Robert Frost beats Takoma Park in Mathcounts

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:(To extrapolate - the reason the magnets were able to completely change their algorithm and still get perfectly capable kids as far as the curriculum goes is because there are literally dozens of students in many, if not all, middle schools who can follow the curriculum. Maybe they will not get straight A's or some students may need to drop a class, but overall as a cohort they would thrive and benfit. It is a great, well-organized, excellent curriculum. It is a shame that is it not used widely in MCPS and possibly nationally. TPMS will naturally see a decline in competition placement because of the cohort approach, but that was to be expected)

Students picked today typically outperform the smaller group selected by their parents in the old system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:(To extrapolate - the reason the magnets were able to completely change their algorithm and still get perfectly capable kids as far as the curriculum goes is because there are literally dozens of students in many, if not all, middle schools who can follow the curriculum. Maybe they will not get straight A's or some students may need to drop a class, but overall as a cohort they would thrive and benfit. It is a great, well-organized, excellent curriculum. It is a shame that is it not used widely in MCPS and possibly nationally. TPMS will naturally see a decline in competition placement because of the cohort approach, but that was to be expected)

Students picked today typically outperform the smaller group selected by their parents in the old system.

Let me spell out what you want to say: the admitted white students who could not make it are smarter than the Asian students who were denied admission. They cannot do high level math because they dont care or are not interested in competitive math. Pathetic!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:(To extrapolate - the reason the magnets were able to completely change their algorithm and still get perfectly capable kids as far as the curriculum goes is because there are literally dozens of students in many, if not all, middle schools who can follow the curriculum. Maybe they will not get straight A's or some students may need to drop a class, but overall as a cohort they would thrive and benfit. It is a great, well-organized, excellent curriculum. It is a shame that is it not used widely in MCPS and possibly nationally. TPMS will naturally see a decline in competition placement because of the cohort approach, but that was to be expected)

Students picked today typically outperform the smaller group selected by their parents in the old system.

Let me spell out what you want to say: the admitted white students who could not make it are smarter than the Asian students who were denied admission. They cannot do high level math because they dont care or are not interested in competitive math. Pathetic!

One of the goals of the changes was to reduce the benefits of prep to better identify actual outliers. There were some schools that had sent a large number of students to the magnets in the past who had private buses deliver students to after school to prep classes. The changes made admission more competitive across the baord since it's no longer just a few hundred applicants whose parents applied and the new system doesn't place as a high a value on prep like the older system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:(To extrapolate - the reason the magnets were able to completely change their algorithm and still get perfectly capable kids as far as the curriculum goes is because there are literally dozens of students in many, if not all, middle schools who can follow the curriculum. Maybe they will not get straight A's or some students may need to drop a class, but overall as a cohort they would thrive and benfit. It is a great, well-organized, excellent curriculum. It is a shame that is it not used widely in MCPS and possibly nationally. TPMS will naturally see a decline in competition placement because of the cohort approach, but that was to be expected)

Students picked today typically outperform the smaller group selected by their parents in the old system.

Let me spell out what you want to say: the admitted white students who could not make it are smarter than the Asian students who were denied admission. They cannot do high level math because they dont care or are not interested in competitive math. Pathetic!

I thought TPMS' program was a math, science, and computer science program, not competitive math team. Who knew?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Takoma Park has AMC 8 (Nov 2019) score of 74 out of 75.

Robert Frost is placed 3rd in Montgomery county (after Takoma Park and Roberto Clemente) at 68 out of 75.

What is OP talking about?

So basically this is 30 pages of useless posts about a made-up non-issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Takoma Park has AMC 8 (Nov 2019) score of 74 out of 75.

Robert Frost is placed 3rd in Montgomery county (after Takoma Park and Roberto Clemente) at 68 out of 75.

What is OP talking about?

So basically this is 30 pages of useless posts about a made-up non-issue.

