Did MCPS do a sneaky thing for the magnet lotteries?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The kids are back in school, what’s the reason they can’t administer CogAT now?

I guess they finally realized it's easily gamed by those who prep so they decided it was doing more harm than good.

I wish we could move beyond the same back-and-forth arguments here.

Yes, some kids "prep." Other kids do not. Some kids don't prep in the sense of memorizing test strategies (and questions!), but are in such highly enriched environments that there's not much school can offer them above what their parents are already paying for in the private sector.

Some kids are already attending schools with a robust high achieving cohort. Others are outliers within their entire schools.

These are real challenges, and a lottery is not really the way to deal with any of them. It won't differentiate the extremely gifted kids from the merely highly enriched, nor will it necessarily pick up the kid who is an outlier and would not otherwise have a peer group.

The real challenge that I see, though, is that MCPS seems committed to not providing real acceleration/enrichment in home schools. If they would just agree to offer enriched classes starting in middle school, and to cohorting the kids who would otherwise have been eligible to attend the MS magnets, so much of this furor would subside.

Maybe that's the upside of the lottery? It might actually increase parental pressure on MCPS to do what they said they would do and offer cohorted enriched and accelerated classes to "gifted/advanced" kids in their home schools.

So you're advocating for tracking? Isn't that considered harmful?

You're asking wokes to maintain logical consistency. Not their strong suit. Similar to Qanon types.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The kids are back in school, what’s the reason they can’t administer CogAT now?

I guess they finally realized it's easily gamed by those who prep so they decided it was doing more harm than good.

I wish we could move beyond the same back-and-forth arguments here.

Yes, some kids "prep." Other kids do not. Some kids don't prep in the sense of memorizing test strategies (and questions!), but are in such highly enriched environments that there's not much school can offer them above what their parents are already paying for in the private sector.

Some kids are already attending schools with a robust high achieving cohort. Others are outliers within their entire schools.

These are real challenges, and a lottery is not really the way to deal with any of them. It won't differentiate the extremely gifted kids from the merely highly enriched, nor will it necessarily pick up the kid who is an outlier and would not otherwise have a peer group.

The real challenge that I see, though, is that MCPS seems committed to not providing real acceleration/enrichment in home schools. If they would just agree to offer enriched classes starting in middle school, and to cohorting the kids who would otherwise have been eligible to attend the MS magnets, so much of this furor would subside.

Maybe that's the upside of the lottery? It might actually increase parental pressure on MCPS to do what they said they would do and offer cohorted enriched and accelerated classes to "gifted/advanced" kids in their home schools.

So you're advocating for tracking? Isn't that considered harmful?

I think it is considered most harmful in elementary. By middle school, and when paired with real efforts to identify talented kids who might otherwise not be receiving acceleration, it makes more sense. MCPS actually does a pretty good job of pushing opportunities for talented kids in low-income schools, to be honest. Saturday School programs for "gifted" kids in Focus and Title I schools, ELO programs offer the summer, math and science camps only availalbe to FARMS-eligible kids. I agree with all of those, and think they are great, but the trade-off is that by 6th grade, MCPS needs to stop creating heterogenous classrooms that include both kids who can hardly read in English with kids capable of doing magnet-level work.

I'm really bothered by the racist undertones in many of the posts.
Being an English language learner has no bearing on your intelligence. There are kids who have limited English skills who are perfectly capable of doing magnet level work. There are actually several at Takoma this year.

DP. I don't think its racist. You are right that ESOL has no bearing on intelligence but it is difficult for an English learner to learn at the same rate in an immersion environment. It's just a matter of practicality.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The kids are back in school, what’s the reason they can’t administer CogAT now?

I guess they finally realized it's easily gamed by those who prep so they decided it was doing more harm than good.

I wish we could move beyond the same back-and-forth arguments here.

Yes, some kids "prep." Other kids do not. Some kids don't prep in the sense of memorizing test strategies (and questions!), but are in such highly enriched environments that there's not much school can offer them above what their parents are already paying for in the private sector.

