Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:There are only 2-6 good high schools in MoCo and people pay a lot to live there.
The other people buy cheap houses zoned for bad schools
If you believe that the only good schools are ones in neighborhoods with over-priced real estate, what do you think we as a society owe to people who truly cannot afford to live in those neighborhoods?
Surely, you also believe that an adequate education is a human right and the key to breaking cycles of generational poverty. Are you okay with real estate prices being the tool that creates a permanent underclass?
The slide began with eliminating finals, but that policy was a symptom of decline, not the cause. What we are calling pandemic learning loss was like a heart attack after the patient had a Krispy Kreme donut following a decade of daily Big Macs.
It is time for a true overhaul. But one that must include parental accountability as well. And buying a $900k house zoned to a W feeder doesn’t discharge your responsibility. Affluent parents need to advocate for a grading policy that supports rather than diminishes students learning time management and accountability skills. Affluent parents need to have constructive conversations with their children about the feedback teachers provide and not just react to low grades with angry emails and vitriolic DCUM posts. Your child didn’t get an A on homework because they really understand the concept. They got an A because that category only allows 100%, 90% (if late), and 50% (if never submitted). The C they got on classwork shows their true achievement.
I think you're mixing things up in your last paragraph.....
1) $900k won't get you anything to brag about in many W feeder areas. You can buy and find many $900k homes in the DCC area. You can definitely get a LARGER sized home for that $900k in the DCC zones compared to the Ws, but expensive housing is expensive throughout MoCo, with those prices decreasing on the fringes of the county. To get "cheap" housing, you really have to move outside of MoCo these days, which is why Frederick is booming.
2) You're talking about a group of wealthy parents who henpeck and screech if their child gets a B on an assignment and demands that their child be given a reassessment or insists the teacher wasn't fair or uses some other excuse to push for their kid to either get a higher grade or have a chance to boost their. To be sure, those parents are ANNOYING. But the shift in the grading was NOT because of this group of parents.
3) There's ANOTHER group of parents who usually are on the lower income side, who
feel that every failure of their child's is the fault of the school. They don't look at their own chaotic home environment, nor do they possess an ounce of discipline and organization themselves, but they insist their child is doing poorly because the school system is wrong. Either the teacher is racist and that's why their kid is skipping class, or the teacher went too fast and didn't explain enough for the kid or they believe it's the teacher's job at the high school level to constantly remind their child to turn in assignments. These parents usually either push back whenever the school calls to intervene and always defends their child no matter how wrong the behavior. "Oh, I don't know what the issue is. He's a GOOD boy at home here. It must something y'all doing."
These parents, whose children continuously fail classes and fail to graduate, are the ones for whom the 50% rule on missing assignments and the 90/10 split of all tasks and practice prep were implemented for. It was done to lower the bar to make it easier to graduate. Because these parents don't actually care if their kids do WELL in school or class. But they do care if they get told their child cannot graduate high school. So this appeases them and makes them happy, and also helps the system look more "successful" since graduation rates go up when you lower the bar.