Yes, but cohort!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:(To extrapolate - the reason the magnets were able to completely change their algorithm and still get perfectly capable kids as far as the curriculum goes is because there are literally dozens of students in many, if not all, middle schools who can follow the curriculum. Maybe they will not get straight A's or some students may need to drop a class, but overall as a cohort they would thrive and benfit. It is a great, well-organized, excellent curriculum. It is a shame that is it not used widely in MCPS and possibly nationally. TPMS will naturally see a decline in competition placement because of the cohort approach, but that was to be expected)

Students picked today typically outperform the smaller group selected by their parents in the old system.

Let me spell out what you want to say: the admitted white students who could not make it are smarter than the Asian students who were denied admission. They cannot do high level math because they dont care or are not interested in competitive math. Pathetic!

One of the goals of the changes was to reduce the benefits of prep to better identify actual outliers. There were some schools that had sent a large number of students to the magnets in the past who had private buses deliver students to after school to prep classes. The changes made admission more competitive across the baord since it's no longer just a few hundred applicants whose parents applied and the new system doesn't place as a high a value on prep like the older system.

I wish you would stop dropping this singular tidbit. Yes, Dr. Li's ran a bus to some schools. Mathnasium runs a van to my child's Silver Spring Focus School, and many of those kids are going for enrichment, not remediation.

Some parents place a high value on advanced math. Not my family, to be honest, but some. That's not weird, or foreign, or unfair. It's just...priorities. It's no different than kids who are the pool every day at 4:30 to train, or my own child who spends most of their free time either practicing their instrument or playing with an orchestra.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:(To extrapolate - the reason the magnets were able to completely change their algorithm and still get perfectly capable kids as far as the curriculum goes is because there are literally dozens of students in many, if not all, middle schools who can follow the curriculum. Maybe they will not get straight A's or some students may need to drop a class, but overall as a cohort they would thrive and benfit. It is a great, well-organized, excellent curriculum. It is a shame that is it not used widely in MCPS and possibly nationally. TPMS will naturally see a decline in competition placement because of the cohort approach, but that was to be expected)

Students picked today typically outperform the smaller group selected by their parents in the old system.

Let me spell out what you want to say: the admitted white students who could not make it are smarter than the Asian students who were denied admission. They cannot do high level math because they dont care or are not interested in competitive math. Pathetic!

One of the goals of the changes was to reduce the benefits of prep to better identify actual outliers. There were some schools that had sent a large number of students to the magnets in the past who had private buses deliver students to after school to prep classes. The changes made admission more competitive across the baord since it's no longer just a few hundred applicants whose parents applied and the new system doesn't place as a high a value on prep like the older system.

Great!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Takoma Park has AMC 8 (Nov 2019) score of 74 out of 75.

Robert Frost is placed 3rd in Montgomery county (after Takoma Park and Roberto Clemente) at 68 out of 75.

What is OP talking about?

So basically this is 30 pages of useless posts about a made-up non-issue.

Yes, but cohort!

LOL!

[Anonymous]

If MCPS puts the magnet curriculum where the highest performers are located (ie not TPMS) the problem is that this group simply gets even more farther ahead. There already is a huge gap, this would only highlight it more.

While I 100% agree that putting high average (not gifted or even the highest performers) white kids from HR directors or non-profit administrators into a rigorous magnet curriculum is beyond stupid. I do agree with MCPS that magnet education overall is not as important an impactful as focusing resources on low income kids. The current approach is just about placating white people so they will live in low performing school clusters and not flee. Their presence takes more away from the low income kids and now it appears that it takes away from the truly high performing kids in other areas.

I think MCPS should simply adopt the AAP model that have in Fairfax and redirect money that went into all the bussing around to CES and magnets into resources that bring up low income kids. MCPS could construct some program with UMD-college park or some type of on-line curriculum for the truly gifted or they could all simply do the John Hopkins CTY program.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Takoma Park has AMC 8 (Nov 2019) score of 74 out of 75.