Some kids are already attending schools with a robust high achieving cohort. Others are outliers within their entire schools.

These are real challenges, and a lottery is not really the way to deal with any of them. It won't differentiate the extremely gifted kids from the merely highly enriched, nor will it necessarily pick up the kid who is an outlier and would not otherwise have a peer group.

The real challenge that I see, though, is that MCPS seems committed to not providing real acceleration/enrichment in home schools. If they would just agree to offer enriched classes starting in middle school, and to cohorting the kids who would otherwise have been eligible to attend the MS magnets, so much of this furor would subside.

Maybe that's the upside of the lottery? It might actually increase parental pressure on MCPS to do what they said they would do and offer cohorted enriched and accelerated classes to "gifted/advanced" kids in their home schools.

So you're advocating for tracking? Isn't that considered harmful?

I think it is considered most harmful in elementary. By middle school, and when paired with real efforts to identify talented kids who might otherwise not be receiving acceleration, it makes more sense. MCPS actually does a pretty good job of pushing opportunities for talented kids in low-income schools, to be honest. Saturday School programs for "gifted" kids in Focus and Title I schools, ELO programs offer the summer, math and science camps only availalbe to FARMS-eligible kids. I agree with all of those, and think they are great, but the trade-off is that by 6th grade, MCPS needs to stop creating heterogenous classrooms that include both kids who can hardly read in English with kids capable of doing magnet-level work.

I'm really bothered by the racist undertones in many of the posts.
Being an English language learner has no bearing on your intelligence. There are kids who have limited English skills who are perfectly capable of doing magnet level work. There are actually several at Takoma this year.

DP. I don't think its racist. You are right that ESOL has no bearing on intelligence but it is difficult for an English learner to learn at the same rate in an immersion environment. It's just a matter of practicality.

I know you mean well..But it is not true at all. English language learning has nothing to do with doing magnet work. They can work hard and be as good or better than kids who can only speak one language. Most of the parents of the magnet kids are immigrants whose native language isn't English. Stop with the patronizing lotteries please.

[Anonymous]

I know you mean well..But it is not true at all. English language learning has nothing to do with doing magnet work. They can work hard and be as good or better than kids who can only speak one language. Most of the parents of the magnet kids are immigrants whose native language isn't English. Stop with the patronizing lotteries please.

You are confusing, maybe intentionally, kids for whom English is a second or third language and kids who are not at all proficient in the language. I have a child who is bilingual, as my partner and I used the "one person one language" approach. But my chiild isn't an English Language Learner - he is bilingual.

You are also confusing the conversation at hand. The point of mentioning ELLs was nothing about lotteries - it was that MCPS refuses to offer differentiation at the MS level. So, "advanced" English includes both kids who could work at the magnet level and kids who began reading in English last year.

Imagine having your child in a math class where some of the kids were doing pre-algebra and others were still learning two-digit addition. Thankfully, MCPS is still offering varying levels of math instruction in MS but "Advanced English" is a free-for-all of kids operating at wildly different levels. If MCPS would just allow the "highly able" kids (including those for whom English is a second language) to be cohorted for math AND English and HIGH, I think a lot of the drama around magnet admissions would subside.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I know you mean well..But it is not true at all. English language learning has nothing to do with doing magnet work. They can work hard and be as good or better than kids who can only speak one language. Most of the parents of the magnet kids are immigrants whose native language isn't English. Stop with the patronizing lotteries please.

You are confusing, maybe intentionally, kids for whom English is a second or third language and kids who are not at all proficient in the language. I have a child who is bilingual, as my partner and I used the "one person one language" approach. But my chiild isn't an English Language Learner - he is bilingual.

You are also confusing the conversation at hand. The point of mentioning ELLs was nothing about lotteries - it was that MCPS refuses to offer differentiation at the MS level. So, "advanced" English includes both kids who could work at the magnet level and kids who began reading in English last year.

