Middle school magnet results?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are supposed to be 125 Math, Science & CS seats in each grade at TPMS. 25 are reserved for the TPMS catchment, while the other 100 are drawn from the rest of the south/east of the county (maybe 2/3 of the MCPS student population? not just the DCC). 75 at Clemente, with 25 of those reserved for the Clemente catchment and the other 50 for the rest of the north/west.

I think there are similar numbers at Eastern for downcounty and King for upcounty for the humanities magnets, though Eastern might have 112 instead of 125, per a 2020 report to the BOE covering placement data through the 2020-21 school year. From that report, the number of seats at each school used to be higher; in 2019-20, there were 90 at Clemente, 188 at Eastern, 136 at King and 147 at Takoma Park. I'm guessing that accommodation of appeals, which probably lost basis with the institution of the lottery, had something to do with that, and that the 2020-21 (& likely 2021-22) numbers are reflective of the intended capacity.

Which is way too low, of course.

Separately, it looks like each of the MSMC schools (Loiederman, Argyle & Parkland), which are not criteria based, have 100 or more slots each for those outside the MSMC catchment. Additional outside seats are made available there if local populations plus the 100 or so outsiders don't fill the school capacity.

A second thought -- the report (https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/uploadedFiles/departments/schoolchoice/210818%20CES%20Secondary%20App%20Prog%20Admission%20Results.pdf) shows numbers placed, which may mean the number offered seats instead of the number enrolled. If the report had been generated at the time of initial offers for 2020-21, there may only have been as many offered seats as there was capacity. The higher numbers for the earlier years may be from those offered seats ("placed"), not all of whom eventually enrolled, with their declined seats going to later rounds of those placed, though they were counted in the total placed for that year -- the report was highlighting placement by race/ethnicity, by application from private and by FARMS status. So it could be that there were always just the 125 at TPMS, 112 at EMS, 75 at RCMS and 75 at MLKMS.

Which, again, is way too low.

It is unclear why they insist on rationing access to quality, accelerated instruction to student that MCPS has deemed worthy. Makes zero sense.

But parents couldn't brag on DCUM if there were enough seats to go around!

[Anonymous]

Are there parents interested in suing MCPS on this lottery based selection? Any proposal on how we can organize and pool our resources to take a legal action.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are there parents interested in suing MCPS on this lottery based selection? Any proposal on how we can organize and pool our resources to take a legal action.

There was a lawsuit based upon Asian discrimination and Magnet acceptances.

https://pacificlegal.org/case/afef-v-montgomery-county-public-schools/
https://casetext.com/case/assn-for-educ-fairness-v-montgomery-cnty-bd-of-educ

The MCPS solution was to make the Middle School Magnet system a "lottery" system

Now no one can prove its not random, unless and insider squeals. Although MCPS never defined the "local norming" piece of the "lottery"?

[Anonymous]

This is why if you're upset, until you vote out the current BOE, nothing will change.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are there parents interested in suing MCPS on this lottery based selection? Any proposal on how we can organize and pool our resources to take a legal action.

There was a lawsuit based upon Asian discrimination and Magnet acceptances.

https://pacificlegal.org/case/afef-v-montgomery-county-public-schools/
https://casetext.com/case/assn-for-educ-fairness-v-montgomery-cnty-bd-of-educ

The MCPS solution was to make the Middle School Magnet system a "lottery" system

Now no one can prove its not random, unless and insider squeals. Although MCPS never defined the "local norming" piece of the "lottery"?

I would imagine that they process they went through to identify the 85% cutoff could probably be proven to be racially motivated. However the problem is that you would never get to discovery on a good hunch. You would need at least to demonstrate some harm.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are there parents interested in suing MCPS on this lottery based selection? Any proposal on how we can organize and pool our resources to take a legal action.

There was a lawsuit based upon Asian discrimination and Magnet acceptances.

https://pacificlegal.org/case/afef-v-montgomery-county-public-schools/
https://casetext.com/case/assn-for-educ-fairness-v-montgomery-cnty-bd-of-educ

The MCPS solution was to make the Middle School Magnet system a "lottery" system

Now no one can prove its not random, unless and insider squeals. Although MCPS never defined the "local norming" piece of the "lottery"?

The timeline doesn't match. It says the complaint was filled September 1. Lottery happened earlier in 2021.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My oldest started Kindergarten in MCPS in 2004. There has always been more demand for these gifted/enriched magnets than spots.

If I had a magic wand:

1. Offer magnet math, magnet social studies, and magnet English at all middle schools. If there are is no cohort, kids can go to another school. Our MS curriculum is terrible. The majority of families would be happy in home MSs with a more rigorous curriculum.

2. Expand the number of seats in middle school magnet programs by adding more locations, like they have expanded the test-in HS magnet programs. With these expanded seats they can let in all the outliers (98%+ on cogat or map or whatever) and then do a lottery for everyone that is between 98% and 85% to fill the remainder of the spots. We have a ton of highly able students in this county. Let's make the pie bigger.

You are actually drawing lines between kids who scored 98 and 99 percent?

THIS EXAM IS ONE MOMENT FROM ONE DAY OF THEIR LIVES.

You pick the number then. I don't personally care what the criteria are. Find a way to identify kids who are academic outliers and then let in a bunch of other kids who would benefit from the program via lottery.

And there's the rub. Kids excel in different ways, and that will be reflected in the measuring stick you choose.

It would be a good point except, the program is supposed to be for kids that excel in specific ways.

So it's only for kids who score well on cogat? Or get all A's on homework? Or all As on assessments? Which specific ways are important?

It’s kids who test well and are overall consistently high achievers. It’s just like sports, you know who the good players are, even if they play one bad game. They consistently play well in all aspects of the game. If your kid makes one home run but can’t catch a ball, it doesn’t mean they can be in the team. Show me the kid who consistently plays well.

