I don't get it- very few CES kids get into magnet school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just found out that a kid who stayed back at the local ES and had decent scores, but not nearly as high as my CES kid (about 20 point MAP-M difference, lower CogAT), got accepted to TPMS. There are other kids in my DC's CES who had the same or similar scores to the local kid (so other student at CES may be in "cohort" with local kid), so I really want to know why that kid was sent to the magnet as an "outlier," but my kid, who was an outlier among the CES kids heading to the same middle school, was not?

No one will provide data on how "cohort" was defined for students presumably denied entry to any CES, who were recommended for local magnets, and presumably were rejected for that reason.

I think this is a very clear cut case, and someone should give you at least an explanation. If I were you, I would certainly appeal. I would also call them and see if they give a justification. I would certainly appreciate if you come back and post your experience. Good luck.

How is this clearcut? How could this parent actually have the details on this other non-deserving applicant? Even if the other family did share a cogat score (which I doubt given they're not even at the same school), there's more to the process.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What makes me more angry than anything is that if someone is rejected, and they appeal the BEST outcome is that they get placed in the wait pool, and then it's a lottery from there with low odds. They will never admit they made a mistake and should have admitted someone outright. The wait pool is not only unranked (so there's absolutely no ability for anyone in the pool to make secure plans for the future until the first day of school in September), it doesn't even take into account the possibility that there will no longer be a "cohort" remaining after people make middle school choices.

At last night's TMPS open house, the director said that 80 kids were selected for BOTH Eastern and TPMS, so there will be an aggregate of 80 spots opening up because those kids have to pick one or the other. 80 spots is enough to kill quite a few "cohorts" at the local middle schools.

No, there won’t be 80 spots open. MCPS sent out more acceptance letters over capacity to fill some of the spots.

How do you know that?

I don’t know about it this year but was told so in the past when MCPS was asked about. They factored it in then and no reason not to do the same now.

Exactly. They've done this before, they know how much to over admit and what size wait pool is appropriate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just found out that a kid who stayed back at the local ES and had decent scores, but not nearly as high as my CES kid (about 20 point MAP-M difference, lower CogAT), got accepted to TPMS. There are other kids in my DC's CES who had the same or similar scores to the local kid (so other student at CES may be in "cohort" with local kid), so I really want to know why that kid was sent to the magnet as an "outlier," but my kid, who was an outlier among the CES kids heading to the same middle school, was not?

No one will provide data on how "cohort" was defined for students presumably denied entry to any CES, who were recommended for local magnets, and presumably were rejected for that reason.

I think this is a very clear cut case, and someone should give you at least an explanation. If I were you, I would certainly appeal. I would also call them and see if they give a justification. I would certainly appreciate if you come back and post your experience. Good luck.

How is this clearcut? How could this parent actually have the details on this other non-deserving applicant? Even if the other family did share a cogat score (which I doubt given they're not even at the same school), there's more to the process.

Same home middle school. 20 point MAP-M difference. Cogat score difference. What else do you want? I just assumed the poster is telling the truth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What makes me more angry than anything is that if someone is rejected, and they appeal the BEST outcome is that they get placed in the wait pool, and then it's a lottery from there with low odds. They will never admit they made a mistake and should have admitted someone outright. The wait pool is not only unranked (so there's absolutely no ability for anyone in the pool to make secure plans for the future until the first day of school in September), it doesn't even take into account the possibility that there will no longer be a "cohort" remaining after people make middle school choices.

At last night's TMPS open house, the director said that 80 kids were selected for BOTH Eastern and TPMS, so there will be an aggregate of 80 spots opening up because those kids have to pick one or the other. 80 spots is enough to kill quite a few "cohorts" at the local middle schools.

No, there won’t be 80 spots open. MCPS sent out more acceptance letters over capacity to fill some of the spots.

How do you know that?

I don’t know about it this year but was told so in the past when MCPS was asked about. They factored it in then and no reason not to do the same now.

Exactly. They've done this before, they know how much to over admit and what size wait pool is appropriate.

Yes. Last year was 149 offers for Eastern, 137 for TPMS. Those numbers from May 1, 2018 Bethesda Magazine article on magnet admissions info presented to BOE.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So your child benefited from universal screening because you convinced yourself she wouldn’t get in if she/you had elected to apply.

Um, ok.

Next time: Think Like A Man.

LOL..... I was thinking the same thing - Mom of the year right there.

