How to help MCPS' lowest performing students?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The curriculum moves too quickly for some kids and there is no way to slow it down and repeat stuff for the kids that need it. I think there needs to be an after school "homework club". I also think that many of the parents are not involved in the academic side of things and the parents need training on how to best help their kids with homework, getting reading practice in.
Many of the title 1 schools have free summer school - but it's a half day. That's tough for families. A few have after school clubs of sorts - but no transportation - that's tough for families. We need to make these services accessible. The learning can't be done in a school day, not enough time with how things are structured. We also need more wrap around services for families.

Theres nothing that hasn't been tried already including all of the above.

The answer is that not all children will do well in school.
There are issues that schools can not fix.
Its okay to have a meaningful and even financially good life without being a top performer, academically.
Skilled contractors can charge the same as your own hourly wage. In may cases, much higher.

The idea that every child must achieve academically is simply wrong.

[Anonymous]

There are way more kids wandering around the hallways of my high’school. They are likely unable to pass any classes with the new grading rule. They basically travel in groups of 3 to 5 ignoring security and admin. Teachers basically refuse to talk to them in passing because we know nothing is being done. It’s pretty clear central office and school admin have no plan. We are prioritizing seniors and Edmentum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are way more kids wandering around the hallways of my high’school. They are likely unable to pass any classes with the new grading rule. They basically travel in groups of 3 to 5 ignoring security and admin. Teachers basically refuse to talk to them in passing because we know nothing is being done. It’s pretty clear central office and school admin have no plan. We are prioritizing seniors and Edmentum.

Have they looked at HS enrollment #s this school year? Are fewer students attending mcps because of the new grading policy?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some of you should visit the homes if an opportunity allows of a student who may be low performing. Some need help. Help them.

You may be surprised to learn that schools aren't able to police the life choices of private families.

Does each elementary school have adult reading volunteers (or enough staff) who can come in to read with students who are struggling? Maybe that could help the lowest performing students.

Our ES didn't allow parent volunteers.

You would be surprised to see how skilled and knowledgeable a teacher has to be for any child who doesn’t pick up reading quickly. Mild dyslexia is extremely common and probably a huge part of the problem here. The good news is the mcps curriculum is much better for this now. However, random volunteers wouldn’t make a big difference without intensive training and ideally years of experience. In fact, lack of training can sometimes make the problem worse.

Thank you. We have students at our elementary who have had years of small group intervention and get to 5th grade still unable to read on grade level. The problem is not that an adult has never sat down and read with them. Dyslexia and learning disabilities are not cured with parent volunteers!

[Anonymous]

It's pretty disheartening that so many commenters are just resigning poor kids to poor achievement as if being poor just means you must be genetically predisposed to having lower cognitive ability. Aren't we past thinking there's a moral implication when you come from a low income family?

It's not true that there is no research on what helps cost these gaps. Really it comes down to wraparound/community services and early intervention. Helping people rise out of poverty essentially, which obviously should not fall on schools to fix. Society needs to care more if we really value bettering all kid's lives.

https://issues.org/beatty/

[Anonymous]

Maybe stop micro managing, harassing, and firing their low paid teachers for trying to keep the kids safe through mandatory reporting and not coverups.

[Anonymous]

Textbooks

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's pretty disheartening that so many commenters are just resigning poor kids to poor achievement as if being poor just means you must be genetically predisposed to having lower cognitive ability. Aren't we past thinking there's a moral implication when you come from a low income family?

It's not true that there is no research on what helps cost these gaps. Really it comes down to wraparound/community services and early intervention. Helping people rise out of poverty essentially, which obviously should not fall on schools to fix. Society needs to care more if we really value bettering all kid's lives.

https://issues.org/beatty/

Try reading The Cult of the Smart. It covers this. There is a bell curve of nature ability within groups and no amount of schooling is going to dramatically change the percentile that most kids find themselves in because any intervention only helps absolute performance, not relative performance. So unless we start using the worst methods on the best kids and the best methods on the worst kids, then I’m sorry, but you’re not going to close the gap because the high achievers are also improving. The gap is based on relative performance, not absolute performance. That’s what colleges and companies care about. Do I think improving absolute performance is a noble goal? Absolutely. We should be building a meaningful life and goals aimed at more than the highest achievers but that’s another topic entirely.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's pretty disheartening that so many commenters are just resigning poor kids to poor achievement as if being poor just means you must be genetically predisposed to having lower cognitive ability. Aren't we past thinking there's a moral implication when you come from a low income family?

