MoCo is diverse, for sure, but MCPS schools are not

[Anonymous]

I support paying taxes. I support allocating non-traditional educational resources such as food, healthcare etc within schools with higher poverty to address the problem. I support giving more resources to schools with poverty for smaller classes, special programs, more ESL etc.

However, there is a balance and Montgomery County needs to provide a good educational program for ALL the kids. While the lower SES schools have a 12:1 K ratio, the higher performing schools have 28:1. This is more than twice and 28 is way too high for any K class. The standards for the curriculum and level of challenge has been lowered so badly by 2.0 to allow the lower performing schools to claim success that kids from higher performing school who come into K with age appropriate skills are doing less than they did in preschool. This is not OK. Forcing my kids to sit on a bus for several hours a day and lose the neighborhood connection to a school just to mask over the housing segregation is not OK. The day this happens is the day everyone moves out of the county.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Your W school rankings would tank because you would have to deport all the Asians.

Do you even know that there are ways to immigrate to US LEGALLY?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Your W school rankings would tank because you would have to deport all the Asians.

Do you even know that there are ways to immigrate to US LEGALLY?

Probably not, because the people who are anti-"illegals" just see non-white people and start foaming at the mouth about how "those people" are just taking all the resources away from hardworking white people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I support paying taxes. I support allocating non-traditional educational resources such as food, healthcare etc within schools with higher poverty to address the problem. I support giving more resources to schools with poverty for smaller classes, special programs, more ESL etc.

However, there is a balance and Montgomery County needs to provide a good educational program for ALL the kids. While the lower SES schools have a 12:1 K ratio, the higher performing schools have 28:1. This is more than twice and 28 is way too high for any K class. The standards for the curriculum and level of challenge has been lowered so badly by 2.0 to allow the lower performing schools to claim success that kids from higher performing school who come into K with age appropriate skills are doing less than they did in preschool. This is not OK. Forcing my kids to sit on a bus for several hours a day and lose the neighborhood connection to a school just to mask over the housing segregation is not OK. The day this happens is the day everyone moves out of the county.

I don't know about K, but my experience with Curriculum 2.0 with a high-performing kid in a school with about 20% students on FARMS has been very good for first and second grade. And yes, I had a kid in that same school before Curriculum 2.0, so I have a valid comparison. When people say "Curriculum 2.0 is remedial preschool!!11!!" -- well, that's not what I've seen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Your W school rankings would tank because you would have to deport all the Asians.

Do you even know that there are ways to immigrate to US LEGALLY?

Probably not, because the people who are anti-"illegals" just see non-white people and start foaming at the mouth about how "those people" are just taking all the resources away from hardworking white people.

Yup. A lot of these "illegals" the people are foaming at the mouth about are legal residents or US citizens.

[Anonymous]

I think tracking would take care of many issues in all schools. The higher ratio and the lower ratio focus schools. It is not fair to plop 15-30 kids together in a class with huge discrepancies in learning, thinking, disabilities, language skills etc... and think 1 (ONE!!) teacher can impact all of them to their best of their abilities all year long. But this county is a liberal PC area where they want to mix classes with equal amounts of girls/boys, races and learning skills. It does not work. If everyone wants to be treated equal in gender, race and culture, the ONLY thing MCPS needs to do is track and place kids regardless of the above in classes appropriate from them. From 1st grade to 12th grade. But then the minorities would actually see front and center how the majority of their kids are the ones at the bottom and they would complain that they aren't being treated fairly. It is a lose lose situation. Everyone has to walk on eggshells. All kids lose out on a good education in a classroom with peers of their own abilities.

Yet there are people complaining about how the schools are segregated here?? Give me a break. There aren't many counties in this country that try to blend mixed cultures and races more than MC. We aide illegal immigrants. We change school zonings all over the place and not the closest to the school per say. All for mixing SES and race. The focus schools get so much more yet complain they aren't being treated fairly. Again - lose lose situation.

If everyone held themselves accountable for their kid's education and not a school district that only sees them 30hrs a week, there would be a lot less finger-pointing and maybe a little more learning going on. But that takes work and we all know how this country feels about hard work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I support paying taxes. I support allocating non-traditional educational resources such as food, healthcare etc within schools with higher poverty to address the problem. I support giving more resources to schools with poverty for smaller classes, special programs, more ESL etc.

