interesting discussion regarding abysmal decline of MoCo schools

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have worked for MCPS for a long time. I don't think MCPS has changed, but our county demographics certainly have changed. We have more newcomers with limited to no English language. We have much higher rates of poverty and trauma. Parents who are struggling to keep roofs over their heads, substance abuse, domestic violence, etc. All of these societal problems are spilling into our school buildings and quite frankly, staff are overwhelmed. It's very, very challenging to try and teach or run a building when you have a few kids in each grade-level who are consistently occupying 95% of your bandwidth. These kids didn't ask to be born into crappy conditions but they're in our schools and are having a really tough time despite the best efforts by staff to support their SEL needs.
We have to be honest with ourselves - until the parents (society) gets in a better place, we're going to continue to see the effects in our buildings. The curriculum standards have become harder with CCSS but we've lowered our expectations. Students know that there aren't any real consequences. We don't suspend students because of the school to prison pipeline. Trust me when I tell you, there are kids I would have advocated for suspension years ago but now knowing what they'd do at home, I'd rather them be safe and fed in our building. Admin are basically spending any free moment covering duties, dealing with behavior issues, etc. This gets in the way of them being able to get into classrooms to observe actual teaching and instruction.
Personally, I'm tired of schools and MCPS being blamed for all of the problems that we've created as a society. We aren't private schools - we take whoever comes to enroll and we do the best that we can with limited staff and training in trauma-informed practices.

DP. This 100%. I'm a parent with kids at a MS and HS with high FARMS rates. The staff at these schools are dealing with problems that aren't even related to academics and it doesn't help that MCPS has taken an approach to discipline that provides little to no consequences. The kids who stay out of trouble, come from stable families who prioritize education, and hang out with similar students are barely affected by this. They get good grades, join clubs and do extracurricular activities, take AP and IB classes, take full advantage of the MCPS college and career programs available to them, and will get into good colleges. Unfortunately, the ones with issues that stem from outside the school (poverty, domestic violence, etc.) are going to have a tough time regardless of the MCPS disciplinary approach. All of this is not some breaking news though. No school system can fix society's problems and while no one wants to hear this, at the end of the day- the most important factor in a child's success is their PARENTS.

The sentence I bolded is so true. If the parents aren't properly raising their kids and providing a poor home-life, there is only so much the schools can do. If your kid comes from a stable home and the parents prioritize education, your kid will do fine in MCPS.

I disagree that my kid will do fine. she attends a high FARMS high school. she is taking advanced classes because they are "easy". There are several kids in her classes that shouldn't be there and as a result, the teachers are slowing down the teaching and skipping important concepts. How do I know this? My kid is getting easy As in her AP classes yet doing poorly on the AP exams claiming a lot of the material on the exam was not covered. Not to mention that she always has the less advanced kids in her group projects and has to carry the weight. she just had to draft a research paper and put together a presentation with no help from her group. I saw their contributions and it was bad. very bad. I wish I could post some examples. My kid had to redo everything because in MCPS, it is a collective group grade and if she went with what her peers submitted she would have received a lot grade. Why they allow.some kids to take advanced classes is beyond me. my kids intentionally signed up for tough classes to avoid the riffraff but they are still there.

I'm curious what school this is. What school allows the barely literate to take AP classes?

DP

Where does the PP say that the students are ‘barely literate’?

I will agree with what she is saying. My kid had that experience in 8th grade Advanced English and it was terrible.

I did - up above, and I am an AP teacher. Many teachers report 4th and 5th grade reading levels in AP English this year.

I'm stunned at how my son's AP English teacher lets my son get away with poor grammar and sloppy writing. It seems like the standards have been relaxed, which I could see for on-level classes, but not AP level.

This is a sample teacher quote from the AP Lang Teacher Forum that relates to your post. It is a mess.

"My AP Lang students noticed I was teaching The Great Gatsby to my sophomore classes. I asked if they read it last year and was told they read three chapters and stopped because their teacher said the text was too difficult and they were not getting it. The teacher showed the movie and did not attempt another novel. I was so sad for them. We are reading I Am Malala and as Juniors this is the first book some have read since middle school. Everything else has been read to them or was a movie. I'm guilty of this too and have an audiobook link for all reading although I don't play it in class. My point, if there is one, is that when did it become okay for a student to finish school without reading a single complete novel?"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There have been remedial classes "in some colleges" for decades.

Probably getting worse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There have been remedial classes "in some colleges" for decades.

Probably getting worse.