It's not true that there is no research on what helps cost these gaps. Really it comes down to wraparound/community services and early intervention. Helping people rise out of poverty essentially, which obviously should not fall on schools to fix. Society needs to care more if we really value bettering all kid's lives.

https://issues.org/beatty/

Try reading The Cult of the Smart. It covers this. There is a bell curve of nature ability within groups and no amount of schooling is going to dramatically change the percentile that most kids find themselves in because any intervention only helps absolute performance, not relative performance. So unless we start using the worst methods on the best kids and the best methods on the worst kids, then I’m sorry, but you’re not going to close the gap because the high achievers are also improving. The gap is based on relative performance, not absolute performance. That’s what colleges and companies care about. Do I think improving absolute performance is a noble goal? Absolutely. We should be building a meaningful life and goals aimed at more than the highest achievers but that’s another topic entirely.

Huh? You know that race, income and wealth are social, not biological categories, right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's pretty disheartening that so many commenters are just resigning poor kids to poor achievement as if being poor just means you must be genetically predisposed to having lower cognitive ability. Aren't we past thinking there's a moral implication when you come from a low income family?

It's not true that there is no research on what helps cost these gaps. Really it comes down to wraparound/community services and early intervention. Helping people rise out of poverty essentially, which obviously should not fall on schools to fix. Society needs to care more if we really value bettering all kid's lives.

https://issues.org/beatty/

Try reading The Cult of the Smart. It covers this. There is a bell curve of nature ability within groups and no amount of schooling is going to dramatically change the percentile that most kids find themselves in because any intervention only helps absolute performance, not relative performance. So unless we start using the worst methods on the best kids and the best methods on the worst kids, then I’m sorry, but you’re not going to close the gap because the high achievers are also improving. The gap is based on relative performance, not absolute performance. That’s what colleges and companies care about. Do I think improving absolute performance is a noble goal? Absolutely. We should be building a meaningful life and goals aimed at more than the highest achievers but that’s another topic entirely.

Huh? You know that race, income and wealth are social, not biological categories, right?

Sorry that should say natural ability. I also didn’t say race and I didn’t speak to poverty either. I said natural ability which persists within groups. Some think this may be intelligence but I’m not calling it that. There is a reason that children’s performance and relative percentile is predictive. How they do in 3rd grade strongly predicts to how they do in 8th and how they do in college and who gets a post-graduate education. There is also plenty of evidence that early childhood interventions fade over time, which shouldn’t be surprising because they bump up against each individual’s natural ability relative to others. And yes, there are exceptional cases where someone succeeds out of proportion to their starting point, which some of you will gladly point out, however, across groups it’s startlingly rare and most children’s percentile is relatively stable. The idea that the bottom 20% is going to move to the 20% if we just had the will, the money or the right teachers or teaching methods defies all evidence to the contrary.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Try reading The Cult of the Smart. It covers this. There is a bell curve of nature ability within groups and no amount of schooling is going to dramatically change the percentile that most kids find themselves in because any intervention only helps absolute performance, not relative performance. So unless we start using the worst methods on the best kids and the best methods on the worst kids, then I’m sorry, but you’re not going to close the gap because the high achievers are also improving. The gap is based on relative performance, not absolute performance. That’s what colleges and companies care about. Do I think improving absolute performance is a noble goal? Absolutely. We should be building a meaningful life and goals aimed at more than the highest achievers but that’s another topic entirely.

I agree that even with the best curriculum and teachers in the world, school can't fix this problem. When I think about the achievement gap I'm not assuming every child will achieve in the 90+ percentile, but unless a student has an actual intellectual disability there is no reason all kids can't at least be proficient in academics. A lot of people seem way too okay with allowing low income kids to fall behind because they're clearly "doomed" to be at the left end of the bell curve. As the comment before me highlights- being born into poverty says nothing about your natural ability to achieve. Read through the link I added to see how growing up in adversity affects one's ability to reach their full potential. It's beyond the school district but it's a societal ill that we don't do more for the least among us. It's the dark side of the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" myth of the American Dream. The implication being if you (or your family) aren't successful it's because you've done something wrong/didn't work hard enough and don't deserve it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Try reading The Cult of the Smart. It covers this. There is a bell curve of nature ability within groups and no amount of schooling is going to dramatically change the percentile that most kids find themselves in because any intervention only helps absolute performance, not relative performance. So unless we start using the worst methods on the best kids and the best methods on the worst kids, then I’m sorry, but you’re not going to close the gap because the high achievers are also improving. The gap is based on relative performance, not absolute performance. That’s what colleges and companies care about. Do I think improving absolute performance is a noble goal? Absolutely. We should be building a meaningful life and goals aimed at more than the highest achievers but that’s another topic entirely.

