How to help MCPS' lowest performing students?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Could these students attending a focus school help them? Smaller class size, more teacher attention?

Most of them do attend focus schools but the ones who need the most help even in those schools are often ignored.

Why?
Shortage of trained personnel?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Could these students attending a focus school help them? Smaller class size, more teacher attention?

Most of them do attend focus schools but the ones who need the most help even in those schools are often ignored.

Why?
Shortage of trained personnel?

They don't care.

[Anonymous]

Parents need to care about the welfare of their kids. Parent need to understand that an education is the way out of poverty. Until we do that, these low performing kids will never succeed.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. You can provide the means or resources for someone to succeed or make a change, ultimately, the decision and action are up to the kid. If the parents don’t care, how can you expect the kid to care. i

The high performing kids are ones where the parents care.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Could these students attending a focus school help them? Smaller class size, more teacher attention?

Most of them do attend focus schools but the ones who need the most help even in those schools are often ignored.

Why?
Shortage of trained personnel?

They don't care.

We do care. I have lost sleep over my students. The system is against us though. It’s expensive to test and then ultimately provide special ed services. Sadly, many students are doing the best they can and just don’t qualify for services.

[Anonymous]

^ and many of the students' parents care. Some are unable to advocate. Some feel teachers know best and don't bother. Some do but get told the listening side's hands are tied.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Could these students attending a focus school help them? Smaller class size, more teacher attention?

Most of them do attend focus schools but the ones who need the most help even in those schools are often ignored.

Why?
Shortage of trained personnel?

They don't care.

We do care. I have lost sleep over my students. The system is against us though. It’s expensive to test and then ultimately provide special ed services. Sadly, many students are doing the best they can and just don’t qualify for services.

Some teachers do, some don't. We have a few teachers that care but the VP and psychologist are a joke. The psychologist had the IEP meeting while in her car and the VP came for the last five minutes and both refused an IEP despite concerns. Neither talked to the parents or ever met the child. They don't even do an assessment, they just refuse. We are spending a fortune on tutoring and other supports.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^ and many of the students' parents care. Some are unable to advocate. Some feel teachers know best and don't bother. Some do but get told the listening side's hands are tied.

Many of us give up asking for help as its regularly refused. And, of all our teachers only a few actually respond to emails when trying to work with them. Most don't even respond.

[Anonymous]

Nothing can be done. Lowest performing are usually also the poorest students in this country.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A point he makes well is that spending more money does not work, that is simply fact. He also points out that no matter what you do, you will not be able to eliminate differences in student performance. Some students are simply better at school than others. What you want to eliminate is the racial gap but that is not an easy thing to do and will require non-academic solutions. I'm not totally on board with his idea of what those are but I think his premise is correct.

Unfortunately that gap exists worldwide. It’s not a US problem.

[Anonymous]

Doing well on state mandated tests (not equivalent to being successful in school) is primarily tied to two factors: HHI, and educational level of the mother.

[Anonymous]

We need free high quality gametes available to anyone who wants them. Pre screened for mental stability, fortitude, gifted iq, and low disease risk. Elon is already doing this with his kids. He should offer it to everyone.

[Anonymous]

I’m an elementary teacher. It’s not just an uphill battle. It’s Sisyphean. The poorest kids live in a completely different world than the middle class kids. They arrive in kindergarten already years behind and they never catch up. Violence at home, hunger, frequent moves, lack of medical care, sometimes foster care, sometimes substance abuse. Not to mention those who need to learn English too. And we try to get them to focus enough to learn some facts for a few hours a day.

[Anonymous]

Immigrants are not the problem, it's usually AA kids that are the worst performing so not sure why people here are so quick to hate immigrant kids but too scared to mention other demographic cause they'll be called racist. Very cowardly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Immigrants are not the problem, it's usually AA kids that are the worst performing so not sure why people here are so quick to hate immigrant kids but too scared to mention other demographic cause they'll be called racist. Very cowardly.

That is not true. Hispanic kids score worse than AA kids in MCPS in literacy and math. Why are you making things up?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Immigrants are not the problem, it's usually AA kids that are the worst performing so not sure why people here are so quick to hate immigrant kids but too scared to mention other demographic cause they'll be called racist. Very cowardly.

That is not true. Hispanic kids score worse than AA kids in MCPS in literacy and math. Why are you making things up?

When your parents ans community doesn't speak English it's easy to work this one out in your head