Montgomery College enrollment has been declining for years. More remedial, less interest in pursuing degrees.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have worked for MCPS for a long time. I don't think MCPS has changed, but our county demographics certainly have changed. We have more newcomers with limited to no English language. We have much higher rates of poverty and trauma. Parents who are struggling to keep roofs over their heads, substance abuse, domestic violence, etc. All of these societal problems are spilling into our school buildings and quite frankly, staff are overwhelmed. It's very, very challenging to try and teach or run a building when you have a few kids in each grade-level who are consistently occupying 95% of your bandwidth. These kids didn't ask to be born into crappy conditions but they're in our schools and are having a really tough time despite the best efforts by staff to support their SEL needs.
We have to be honest with ourselves - until the parents (society) gets in a better place, we're going to continue to see the effects in our buildings. The curriculum standards have become harder with CCSS but we've lowered our expectations. Students know that there aren't any real consequences. We don't suspend students because of the school to prison pipeline. Trust me when I tell you, there are kids I would have advocated for suspension years ago but now knowing what they'd do at home, I'd rather them be safe and fed in our building. Admin are basically spending any free moment covering duties, dealing with behavior issues, etc. This gets in the way of them being able to get into classrooms to observe actual teaching and instruction.
Personally, I'm tired of schools and MCPS being blamed for all of the problems that we've created as a society. We aren't private schools - we take whoever comes to enroll and we do the best that we can with limited staff and training in trauma-informed practices.

DP. This 100%. I'm a parent with kids at a MS and HS with high FARMS rates. The staff at these schools are dealing with problems that aren't even related to academics and it doesn't help that MCPS has taken an approach to discipline that provides little to no consequences. The kids who stay out of trouble, come from stable families who prioritize education, and hang out with similar students are barely affected by this. They get good grades, join clubs and do extracurricular activities, take AP and IB classes, take full advantage of the MCPS college and career programs available to them, and will get into good colleges. Unfortunately, the ones with issues that stem from outside the school (poverty, domestic violence, etc.) are going to have a tough time regardless of the MCPS disciplinary approach. All of this is not some breaking news though. No school system can fix society's problems and while no one wants to hear this, at the end of the day- the most important factor in a child's success is their PARENTS.

The sentence I bolded is so true. If the parents aren't properly raising their kids and providing a poor home-life, there is only so much the schools can do. If your kid comes from a stable home and the parents prioritize education, your kid will do fine in MCPS.

I disagree that my kid will do fine. she attends a high FARMS high school. she is taking advanced classes because they are "easy". There are several kids in her classes that shouldn't be there and as a result, the teachers are slowing down the teaching and skipping important concepts. How do I know this? My kid is getting easy As in her AP classes yet doing poorly on the AP exams claiming a lot of the material on the exam was not covered. Not to mention that she always has the less advanced kids in her group projects and has to carry the weight. she just had to draft a research paper and put together a presentation with no help from her group. I saw their contributions and it was bad. very bad. I wish I could post some examples. My kid had to redo everything because in MCPS, it is a collective group grade and if she went with what her peers submitted she would have received a lot grade. Why they allow.some kids to take advanced classes is beyond me. my kids intentionally signed up for tough classes to avoid the riffraff but they are still there.

I'm curious what school this is. What school allows the barely literate to take AP classes?

DP

Where does the PP say that the students are ‘barely literate’?

I will agree with what she is saying. My kid had that experience in 8th grade Advanced English and it was terrible.

I did - up above, and I am an AP teacher. Many teachers report 4th and 5th grade reading levels in AP English this year.

I'm stunned at how my son's AP English teacher lets my son get away with poor grammar and sloppy writing. It seems like the standards have been relaxed, which I could see for on-level classes, but not AP level.

This is a sample teacher quote from the AP Lang Teacher Forum that relates to your post. It is a mess.

"My AP Lang students noticed I was teaching The Great Gatsby to my sophomore classes. I asked if they read it last year and was told they read three chapters and stopped because their teacher said the text was too difficult and they were not getting it. The teacher showed the movie and did not attempt another novel. I was so sad for them. We are reading I Am Malala and as Juniors this is the first book some have read since middle school. Everything else has been read to them or was a movie. I'm guilty of this too and have an audiobook link for all reading although I don't play it in class. My point, if there is one, is that when did it become okay for a student to finish school without reading a single complete novel?"

Yeah. I'm confused as to how and why reading books has become a thing of the past. Everything is excerpts and passages in PDFs. It's wild.