However, there is a balance and Montgomery County needs to provide a good educational program for ALL the kids. While the lower SES schools have a 12:1 K ratio, the higher performing schools have 28:1. This is more than twice and 28 is way too high for any K class. The standards for the curriculum and level of challenge has been lowered so badly by 2.0 to allow the lower performing schools to claim success that kids from higher performing school who come into K with age appropriate skills are doing less than they did in preschool. This is not OK. Forcing my kids to sit on a bus for several hours a day and lose the neighborhood connection to a school just to mask over the housing segregation is not OK. The day this happens is the day everyone moves out of the county.

I haven't concluded for myself that 2.0 is all about lowering standards and thereby shrinking the achievement gap, but I agree with everything else you say. To read this thread, one might conclude that the county is not doing anything to help ease the differences that spring from neighborhood differences. But these housing differentials exist in every community and has persisted for decades nationwide. It's a vast problem that every community has struggled with. To suggest that tackling this problem is the silver bullet is to ignore so many other incremental solutions that can be employed in every school. Title I is a piece of that, and it's what allows lower SES schools to have extra funding and smaller classes to tackle the problems that higher poverty brings. I just looked at a bunch of MCPS maps, and it's clear that there's been a lot of effort to put high density housing (apartments, condos, etc...) into high-performing school districts on the west side of the county...but there's a limit to how much change can be effected by moving one Gaithersburg neighborhood into another Gaitherburg cluster, or moving a Rockville neighborhood into a Potomac or G'burg cluster. Unless you're talking about large-scale busing, that's not going to help low SES kids in Silver Spring. Or it might help a few with dedicated and "squeaky wheel" parents in Title I schools -- but frankly, those parents' kids are not the ones who are most vulnerable.

I think most people want to do the right thing to help struggling kids in struggling schools, but it doesn't help the dialog to tell the wealthier residents that they're selfish and bigoted against the poor and the nonwhite for having good schools, to blame every "illegal" for...everything, or to claim the county administrators don't give a damn. It's a big county with a lot of people and a lot of divergent needs -- there are balances to be calibrated and maybe if we spent as much time writing our elected officials (from the loacl school board on up) and getting educated on the issues as we do bitching on this board, the system could find the right balance more quickly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Your W school rankings would tank because you would have to deport all the Asians.

Do you even know that there are ways to immigrate to US LEGALLY?

Probably not, because the people who are anti-"illegals" just see non-white people and start foaming at the mouth about how "those people" are just taking all the resources away from hardworking white people.

Yup. A lot of these "illegals" the people are foaming at the mouth about are legal residents or US citizens.

Yes, I'm curious how people know the legal status of the kids. Do you just assume if they don't know how to speak English that they are not legal? Sorry to burst your bubble, but we were legal immigrants back in the 70's and we didn't know a lick of English, and yet here we are, now all my siblings and I are tax paying US citizens. We vote, are involved in schools, etc.. My parents didn't do those things because, yea, they didn't know English very well. But they worked hard and provided for us so that we could do these things for our kids.

OP - I really don't think you will find any where in this country where a particular school is representative in its SES makeup of the district if that district has huge income disparities simply because of housing costs. Unfortunately, SES in large urban areas do seem to fall along racial lines. So, this is what you are seeing in MCPS.

What nationality were you originally? Did you/your kids receive government aid, special tutoring, special ESOL, free lunches? What level of education did your father have?

Today's ILLEGAL immigrant profile, Adult: Central America / Yes, yes yes yes / middle school educated.

Today's LEGAL immigrant profile, Adult: SE Asia / No, no, no, no / College educated.

What does it matter where we came from or whether we had free lunches? And yes, some of my siblings went to ESL. I didn't because I was just a toddler when I came here, so my English skills were better than my siblings' by the time I hit ES age.

My point was that some people assume that all those kids that don't speak English (or should I say those that seem to only speak Spanish) are illegals. My point was.. how the hell can you tell who is illegal and who is not simply by the fact that they don't speak English?

And BTW, my father had a MS education and my mother only an ES level education. And we are not from SE Asia. So what? What does that have to do with anything? They worked themselves to the bone to provide for us.

So, it's ok if someone is illegal, but can speak English and has a college diploma, but it's not ok if the illegal is perceived to be uneducated and can't speak English because these people take from taxpayers whereas the other types of illegals don't? Ha! I knew a white family who were illegal immigrants, and living in a very white area, kids going to a very affluent white school, taking away precious resources from this school. The woman worked in my company. People knew about her status, and yet, no one batted an eye at work about it. Why is that? Because she's white? Oh, and she and her family eventually got her greencard. She is now an executive at the company.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I support paying taxes. I support allocating non-traditional educational resources such as food, healthcare etc within schools with higher poverty to address the problem. I support giving more resources to schools with poverty for smaller classes, special programs, more ESL etc.