Imagine having your child in a math class where some of the kids were doing pre-algebra and others were still learning two-digit addition. Thankfully, MCPS is still offering varying levels of math instruction in MS but "Advanced English" is a free-for-all of kids operating at wildly different levels. If MCPS would just allow the "highly able" kids (including those for whom English is a second language) to be cohorted for math AND English and HIGH, I think a lot of the drama around magnet admissions would subside.

At our school everyone (I mean every single student at the school) takes Advanced English and Global Humanities so basically they're regular English and Social Studies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The kids are back in school, what’s the reason they can’t administer CogAT now?

I guess they finally realized it's easily gamed by those who prep so they decided it was doing more harm than good.

I wish we could move beyond the same back-and-forth arguments here.

Yes, some kids "prep." Other kids do not. Some kids don't prep in the sense of memorizing test strategies (and questions!), but are in such highly enriched environments that there's not much school can offer them above what their parents are already paying for in the private sector.

Some kids are already attending schools with a robust high achieving cohort. Others are outliers within their entire schools.

These are real challenges, and a lottery is not really the way to deal with any of them. It won't differentiate the extremely gifted kids from the merely highly enriched, nor will it necessarily pick up the kid who is an outlier and would not otherwise have a peer group.

The real challenge that I see, though, is that MCPS seems committed to not providing real acceleration/enrichment in home schools. If they would just agree to offer enriched classes starting in middle school, and to cohorting the kids who would otherwise have been eligible to attend the MS magnets, so much of this furor would subside.

Maybe that's the upside of the lottery? It might actually increase parental pressure on MCPS to do what they said they would do and offer cohorted enriched and accelerated classes to "gifted/advanced" kids in their home schools.

So you're advocating for tracking? Isn't that considered harmful?

I think it is considered most harmful in elementary. By middle school, and when paired with real efforts to identify talented kids who might otherwise not be receiving acceleration, it makes more sense. MCPS actually does a pretty good job of pushing opportunities for talented kids in low-income schools, to be honest. Saturday School programs for "gifted" kids in Focus and Title I schools, ELO programs offer the summer, math and science camps only availalbe to FARMS-eligible kids. I agree with all of those, and think they are great, but the trade-off is that by 6th grade, MCPS needs to stop creating heterogenous classrooms that include both kids who can hardly read in English with kids capable of doing magnet-level work.

I'm really bothered by the racist undertones in many of the posts.
Being an English language learner has no bearing on your intelligence. There are kids who have limited English skills who are perfectly capable of doing magnet level work. There are actually several at Takoma this year.

They might be intelligent, but they are attending school in the United States, where English is read, written and spoken in school. They should be able to do their school work in English. If they wanted to exhibit their intelligence in their native language, they should have stayed in their home country. So no, it is highly unlikely that an English language learner can do the work required by test-in magnet programs. If they can, they are by definition not an English language learner.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The kids are back in school, what’s the reason they can’t administer CogAT now?

I guess they finally realized it's easily gamed by those who prep so they decided it was doing more harm than good.

I wish we could move beyond the same back-and-forth arguments here.

Yes, some kids "prep." Other kids do not. Some kids don't prep in the sense of memorizing test strategies (and questions!), but are in such highly enriched environments that there's not much school can offer them above what their parents are already paying for in the private sector.

Some kids are already attending schools with a robust high achieving cohort. Others are outliers within their entire schools.

These are real challenges, and a lottery is not really the way to deal with any of them. It won't differentiate the extremely gifted kids from the merely highly enriched, nor will it necessarily pick up the kid who is an outlier and would not otherwise have a peer group.

The real challenge that I see, though, is that MCPS seems committed to not providing real acceleration/enrichment in home schools. If they would just agree to offer enriched classes starting in middle school, and to cohorting the kids who would otherwise have been eligible to attend the MS magnets, so much of this furor would subside.

Maybe that's the upside of the lottery? It might actually increase parental pressure on MCPS to do what they said they would do and offer cohorted enriched and accelerated classes to "gifted/advanced" kids in their home schools.