[Anonymous]

MCPS is huge and from my experience, it is the principal, and whether students self selected into a program, that makes the difference a crappy school and a great one. To find the good schools here you have to see how happy the parents and students are. The wealthiness of the area alone is not a reliable indicator, unfortunately. If the parents seem indifferent, the principal is probably mediocre and it’s probably a crappy school full of mediocre teachers with a gem here and there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have worked for MCPS for a long time. I don't think MCPS has changed, but our county demographics certainly have changed. We have more newcomers with limited to no English language. We have much higher rates of poverty and trauma. Parents who are struggling to keep roofs over their heads, substance abuse, domestic violence, etc. All of these societal problems are spilling into our school buildings and quite frankly, staff are overwhelmed. It's very, very challenging to try and teach or run a building when you have a few kids in each grade-level who are consistently occupying 95% of your bandwidth. These kids didn't ask to be born into crappy conditions but they're in our schools and are having a really tough time despite the best efforts by staff to support their SEL needs.
We have to be honest with ourselves - until the parents (society) gets in a better place, we're going to continue to see the effects in our buildings. The curriculum standards have become harder with CCSS but we've lowered our expectations. Students know that there aren't any real consequences. We don't suspend students because of the school to prison pipeline. Trust me when I tell you, there are kids I would have advocated for suspension years ago but now knowing what they'd do at home, I'd rather them be safe and fed in our building. Admin are basically spending any free moment covering duties, dealing with behavior issues, etc. This gets in the way of them being able to get into classrooms to observe actual teaching and instruction.
Personally, I'm tired of schools and MCPS being blamed for all of the problems that we've created as a society. We aren't private schools - we take whoever comes to enroll and we do the best that we can with limited staff and training in trauma-informed practices.

DP. This 100%. I'm a parent with kids at a MS and HS with high FARMS rates. The staff at these schools are dealing with problems that aren't even related to academics and it doesn't help that MCPS has taken an approach to discipline that provides little to no consequences. The kids who stay out of trouble, come from stable families who prioritize education, and hang out with similar students are barely affected by this. They get good grades, join clubs and do extracurricular activities, take AP and IB classes, take full advantage of the MCPS college and career programs available to them, and will get into good colleges. Unfortunately, the ones with issues that stem from outside the school (poverty, domestic violence, etc.) are going to have a tough time regardless of the MCPS disciplinary approach. All of this is not some breaking news though. No school system can fix society's problems and while no one wants to hear this, at the end of the day- the most important factor in a child's success is their PARENTS.

The sentence I bolded is so true. If the parents aren't properly raising their kids and providing a poor home-life, there is only so much the schools can do. If your kid comes from a stable home and the parents prioritize education, your kid will do fine in MCPS.

I disagree that my kid will do fine. she attends a high FARMS high school. she is taking advanced classes because they are "easy". There are several kids in her classes that shouldn't be there and as a result, the teachers are slowing down the teaching and skipping important concepts. How do I know this? My kid is getting easy As in her AP classes yet doing poorly on the AP exams claiming a lot of the material on the exam was not covered. Not to mention that she always has the less advanced kids in her group projects and has to carry the weight. she just had to draft a research paper and put together a presentation with no help from her group. I saw their contributions and it was bad. very bad. I wish I could post some examples. My kid had to redo everything because in MCPS, it is a collective group grade and if she went with what her peers submitted she would have received a lot grade. Why they allow.some kids to take advanced classes is beyond me. my kids intentionally signed up for tough classes to avoid the riffraff but they are still there.

I'm curious what school this is. What school allows the barely literate to take AP classes?

DP

Where does the PP say that the students are ‘barely literate’?

I will agree with what she is saying. My kid had that experience in 8th grade Advanced English and it was terrible.

I did - up above, and I am an AP teacher. Many teachers report 4th and 5th grade reading levels in AP English this year.

I'm stunned at how my son's AP English teacher lets my son get away with poor grammar and sloppy writing. It seems like the standards have been relaxed, which I could see for on-level classes, but not AP level.

This is a sample teacher quote from the AP Lang Teacher Forum that relates to your post. It is a mess.

"My AP Lang students noticed I was teaching The Great Gatsby to my sophomore classes. I asked if they read it last year and was told they read three chapters and stopped because their teacher said the text was too difficult and they were not getting it. The teacher showed the movie and did not attempt another novel. I was so sad for them. We are reading I Am Malala and as Juniors this is the first book some have read since middle school. Everything else has been read to them or was a movie. I'm guilty of this too and have an audiobook link for all reading although I don't play it in class. My point, if there is one, is that when did it become okay for a student to finish school without reading a single complete novel?"

My kids read a few books a year for school but it seems about the same as what I did years ago at a W. They also are always reading on their own so it really doesn't matter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:MCPS is huge and from my experience, it is the principal, and whether students self selected into a program, that makes the difference a crappy school and a great one. To find the good schools here you have to see how happy the parents and students are. The wealthiness of the area alone is not a reliable indicator, unfortunately. If the parents seem indifferent, the principal is probably mediocre and it’s probably a crappy school full of mediocre teachers with a gem here and there.