Hi, it’s the “Mom of the year,” here. We decided not to apply to the CES two years ago because we had a family situation that made having all of our children at the same elementary school preferable...but once universal screening was implemented and dd actually got into a CES, it was harder to let things such as the logistical difficulties of having our children at different schools or the difference between a short walk to the excellent neighborhood school versus a long bus ride to a special program at a different school stand in the way of sending our child to a CES. Feelings change once getting in is no longer theoretical. Yes, I did say that I thought my dd had a slim chance of getting into a middle school magnet (which everyone does, even if they have high test scores!), but the point I was trying to make was that knowing dd would be considered automatically again, I didn’t even have to think about whether to apply to a magnet. I don’t know whether we would have applied under the old system, but it doesn’t matter under the new system.

You made it clear in your original post that you would not have applied to the MS Magnet because you had serious doubts that she could get in. Now you say that you wouldn't have applied to the CES because it would have made things logistically difficult for you. So you are saying that Universal testing is the only way for a kid to overcome having a parent like you? I guess I can agree with that.

It seems like the only thing some people get out of my posts is how dumb the decision making process of a single poster is. You can think whatever you want about me and my choices, but you are missing the point entirely if you don’t understand that that not every child admitted to a magnet under universal screening who would not have even been considered under the old system is “mediocre,” or “unprepared,” or lacks parental support/resources or receives special services or has a lower SES or is an URM or is a pawn in MCPS’s attempt to close the achievement gap or is being used to justify getting rid of the magnet program altogether (all of which have been suggested on this board, if not in this thread). It’s way too early to make a judgment that the magnets will be “watered down,” by the presence of a different selection of children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What makes me more angry than anything is that if someone is rejected, and they appeal the BEST outcome is that they get placed in the wait pool, and then it's a lottery from there with low odds. They will never admit they made a mistake and should have admitted someone outright. The wait pool is not only unranked (so there's absolutely no ability for anyone in the pool to make secure plans for the future until the first day of school in September), it doesn't even take into account the possibility that there will no longer be a "cohort" remaining after people make middle school choices.

At last night's TMPS open house, the director said that 80 kids were selected for BOTH Eastern and TPMS, so there will be an aggregate of 80 spots opening up because those kids have to pick one or the other. 80 spots is enough to kill quite a few "cohorts" at the local middle schools.

No, there won’t be 80 spots open. MCPS sent out more acceptance letters over capacity to fill some of the spots.

How do you know that?

I don’t know about it this year but was told so in the past when MCPS was asked about. They factored it in then and no reason not to do the same now.

Exactly. They've done this before, they know how much to over admit and what size wait pool is appropriate.

Yes. Last year was 149 offers for Eastern, 137 for TPMS. Those numbers from May 1, 2018 Bethesda Magazine article on magnet admissions info presented to BOE.

Assuming 12,000 grade and an overlap of 80 between those admitted to the different magnets, that suggests about 1.5% of all 5th graders were offered a spot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just found out that a kid who stayed back at the local ES and had decent scores, but not nearly as high as my CES kid (about 20 point MAP-M difference, lower CogAT), got accepted to TPMS. There are other kids in my DC's CES who had the same or similar scores to the local kid (so other student at CES may be in "cohort" with local kid), so I really want to know why that kid was sent to the magnet as an "outlier," but my kid, who was an outlier among the CES kids heading to the same middle school, was not?

No one will provide data on how "cohort" was defined for students presumably denied entry to any CES, who were recommended for local magnets, and presumably were rejected for that reason.

I think this is a very clear cut case, and someone should give you at least an explanation. If I were you, I would certainly appeal. I would also call them and see if they give a justification. I would certainly appreciate if you come back and post your experience. Good luck.

How is this clearcut? How could this parent actually have the details on this other non-deserving applicant? Even if the other family did share a cogat score (which I doubt given they're not even at the same school), there's more to the process.

Same home middle school. 20 point MAP-M difference. Cogat score difference. What else do you want? I just assumed the poster is telling the truth.

I assume that there's more than one side to each story.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So your child benefited from universal screening because you convinced yourself she wouldn’t get in if she/you had elected to apply.

Um, ok.

Next time: Think Like A Man.

LOL..... I was thinking the same thing - Mom of the year right there.