However, there is a balance and Montgomery County needs to provide a good educational program for ALL the kids. While the lower SES schools have a 12:1 K ratio, the higher performing schools have 28:1. This is more than twice and 28 is way too high for any K class. The standards for the curriculum and level of challenge has been lowered so badly by 2.0 to allow the lower performing schools to claim success that kids from higher performing school who come into K with age appropriate skills are doing less than they did in preschool. This is not OK. Forcing my kids to sit on a bus for several hours a day and lose the neighborhood connection to a school just to mask over the housing segregation is not OK. The day this happens is the day everyone moves out of the county.

+1 - I've had kids in MCPS long enough (huge gap in ages) to say yes the standards have been lowered and the current system of accountability is a joke for Elementary school age kids. Just look at what a child needs to produce to get a P as a passing grade. The standards and level of expectations are way lower than what they were 10 years ago for Elementary students. I can't wait to see when this crop of guinea pig 5th graders hit Middle School.

I was so concerned about the lack of standards that for my child, I provided him with outside resources. He has a tutor to help with his writing skills, he reads at least 30 minutes a day, and he is working through the Singapore Math curriculum. These are all on our family's dime and time and we are not the only family that feels the need for educational supplementation. A lower income family might not know of the need to supplement or have the resources. Therefore, is it any wonder our kids perform better?

You can be the squeaky wheel, protest for better, write blogs on DC Urban Mom but meanwhile, what are you personally doing to help your child's education? If you are doing nothing than your child will continue to fall behind.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I support paying taxes. I support allocating non-traditional educational resources such as food, healthcare etc within schools with higher poverty to address the problem. I support giving more resources to schools with poverty for smaller classes, special programs, more ESL etc.

However, there is a balance and Montgomery County needs to provide a good educational program for ALL the kids. While the lower SES schools have a 12:1 K ratio, the higher performing schools have 28:1. This is more than twice and 28 is way too high for any K class. The standards for the curriculum and level of challenge has been lowered so badly by 2.0 to allow the lower performing schools to claim success that kids from higher performing school who come into K with age appropriate skills are doing less than they did in preschool. This is not OK. Forcing my kids to sit on a bus for several hours a day and lose the neighborhood connection to a school just to mask over the housing segregation is not OK. The day this happens is the day everyone moves out of the county.

+1 - I've had kids in MCPS long enough (huge gap in ages) to say yes the standards have been lowered and the current system of accountability is a joke for Elementary school age kids. Just look at what a child needs to produce to get a P as a passing grade. The standards and level of expectations are way lower than what they were 10 years ago for Elementary students. I can't wait to see when this crop of guinea pig 5th graders hit Middle School.

I was so concerned about the lack of standards that for my child, I provided him with outside resources. He has a tutor to help with his writing skills, he reads at least 30 minutes a day, and he is working through the Singapore Math curriculum. These are all on our family's dime and time and we are not the only family that feels the need for educational supplementation. A lower income family might not know of the need to supplement or have the resources. Therefore, is it any wonder our kids perform better?

You can be the squeaky wheel, protest for better, write blogs on DC Urban Mom but meanwhile, what are you personally doing to help your child's education? If you are doing nothing than your child will continue to fall behind.

I have 2 kids that are 9yrs apart and agree that they have dumbed down the education to the increasing SES going to MCPS. But many won't be proactive with their kids education. This is why we have the problem. Yet people want things equal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I have 2 kids that are 9yrs apart and agree that they have dumbed down the education to the increasing SES going to MCPS. But many won't be proactive with their kids education. This is why we have the problem. Yet people want things equal.

I don't think that SES means what you think it means. SES doesn't mean "poor and uneducated". SES stands for socioeconomic status. If you are a rich doctor, you have a high SES. If you are a poor high-school dropout, you have a low SES. Both the rich doctor and the poor dropout have an SES.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I have 2 kids that are 9yrs apart and agree that they have dumbed down the education to the increasing SES going to MCPS. But many won't be proactive with their kids education. This is why we have the problem. Yet people want things equal.

I don't think that SES means what you think it means. SES doesn't mean "poor and uneducated". SES stands for socioeconomic status. If you are a rich doctor, you have a high SES. If you are a poor high-school dropout, you have a low SES. Both the rich doctor and the poor dropout have an SES.

