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

[Anonymous]

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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.

The article says it was about 8000 in the pool "universally" considered - that is, only those in the relevant catchment area, not "all" MCPS 5th graders. Of the 8000ish, almost 4000 actually tested and so the pool of actual applicants was approx 4000. So about 7% of those who tested were offered a spot. Or...3.5% of the 8000 in the universal pool were offered a spot. Then some unknown number came off the waitlist. I think somewhere this year is a FAQ that says something about the size of the waitlist - maybe it was 80 or so? I am guessing 40+ come off the waitlist by the time school starts in the fall. Not sure where the magnets get kids to fill spots created by students who withdraw in first or subsequent years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

I don't think that "maintaining excellence" (if by that you mean "scores the highest") is the ultimate goal of MoCo, and I don't think it should be. If all you wanted was a showcase with the top scoring kids continuing to score at the top, that's easy. Just pick the top scoring kids and not worry how they got there. Then you have the NYC system for the three specialized high schools where admission is based on one exam, and 60-75% of the students are Asian-Americans (and, yes, maybe some are undocumented, I have no idea). If the mayor has his way, admissions will be heavily weighted towards the top x% of the kids in each middle school city wide. And guess what, either the percentage of Asian-American will plummet, or these will be this amazing diaspora of Asian-American students to middle-schools throughout the city. Or maybe something in between.

De Blasio's solution is rough justice, and it's intended to give kids throughout the city a better opportunity to access what has been a great education at these specialized high schools. And it seems to me that is roughly what MoCo is trying to do here, but with this "cohort" approach that is trying to find the outliers in any given middle school. If you want to say that's terrible or misguided because scores of incoming students will go down, and that student body will not be as "high achieving" as in the past (both of which I suspect will be true), that's certainly anyone's prerogative. But I don't think MoCo cares because it's made pretty clear that getting only the students with the highest scores is not the objective.

[Anonymous]

Pretry clear MCPS aiming to have no highly able student isolated from peer ability students. 'Cause that IS the result of their system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Pretry clear MCPS aiming to have no highly able student isolated from peer ability students. 'Cause that IS the result of their system.

It’s never going to do that with such subscale in size CES and magnet programs.
Mcps should be serving 5% of its student population in G&T, especially in an area as educated as this and especially because that’s what other large and small public schools districts aim for.

Mcps population have vastly grown over the last 10-20 years, its G&T had not kept up whatsoever. It should have added 10x the amount of its one Wheaton HS programs and not all in the failing schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Pretry clear MCPS aiming to have no highly able student isolated from peer ability students. 'Cause that IS the result of their system.

It’s never going to do that with such subscale in size CES and magnet programs.
Mcps should be serving 5% of its student population in G&T, especially in an area as educated as this and especially because that’s what other large and small public schools districts aim for.

Mcps population have vastly grown over the last 10-20 years, its G&T had not kept up whatsoever. It should have added 10x the amount of its one Wheaton HS programs and not all in the failing schools.

FCPS now has 20% in its advanced track program.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Pretry clear MCPS aiming to have no highly able student isolated from peer ability students. 'Cause that IS the result of their system.

It’s never going to do that with such subscale in size CES and magnet programs.
Mcps should be serving 5% of its student population in G&T, especially in an area as educated as this and especially because that’s what other large and small public schools districts aim for.

Mcps population have vastly grown over the last 10-20 years, its G&T had not kept up whatsoever. It should have added 10x the amount of its one Wheaton HS programs and not all in the failing schools.

They are doing it with specific courses for the cohort at the home middle schools. At least one home middle school has a strong enough cohort they all skipped 6th grade msgnet level math.