Hi, it’s the “Mom of the year,” here. We decided not to apply to the CES two years ago because we had a family situation that made having all of our children at the same elementary school preferable...but once universal screening was implemented and dd actually got into a CES, it was harder to let things such as the logistical difficulties of having our children at different schools or the difference between a short walk to the excellent neighborhood school versus a long bus ride to a special program at a different school stand in the way of sending our child to a CES. Feelings change once getting in is no longer theoretical. Yes, I did say that I thought my dd had a slim chance of getting into a middle school magnet (which everyone does, even if they have high test scores!), but the point I was trying to make was that knowing dd would be considered automatically again, I didn’t even have to think about whether to apply to a magnet. I don’t know whether we would have applied under the old system, but it doesn’t matter under the new system.

You made it clear in your original post that you would not have applied to the MS Magnet because you had serious doubts that she could get in. Now you say that you wouldn't have applied to the CES because it would have made things logistically difficult for you. So you are saying that Universal testing is the only way for a kid to overcome having a parent like you? I guess I can agree with that.

It seems like the only thing some people get out of my posts is how dumb the decision making process of a single poster is. You can think whatever you want about me and my choices, but you are missing the point entirely if you don’t understand that that not every child admitted to a magnet under universal screening who would not have even been considered under the old system is “mediocre,” or “unprepared,” or lacks parental support/resources or receives special services or has a lower SES or is an URM or is a pawn in MCPS’s attempt to close the achievement gap or is being used to justify getting rid of the magnet program altogether (all of which have been suggested on this board, if not in this thread). It’s way too early to make a judgment that the magnets will be “watered down,” by the presence of a different selection of children.

This is what happens when you make up a narrative to prove a point - it's a tough thing to do successfully.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So your child benefited from universal screening because you convinced yourself she wouldn’t get in if she/you had elected to apply.

Um, ok.

Next time: Think Like A Man.

LOL..... I was thinking the same thing - Mom of the year right there.

Hi, it’s the “Mom of the year,” here. We decided not to apply to the CES two years ago because we had a family situation that made having all of our children at the same elementary school preferable...but once universal screening was implemented and dd actually got into a CES, it was harder to let things such as the logistical difficulties of having our children at different schools or the difference between a short walk to the excellent neighborhood school versus a long bus ride to a special program at a different school stand in the way of sending our child to a CES. Feelings change once getting in is no longer theoretical. Yes, I did say that I thought my dd had a slim chance of getting into a middle school magnet (which everyone does, even if they have high test scores!), but the point I was trying to make was that knowing dd would be considered automatically again, I didn’t even have to think about whether to apply to a magnet. I don’t know whether we would have applied under the old system, but it doesn’t matter under the new system.

You made it clear in your original post that you would not have applied to the MS Magnet because you had serious doubts that she could get in. Now you say that you wouldn't have applied to the CES because it would have made things logistically difficult for you. So you are saying that Universal testing is the only way for a kid to overcome having a parent like you? I guess I can agree with that.

It seems like the only thing some people get out of my posts is how dumb the decision making process of a single poster is. You can think whatever you want about me and my choices, but you are missing the point entirely if you don’t understand that that not every child admitted to a magnet under universal screening who would not have even been considered under the old system is “mediocre,” or “unprepared,” or lacks parental support/resources or receives special services or has a lower SES or is an URM or is a pawn in MCPS’s attempt to close the achievement gap or is being used to justify getting rid of the magnet program altogether (all of which have been suggested on this board, if not in this thread). It’s way too early to make a judgment that the magnets will be “watered down,” by the presence of a different selection of children.

Lots of awesome parents don’t send their kids for testing, for a zillion cloudy reasons. That is why the universal testing is good... it makes things clear. Schools don’t like to tell parents their kids are outliers, because they don’t want to deal with enrichment issues and because they want the kids to stay at the home school and give it good scores. So she didn’t pore over her third grader’s scores and percentiles... whatever. Maybe she used that time to hug and listen to her kid. There are some nasty people here who can stop acting like “Mom of the Year” is some sort of slag.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just found out that a kid who stayed back at the local ES and had decent scores, but not nearly as high as my CES kid (about 20 point MAP-M difference, lower CogAT), got accepted to TPMS. There are other kids in my DC's CES who had the same or similar scores to the local kid (so other student at CES may be in "cohort" with local kid), so I really want to know why that kid was sent to the magnet as an "outlier," but my kid, who was an outlier among the CES kids heading to the same middle school, was not?

No one will provide data on how "cohort" was defined for students presumably denied entry to any CES, who were recommended for local magnets, and presumably were rejected for that reason.

I think this is a very clear cut case, and someone should give you at least an explanation. If I were you, I would certainly appeal. I would also call them and see if they give a justification. I would certainly appreciate if you come back and post your experience. Good luck.