Guess her school used the 'dumbed down' 2.0
LOL!

[Anonymous]

The point the PP's are trying to make is that if you don't think MCPS is doing enough to educate your kids then do SOMETHING about it.

1) You can have your children use FREE online resources such as Kahn Academy (go to the library and use their computer if you do not have internet access at home).

2) Purchase $7 Singapore math work books at the Teacher Bookstore. You can also find math work books for cheap at Sams Club and Costco. Have your kids practice with them and check their answers. Have them redo problems they get wrong.

3) Make flash cards for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division facts. Drill them over and over with your kids till they are ingrained. Kids will fall off a cliff in middle school and high school if they do not know their basic math facts.

4) Read to infants - first graders 20 minutes a day, everyday. Have your first grader and second grader read to you for 20 minutes a day. 3rd grade on up, they should read AT LEAST 30 minutes a day and all the reading should not be fiction. Mix it up with non-fiction sources such as magazines and newspapers or non-fiction books at the library.

5) Take the time to see all your children's assessments. Make appointments at school if they are not coming home. You would be surprised how little the P is telling you about their performance. You would be surprised how little the B means about their preparedness for higher education. Review the tests with your kids so they can learn from their mistakes and so you know what they may need more instruction in.

6) Finally, find out who is running for public office in November and research their stand on educational issues. If you are unhappy with MCPS, vote for new people onto the Board of Education. Otherwise your cries of injustice are just sprinkling out to the wind. The old guard just doesn't care and isn't listening.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The point the PP's are trying to make is that if you don't think MCPS is doing enough to educate your kids then do SOMETHING about it.

1) You can have your children use FREE online resources such as Kahn Academy (go to the library and use their computer if you do not have internet access at home).

2) Purchase $7 Singapore math work books at the Teacher Bookstore. You can also find math work books for cheap at Sams Club and Costco. Have your kids practice with them and check their answers. Have them redo problems they get wrong.

3) Make flash cards for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division facts. Drill them over and over with your kids till they are ingrained. Kids will fall off a cliff in middle school and high school if they do not know their basic math facts.

4) Read to infants - first graders 20 minutes a day, everyday. Have your first grader and second grader read to you for 20 minutes a day. 3rd grade on up, they should read AT LEAST 30 minutes a day and all the reading should not be fiction. Mix it up with non-fiction sources such as magazines and newspapers or non-fiction books at the library.

5) Take the time to see all your children's assessments. Make appointments at school if they are not coming home. You would be surprised how little the P is telling you about their performance. You would be surprised how little the B means about their preparedness for higher education. Review the tests with your kids so they can learn from their mistakes and so you know what they may need more instruction in.

6) Finally, find out who is running for public office in November and research their stand on educational issues. If you are unhappy with MCPS, vote for new people onto the Board of Education. Otherwise your cries of injustice are just sprinkling out to the wind. The old guard just doesn't care and isn't listening.

This is what most parents at W schools do

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The point the PP's are trying to make is that if you don't think MCPS is doing enough to educate your kids then do SOMETHING about it.

1) You can have your children use FREE online resources such as Kahn Academy (go to the library and use their computer if you do not have internet access at home).

2) Purchase $7 Singapore math work books at the Teacher Bookstore. You can also find math work books for cheap at Sams Club and Costco. Have your kids practice with them and check their answers. Have them redo problems they get wrong.

3) Make flash cards for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division facts. Drill them over and over with your kids till they are ingrained. Kids will fall off a cliff in middle school and high school if they do not know their basic math facts.

4) Read to infants - first graders 20 minutes a day, everyday. Have your first grader and second grader read to you for 20 minutes a day. 3rd grade on up, they should read AT LEAST 30 minutes a day and all the reading should not be fiction. Mix it up with non-fiction sources such as magazines and newspapers or non-fiction books at the library.

5) Take the time to see all your children's assessments. Make appointments at school if they are not coming home. You would be surprised how little the P is telling you about their performance. You would be surprised how little the B means about their preparedness for higher education. Review the tests with your kids so they can learn from their mistakes and so you know what they may need more instruction in.

6) Finally, find out who is running for public office in November and research their stand on educational issues. If you are unhappy with MCPS, vote for new people onto the Board of Education. Otherwise your cries of injustice are just sprinkling out to the wind. The old guard just doesn't care and isn't listening.

This all sounds like really good advice. Thank you.