Yes, the leadership determines so much. You are right - there are a ton of mediocre teachers (and only a few excellent ones) and that needs to change.

Worth a read - https://raisingamericans.substack.com/p/were-entering-a-dark-age-in-american

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MCPS is huge and from my experience, it is the principal, and whether students self selected into a program, that makes the difference a crappy school and a great one. To find the good schools here you have to see how happy the parents and students are. The wealthiness of the area alone is not a reliable indicator, unfortunately. If the parents seem indifferent, the principal is probably mediocre and it’s probably a crappy school full of mediocre teachers with a gem here and there.

Yes, the leadership determines so much. You are right - there are a ton of mediocre teachers (and only a few excellent ones) and that needs to change.

Worth a read - https://raisingamericans.substack.com/p/were-entering-a-dark-age-in-american

We've had such excellent and dedicated teachers. From my vantage, the problem isn't MCPS but people like you. I went to MCPS 30+ years ago and my kids are doing way better than anyone I knew back then. This is because you only get out of it what you are willing to put into it. These people complaining also refuse to make any real effort and expect the county to do everything for them. That was never true in the past and is still true today.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just clicked on the link. Thanks for posting. Most people make really good points. Unfortunately, our BOE and MCPS leadership don’t care.

Smaller class sizes and better discipline sounds like common requests that I think, everyone could get behind. Why can’t MCPS start there?

Except that costs money and a tax hike needed to pay for this will mostly go to create more central office jobs.

The bottom line is MCPS is about the same or even better than years past, the demographics of the county are what has changed. That has an impact on standardized test scores but doesn't mean you can't get a great education. People just need to accept and adapt instead of focusing on a past that never really existed.

This is a naive read of larger educational trends toward: little student discipline or accountability or late or no work, a belief in education that requiring homework and giving grades is inequitable, reading few actual books, over-reliance on screens, etc., etc., etc.
- HS teacher

PREACH!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There have been remedial classes "in some colleges" for decades.

Probably getting worse.

Montgomery College enrollment has been declining for years. More remedial, less interest in pursuing degrees.

The number of people who are 18-24 has also been declining for years. Weird how those two trends coincide.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Good discussion going on the local sub reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MontgomeryCountyMD/comments/102jg8a/parents_of_mcps_students_do_you_guys_have_a/

MCPS sound like an absolute disaster. Zero accountability. Zero standards. Rapid decline of quality. How long until people with money stop moving to this county to flee all of the progressivism ruining the schools and county? The only reason property values maintained value in MoCo was always because of the schools. The discussion going on now with messages from insiders is truly shocking. MoCo looks like it is in rapid decline and once the schools go, what reason will there be to stayI?

I disagree. My child could not have been happier at MCPS. He loved having the freedom to wander the hallways during classroom instruction and not face punishment. He loved taking classes where he could do nothing on an assignment and still receive 50%. He loved not having rigorous comprehensive final exams. As a parent I loved the grading scheme in which the range for "Proficient" was 70-94%, because it allowed me to pretend that my C minus student was learning as much as the solid A students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Good discussion going on the local sub reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MontgomeryCountyMD/comments/102jg8a/parents_of_mcps_students_do_you_guys_have_a/

MCPS sound like an absolute disaster. Zero accountability. Zero standards. Rapid decline of quality. How long until people with money stop moving to this county to flee all of the progressivism ruining the schools and county? The only reason property values maintained value in MoCo was always because of the schools. The discussion going on now with messages from insiders is truly shocking. MoCo looks like it is in rapid decline and once the schools go, what reason will there be to stayI?

I disagree. My child could not have been happier at MCPS. He loved having the freedom to wander the hallways during classroom instruction and not face punishment. He loved taking classes where he could do nothing on an assignment and still receive 50%. He loved not having rigorous comprehensive final exams. As a parent I loved the grading scheme in which the range for "Proficient" was 70-94%, because it allowed me to pretend that my C minus student was learning as much as the solid A students.

Wow. I hope this is satire.

Teacher here. I had MULTIPLE students not complete any Common Writing Tasks this quarter (we have two in English). They still passed with the 50% rule. How are we ok with kids passing who did not even attempt a test or major paper?

Kids are passing, not learning anything, and STRUGGLING in the next grade.

Another person posted frustration that teachers are not making kids read and are just showing movies…. Sometimes we HAVE to do this because kids cannot read. I have multiple 11th graders this year who cannot read above a 3rd grade level.

Make it make sense.