How is this clearcut? How could this parent actually have the details on this other non-deserving applicant? Even if the other family did share a cogat score (which I doubt given they're not even at the same school), there's more to the process.

Same home middle school. 20 point MAP-M difference. Cogat score difference. What else do you want? I just assumed the poster is telling the truth.

I assume that there's more than one side to each story.

Perhaps the rejected kid has a only slightly higher Cogat and much higher MAP P, perhaps indicating they get lots of math enrichment compared to a similar Cogat kid who might benefit more from the availability of middle school enrichment. Perhaps accepted kid also has a very high MAP R, which is harder to cram. Some holes in the info. And how do you know so much about another kid’s scores? I don’t know anyone who shares that stuff.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just found out that a kid who stayed back at the local ES and had decent scores, but not nearly as high as my CES kid (about 20 point MAP-M difference, lower CogAT), got accepted to TPMS. There are other kids in my DC's CES who had the same or similar scores to the local kid (so other student at CES may be in "cohort" with local kid), so I really want to know why that kid was sent to the magnet as an "outlier," but my kid, who was an outlier among the CES kids heading to the same middle school, was not?

No one will provide data on how "cohort" was defined for students presumably denied entry to any CES, who were recommended for local magnets, and presumably were rejected for that reason.

I think this is a very clear cut case, and someone should give you at least an explanation. If I were you, I would certainly appeal. I would also call them and see if they give a justification. I would certainly appreciate if you come back and post your experience. Good luck.

How is this clearcut? How could this parent actually have the details on this other non-deserving applicant? Even if the other family did share a cogat score (which I doubt given they're not even at the same school), there's more to the process.

Same home middle school. 20 point MAP-M difference. Cogat score difference. What else do you want? I just assumed the poster is telling the truth.

I assume that there's more than one side to each story.

And there's the fact that the poster can really know the other child's scores with any certainty. It's all just anecdotes and rumor to feed the narrative that some underserving children are being given spots over mine!

[Anonymous]

It’s very hard to increase the diversity while maintaining the excellence for hard science based magnet programs. TJ of FCPS tried various methods over the last two decades with no success.

[Anonymous]

Here’s a metaphor for our current situation: you’re a teacher and you’ve asked the class a question. The one child who always raises her hand is waving it vigorously, desperate to answer, and you’re continuing to ask the rest of the class if anyone else would like to try to answer. Yes, Larla, we know you always know the answer and always want the attention, but this class is actually here to serve and teach everyone. There are plenty of people in this class who know the answer. As a teacher you know Larla is doing fine and learning and thriving but sometimes you want to call on someone else who may know as much or more but doesn’t speak up.

That’s universal screening.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here’s a metaphor for our current situation: you’re a teacher and you’ve asked the class a question. The one child who always raises her hand is waving it vigorously, desperate to answer, and you’re continuing to ask the rest of the class if anyone else would like to try to answer. Yes, Larla, we know you always know the answer and always want the attention, but this class is actually here to serve and teach everyone. There are plenty of people in this class who know the answer. As a teacher you know Larla is doing fine and learning and thriving but sometimes you want to call on someone else who may know as much or more but doesn’t speak up.

That’s universal screening.

I like your metaphor except vilifying Larla isn’t really fair - she knows and she is answering... saying she wants all the attention is not what this is about (for the kids, anyway).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just found out that a kid who stayed back at the local ES and had decent scores, but not nearly as high as my CES kid (about 20 point MAP-M difference, lower CogAT), got accepted to TPMS. There are other kids in my DC's CES who had the same or similar scores to the local kid (so other student at CES may be in "cohort" with local kid), so I really want to know why that kid was sent to the magnet as an "outlier," but my kid, who was an outlier among the CES kids heading to the same middle school, was not?

No one will provide data on how "cohort" was defined for students presumably denied entry to any CES, who were recommended for local magnets, and presumably were rejected for that reason.

Your brilliant kid who got into the CES but didn't get into TPMS, and that other dumb kid who didn't get into the CES but did get into TPMS, presumably have the same home middle school. That's how cohort was defined - by home middle school.

Do you get to find out why that other dumb kid got in but your kid didn't? No, you do not.

You do not get to judge the other kid and assume your kid is somehow "better." You have no idea what his other scores were and whether his family is very poor or he started out in the school system not speaking English. Do not go down this road. Appeal based on your child's strengths but don't put down the kids who were accepted with incomplete data. You come off as insecure, bitter and unreasonable.