So you're advocating for tracking? Isn't that considered harmful?

I think it is considered most harmful in elementary. By middle school, and when paired with real efforts to identify talented kids who might otherwise not be receiving acceleration, it makes more sense. MCPS actually does a pretty good job of pushing opportunities for talented kids in low-income schools, to be honest. Saturday School programs for "gifted" kids in Focus and Title I schools, ELO programs offer the summer, math and science camps only availalbe to FARMS-eligible kids. I agree with all of those, and think they are great, but the trade-off is that by 6th grade, MCPS needs to stop creating heterogenous classrooms that include both kids who can hardly read in English with kids capable of doing magnet-level work.

I'm really bothered by the racist undertones in many of the posts.
Being an English language learner has no bearing on your intelligence. There are kids who have limited English skills who are perfectly capable of doing magnet level work. There are actually several at Takoma this year.

DP. I don't think its racist. You are right that ESOL has no bearing on intelligence but it is difficult for an English learner to learn at the same rate in an immersion environment. It's just a matter of practicality.

I know you mean well..But it is not true at all. English language learning has nothing to do with doing magnet work. They can work hard and be as good or better than kids who can only speak one language. Most of the parents of the magnet kids are immigrants whose native language isn't English. Stop with the patronizing lotteries please.

What I also find patronizing is this stereotype that magnet kids are all children of immigrants, which is actually quite rare, most are the children of affluent families since these programs are effectively limited to only those who can afford expensive prep.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The kids are back in school, what’s the reason they can’t administer CogAT now?

I guess they finally realized it's easily gamed by those who prep so they decided it was doing more harm than good.

I wish we could move beyond the same back-and-forth arguments here.

Yes, some kids "prep." Other kids do not. Some kids don't prep in the sense of memorizing test strategies (and questions!), but are in such highly enriched environments that there's not much school can offer them above what their parents are already paying for in the private sector.

Some kids are already attending schools with a robust high achieving cohort. Others are outliers within their entire schools.

These are real challenges, and a lottery is not really the way to deal with any of them. It won't differentiate the extremely gifted kids from the merely highly enriched, nor will it necessarily pick up the kid who is an outlier and would not otherwise have a peer group.

The real challenge that I see, though, is that MCPS seems committed to not providing real acceleration/enrichment in home schools. If they would just agree to offer enriched classes starting in middle school, and to cohorting the kids who would otherwise have been eligible to attend the MS magnets, so much of this furor would subside.

Maybe that's the upside of the lottery? It might actually increase parental pressure on MCPS to do what they said they would do and offer cohorted enriched and accelerated classes to "gifted/advanced" kids in their home schools.

So you're advocating for tracking? Isn't that considered harmful?

I think it is considered most harmful in elementary. By middle school, and when paired with real efforts to identify talented kids who might otherwise not be receiving acceleration, it makes more sense. MCPS actually does a pretty good job of pushing opportunities for talented kids in low-income schools, to be honest. Saturday School programs for "gifted" kids in Focus and Title I schools, ELO programs offer the summer, math and science camps only availalbe to FARMS-eligible kids. I agree with all of those, and think they are great, but the trade-off is that by 6th grade, MCPS needs to stop creating heterogenous classrooms that include both kids who can hardly read in English with kids capable of doing magnet-level work.

I'm really bothered by the racist undertones in many of the posts.
Being an English language learner has no bearing on your intelligence. There are kids who have limited English skills who are perfectly capable of doing magnet level work. There are actually several at Takoma this year.

DP. I don't think its racist. You are right that ESOL has no bearing on intelligence but it is difficult for an English learner to learn at the same rate in an immersion environment. It's just a matter of practicality.

I know you mean well..But it is not true at all. English language learning has nothing to do with doing magnet work. They can work hard and be as good or better than kids who can only speak one language. Most of the parents of the magnet kids are immigrants whose native language isn't English. Stop with the patronizing lotteries please.