But there’s the thing, a kid who gets As in compacted math, tests well on exams, enjoys the subject, but doesn’t do well on MAP or Cogat - that kid is largely the kid who has one bad game. However, they’re not going to make it into a magnet.

[Anonymous]

When they had a more personalized review up until the pandemic that child could have made it into the magnet even if he or she had a bad day on a MAP test or Cogat. We've seen it for DC's friends who may have had a great MAP or Cogat but didn't do well on the other.

Now it's all done according to some formulas and a computer spits out kids in the lottery. This does not allow for kids who have potential or may need something extra.

I really think they need to completely rethink the magnets. The situation now is nonsense. If they are using them for equity reasons which they have said they are they need to just take the kids from the Ws out of the lottery and mandate enriched curriculum at all schools. None of those kid would have to commute and could stay with friends.

For the less high performing schools they could keep magnets by lottery if they want and just because of our demographic distribution they will be almost all URM students which is what they want in the first place. They should still offer enriched curriculum at those neighborhood schools because regardless there will still be lots of high performers who did not get a space.

Everyone's happy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are there parents interested in suing MCPS on this lottery based selection? Any proposal on how we can organize and pool our resources to take a legal action.

There was a lawsuit based upon Asian discrimination and Magnet acceptances.

https://pacificlegal.org/case/afef-v-montgomery-county-public-schools/
https://casetext.com/case/assn-for-educ-fairness-v-montgomery-cnty-bd-of-educ

The MCPS solution was to make the Middle School Magnet system a "lottery" system

Now no one can prove its not random, unless and insider squeals. Although MCPS never defined the "local norming" piece of the "lottery"?

The timeline doesn't match. It says the complaint was filled September 1. Lottery happened earlier in 2021.

The lottery was to head off the lawsuit. There's no reason they could not have given the Cogat or used MAP or other measures of ranking to select the students during the first year of the pandemic and definitely the second year everyone was in school so no reason not to give the Cogat. They also could have made the cut off more narrow. Instead they made it large enough to get the demographic mix they wanted but if they had made it 95th percentile the demographics would probably have looked similar to past years. I think this should be easy to prove with basic public information requests but I do think discovery of internal emails and depositions would yield a lot more information. Isn't the lawsuit proceeding so aren't they in this discovery phase at this point?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When they had a more personalized review up until the pandemic that child could have made it into the magnet even if he or she had a bad day on a MAP test or Cogat. We've seen it for DC's friends who may have had a great MAP or Cogat but didn't do well on the other.

Now it's all done according to some formulas and a computer spits out kids in the lottery. This does not allow for kids who have potential or may need something extra.

I really think they need to completely rethink the magnets. The situation now is nonsense. If they are using them for equity reasons which they have said they are they need to just take the kids from the Ws out of the lottery and mandate enriched curriculum at all schools. None of those kid would have to commute and could stay with friends.

I think they've started introducing enriched curriculum at some middle schools, but time will tell how good they are.


For the less high performing schools they could keep magnets by lottery if they want and just because of our demographic distribution they will be almost all URM students which is what they want in the first place. They should still offer enriched curriculum at those neighborhood schools because regardless there will still be lots of high performers who did not get a space.

Everyone's happy.

[Anonymous]

I think they've started introducing enriched curriculum at some middle schools, but time will tell how good they are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think they've started introducing enriched curriculum at some middle schools, but time will tell how good they are.

They did that four years ago, and English is still a mess.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think they've started introducing enriched curriculum at some middle schools, but time will tell how good they are.

They did that four years ago, and English is still a mess.

The enrichment they began four years ago was for middle school math and social studies only.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are there parents interested in suing MCPS on this lottery based selection? Any proposal on how we can organize and pool our resources to take a legal action.

There was a lawsuit based upon Asian discrimination and Magnet acceptances.

https://pacificlegal.org/case/afef-v-montgomery-county-public-schools/
https://casetext.com/case/assn-for-educ-fairness-v-montgomery-cnty-bd-of-educ

The MCPS solution was to make the Middle School Magnet system a "lottery" system

Now no one can prove its not random, unless and insider squeals. Although MCPS never defined the "local norming" piece of the "lottery"?

The timeline doesn't match. It says the complaint was filled September 1. Lottery happened earlier in 2021.

The lottery was to head off the lawsuit. There's no reason they could not have given the Cogat or used MAP or other measures of ranking to select the students during the first year of the pandemic and definitely the second year everyone was in' school so no reason not to give the Cogat. They also could have made the cut off more narrow. Instead they made it large enough to get the demographic mix they wanted but if they had made it 95th percentile the demographics would probably have looked similar to past years. I think this should be easy to prove with basic public information requests but I do think discovery of internal emails and depositions would yield a lot more information. Isn't the lawsuit proceeding so aren't they in this discovery phase at this point?

For Pete's sake, the lottery wasn't about the law suit. MCPS is still in a posture where law suit may not get dismissed because the pool for the lottery isn't transparent. Discovery in the suit could reveal a race-based advantage/disadvantage in the pool selection. (Particularly with respect to the local norming) Now the Supreme Court is likely to overturn using race for admissions, so we'll have to see what they say.

[Anonymous]

You really don't know anything do you? The judge in that case said the timing and the design of the lottery seemed to indicate that the it may have been at least partially motivated by the lawsuit but that no one will really know until the facts of the case are out.

The lawsuit was not dismissed. What do you mean MCPS is still in a posture where it may not get dismissed? That part of the legal proceedings is done. The case is going forward because there was enough evidence to indicate MCPS's actions violated equal protection and was discriminatory.