I agree that even with the best curriculum and teachers in the world, school can't fix this problem. When I think about the achievement gap I'm not assuming every child will achieve in the 90+ percentile, but unless a student has an actual intellectual disability there is no reason all kids can't at least be proficient in academics. A lot of people seem way too okay with allowing low income kids to fall behind because they're clearly "doomed" to be at the left end of the bell curve. As the comment before me highlights- being born into poverty says nothing about your natural ability to achieve. Read through the link I added to see how growing up in adversity affects one's ability to reach their full potential. It's beyond the school district but it's a societal ill that we don't do more for the least among us. It's the dark side of the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" myth of the American Dream. The implication being if you (or your family) aren't successful it's because you've done something wrong/didn't work hard enough and don't deserve it.

I’d argue it’s even worse than that. If it’s due to natural ability over which we have no control, then it’s an indictment of society that we blame the individual for their circumstances (which may be an accident of birth) and do not provide more of a social safety net and meaningful life opportunities. We lionize merit as if it’s something that can be cultivated. What if some people are naturally higher achieving than others and no amount of intervention or wishful thinking will change this? I think believing this would be more honest. It would also stop blaming teachers and schools and throwing money at interventions that won’t work on changing relative performance and instead focus on building civic minded people who all have value and worth and support for a meaningful life, even if they do not have the same natural ability.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe stop micro managing, harassing, and firing their low paid teachers for trying to keep the kids safe through mandatory reporting and not coverups.

Agree. I had two kids go through MCPS, and this is it. ^^^

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Kids performing below grade level should not advance to the next grade. They should make the grade placements based on ability and knowledge instead of age.

This is a really good point. How can you keep moving up these kids who can’t read? Keep them an extra year until they can meet the bare minimum requirements.

At BCC graduation several years ago, the graduation speaker was a former counselor of some sort who spent a good 20 minutes naming and celebrating the troublemakers of the school. It was so sad. I often wonder how those kids are doing now out in the real world, without any basic math or reading skills and being told for most of their lives that cutting class and fighting was somehow cute.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Try reading The Cult of the Smart. It covers this. There is a bell curve of nature ability within groups and no amount of schooling is going to dramatically change the percentile that most kids find themselves in because any intervention only helps absolute performance, not relative performance. So unless we start using the worst methods on the best kids and the best methods on the worst kids, then I’m sorry, but you’re not going to close the gap because the high achievers are also improving. The gap is based on relative performance, not absolute performance. That’s what colleges and companies care about. Do I think improving absolute performance is a noble goal? Absolutely. We should be building a meaningful life and goals aimed at more than the highest achievers but that’s another topic entirely.

I agree that even with the best curriculum and teachers in the world, school can't fix this problem. When I think about the achievement gap I'm not assuming every child will achieve in the 90+ percentile, but unless a student has an actual intellectual disability there is no reason all kids can't at least be proficient in academics. A lot of people seem way too okay with allowing low income kids to fall behind because they're clearly "doomed" to be at the left end of the bell curve. As the comment before me highlights- being born into poverty says nothing about your natural ability to achieve. Read through the link I added to see how growing up in adversity affects one's ability to reach their full potential. It's beyond the school district but it's a societal ill that we don't do more for the least among us. It's the dark side of the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" myth of the American Dream. The implication being if you (or your family) aren't successful it's because you've done something wrong/didn't work hard enough and don't deserve it.

I’d argue it’s even worse than that. If it’s due to natural ability over which we have no control, then it’s an indictment of society that we blame the individual for their circumstances (which may be an accident of birth) and do not provide more of a social safety net and meaningful life opportunities. We lionize merit as if it’s something that can be cultivated. What if some people are naturally higher achieving than others and no amount of intervention or wishful thinking will change this? I think believing this would be more honest. It would also stop blaming teachers and schools and throwing money at interventions that won’t work on changing relative performance and instead focus on building civic minded people who all have value and worth and support for a meaningful life, even if they do not have the same natural ability.

Obviously people all have different strengths (ie, natural ability). This is exacerbated or enhanced by the family and--to a lesser degree--school environment.

The school environment can be controlled. Not allowing disruptive students to take over the class can be controlled, as is getting textbooks, not teaching to the lowest denominator, adding teachers so the current teachers are not overwhelmed and can spend more time helping each student, that sort of thing.

What will not close the achievement gap are programs like the proposed regions model, the structure of which looks designed to make the poor schools poorer.