What I also find patronizing is this stereotype that magnet kids are all children of immigrants, which is actually quite rare, most are the children of affluent families since these programs are effectively limited to only those who can afford expensive prep.

NP. Our experience in the magnets for the past few years, at middle magnet and regional CES, is that there is a very significant immigrant population attending. Most kids have at least one parent who is a first generation immigrant. They have families who value education as a path to stability and prosperity, and most are definitely not affluent.

[Anonymous]

What I also find patronizing is this stereotype that magnet kids are all children of immigrants, which is actually quite rare, most are the children of affluent families since these programs are effectively limited to only those who can afford expensive prep.

NP. Our experience in the magnets for the past few years, at middle magnet and regional CES, is that there is a very significant immigrant population attending. Most kids have at least one parent who is a first generation immigrant. They have families who value education as a path to stability and prosperity, and most are definitely not affluent.

This is anecdata, but my experience is both. Yes, a lot of kids at my child's regional CES and MS magnets have been the children of immigrants, but they were largely MC/UMC immigrants. These weren't kids whose parents own a bodega, or a dry-cleaning shop, or work as landscapers. Their parents are highly educted either back home or here in the United States, and work in a variety of white collar fields.

In addition, the large number of kids whose parents were born abroad in the magnets is not because immigrants are so special and value education more than native-born Americans. MCPS has the highest foreign-born population in the region, and while the last firm count was in 2015 (1/3 of residents were foreign-born), all trends suggest the number is closer to 50 percent now. So, yes, there are a lot of children of immigrants in the magnets. There are also a lot of children of immigrants outside the magnet. There are just a lot of children of immigrants in MCPS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

NP. Our experience in the magnets for the past few years, at middle magnet and regional CES, is that there is a very significant immigrant population attending. Most kids have at least one parent who is a first generation immigrant. They have families who value education as a path to stability and prosperity, and most are definitely not affluent.

It depends on how you define "affluent"...

In my west-county/upcounty anecdotal experience, most of the immigrant parents of children in the application magnet programs come from the more affluent parts of society in their countries of origin, have college degrees (either from their country of origin or from the colleges they came to the US to attend), and work in professional jobs in the US.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

NP. Our experience in the magnets for the past few years, at middle magnet and regional CES, is that there is a very significant immigrant population attending. Most kids have at least one parent who is a first generation immigrant. They have families who value education as a path to stability and prosperity, and most are definitely not affluent.

It depends on how you define "affluent"...

In my west-county/upcounty anecdotal experience, most of the immigrant parents of children in the application magnet programs come from the more affluent parts of society in their countries of origin, have college degrees (either from their country of origin or from the colleges they came to the US to attend), and work in professional jobs in the US.

At least in my book if you can afford to drop $10k on prep classes to ensure your kid gets the scores necessary to appear gifted and access these limited opportunities then you're affluent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

NP. Our experience in the magnets for the past few years, at middle magnet and regional CES, is that there is a very significant immigrant population attending. Most kids have at least one parent who is a first generation immigrant. They have families who value education as a path to stability and prosperity, and most are definitely not affluent.

It depends on how you define "affluent"...

In my west-county/upcounty anecdotal experience, most of the immigrant parents of children in the application magnet programs come from the more affluent parts of society in their countries of origin, have college degrees (either from their country of origin or from the colleges they came to the US to attend), and work in professional jobs in the US.

At least in my book if you can afford to drop $10k on prep classes to ensure your kid gets the scores necessary to appear gifted and access these limited opportunities then you're affluent.

Can we just set the "prepping" issue to the side, please? It's a vague word that does more harm than good and encompasses all sorts of activities, from Russian School of Math to STEM classes to robotics club, to Outschool book clubs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They might be intelligent, but they are attending school in the United States, where English is read, written and spoken in school. They should be able to do their school work in English. If they wanted to exhibit their intelligence in their native language, they should have stayed in their home country. So no, it is highly unlikely that an English language learner can do the work required by test-in magnet programs. If they can, they are by definition not an English language learner.

Thus speaks a Nativist.

We have no Official language in the US. Yes, English is the de facto one, but there's a reason MCPS produces stuff in many languages.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The kids are back in school, what’s the reason they can’t administer CogAT now?

I guess they finally realized it's easily gamed by those who prep so they decided it was doing more harm than good.

I wish we could move beyond the same back-and-forth arguments here.

Yes, some kids "prep." Other kids do not. Some kids don't prep in the sense of memorizing test strategies (and questions!), but are in such highly enriched environments that there's not much school can offer them above what their parents are already paying for in the private sector.

Some kids are already attending schools with a robust high achieving cohort. Others are outliers within their entire schools.

These are real challenges, and a lottery is not really the way to deal with any of them. It won't differentiate the extremely gifted kids from the merely highly enriched, nor will it necessarily pick up the kid who is an outlier and would not otherwise have a peer group.

The real challenge that I see, though, is that MCPS seems committed to not providing real acceleration/enrichment in home schools. If they would just agree to offer enriched classes starting in middle school, and to cohorting the kids who would otherwise have been eligible to attend the MS magnets, so much of this furor would subside.

Maybe that's the upside of the lottery? It might actually increase parental pressure on MCPS to do what they said they would do and offer cohorted enriched and accelerated classes to "gifted/advanced" kids in their home schools.

So you're advocating for tracking? Isn't that considered harmful?

I think it is considered most harmful in elementary. By middle school, and when paired with real efforts to identify talented kids who might otherwise not be receiving acceleration, it makes more sense. MCPS actually does a pretty good job of pushing opportunities for talented kids in low-income schools, to be honest. Saturday School programs for "gifted" kids in Focus and Title I schools, ELO programs offer the summer, math and science camps only availalbe to FARMS-eligible kids. I agree with all of those, and think they are great, but the trade-off is that by 6th grade, MCPS needs to stop creating heterogenous classrooms that include both kids who can hardly read in English with kids capable of doing magnet-level work.

I'm really bothered by the racist undertones in many of the posts.
Being an English language learner has no bearing on your intelligence. There are kids who have limited English skills who are perfectly capable of doing magnet level work. There are actually several at Takoma this year.

DP. I don't think its racist. You are right that ESOL has no bearing on intelligence but it is difficult for an English learner to learn at the same rate in an immersion environment. It's just a matter of practicality.

I know you mean well..But it is not true at all. English language learning has nothing to do with doing magnet work. They can work hard and be as good or better than kids who can only speak one language. Most of the parents of the magnet kids are immigrants whose native language isn't English. Stop with the patronizing lotteries please.

What I also find patronizing is this stereotype that magnet kids are all children of immigrants, which is actually quite rare, most are the children of affluent families since these programs are effectively limited to only those who can afford expensive prep.

I think your experience is clouded by living in Takoma Park where most of the magnet kids are US born white kids. Over here in the W schools, most magnets are populated by poor(ish) Asian and Indian immigrants or 1st gen Asian and Indian kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

NP. Our experience in the magnets for the past few years, at middle magnet and regional CES, is that there is a very significant immigrant population attending. Most kids have at least one parent who is a first generation immigrant. They have families who value education as a path to stability and prosperity, and most are definitely not affluent.

It depends on how you define "affluent"...

In my west-county/upcounty anecdotal experience, most of the immigrant parents of children in the application magnet programs come from the more affluent parts of society in their countries of origin, have college degrees (either from their country of origin or from the colleges they came to the US to attend), and work in professional jobs in the US.

At least in my book if you can afford to drop $10k on prep classes to ensure your kid gets the scores necessary to appear gifted and access these limited opportunities then you're affluent.

Can we just set the "prepping" issue to the side, please? It's a vague word that does more harm than good and encompasses all sorts of activities, from Russian School of Math to STEM classes to robotics club, to Outschool book clubs.

Wokes can't drop the prepping issue. They have to keep pretending that this is Lake Wobegon and all children are above average and that the only thing keeping our poor minorities is $.