Robert Frost is placed 3rd in Montgomery county (after Takoma Park and Roberto Clemente) at 68 out of 75.

What is OP talking about?

So basically this is 30 pages of useless posts about a made-up non-issue.

Point taken.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If MCPS puts the magnet curriculum where the highest performers are located (ie not TPMS) the problem is that this group simply gets even more farther ahead. There already is a huge gap, this would only highlight it more.

While I 100% agree that putting high average (not gifted or even the highest performers) white kids from HR directors or non-profit administrators into a rigorous magnet curriculum is beyond stupid. I do agree with MCPS that magnet education overall is not as important an impactful as focusing resources on low income kids. The current approach is just about placating white people so they will live in low performing school clusters and not flee. Their presence takes more away from the low income kids and now it appears that it takes away from the truly high performing kids in other areas.

I think MCPS should simply adopt the AAP model that have in Fairfax and redirect money that went into all the bussing around to CES and magnets into resources that bring up low income kids. MCPS could construct some program with UMD-college park or some type of on-line curriculum for the truly gifted or they could all simply do the John Hopkins CTY program.

1) The majority of the kids in the magnets are not white.
2) The magnets do benefit neighborhood kids who have access to classes they otherwise would not. Most magnet electives are open to anyone with pre-recs.
3) Fairfax still busses lots of kids for AAP and continually complains that it is not so different from the regular curriculum because it includes so many kids.
4) MCPS focuses tons of resources on lower income kids already. Do you have recommendations for new ideas?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
If MCPS puts the magnet curriculum where the highest performers are located (ie not TPMS) the problem is that this group simply gets even more farther ahead. There already is a huge gap, this would only highlight it more.

While I 100% agree that putting high average (not gifted or even the highest performers) white kids from HR directors or non-profit administrators into a rigorous magnet curriculum is beyond stupid. I do agree with MCPS that magnet education overall is not as important an impactful as focusing resources on low income kids. The current approach is just about placating white people so they will live in low performing school clusters and not flee. Their presence takes more away from the low income kids and now it appears that it takes away from the truly high performing kids in other areas.

I think MCPS should simply adopt the AAP model that have in Fairfax and redirect money that went into all the bussing around to CES and magnets into resources that bring up low income kids. MCPS could construct some program with UMD-college park or some type of on-line curriculum for the truly gifted or they could all simply do the John Hopkins CTY program.


1) The majority of the kids in the magnets are not white.
2) The magnets do benefit neighborhood kids who have access to classes they otherwise would not. Most magnet electives are open to anyone with pre-recs.
3) Fairfax still busses lots of kids for AAP and continually complains that it is not so different from the regular curriculum because it includes so many kids.
4) MCPS focuses tons of resources on lower income kids already. Do you have recommendations for new ideas?

We're talking about TPMS here. The majority of the students are overwhelming white and asian, though there are far more whites than asians there now thanks to MCPS changes. There are very very few low income kids who meet the pre-recs to get into a magnet class so again this is just helping the less qualified local white kids.

MCPS does not focus enough resources on low income kids. Add more teachers, add more counselors, add more quality after school programs, add summer school to low performing schools.

Too often resources at low income schools are being redirected to deal with the white kids and the CES programs that serve the white kids or dealing with wealthy parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
We're talking about TPMS here. The majority of the students are overwhelming white and asian, though there are far more whites than asians there now thanks to MCPS changes. There are very very few low income kids who meet the pre-recs to get into a magnet class so again this is just helping the less qualified local white kids.

I've heard this too, and the statistics seem to bear out that some of their new "peer cohort" criteria did not always result in the students they intended to catch. The biggest boost goes goes to "prepped" middle class white students whose parents live in poorer districts. If Asian students lived in these districts they would benefit too but the culture in the immigrant community has been to save save save and sacrifice to get your child into a high performing school district. I think MCPS should have anticipated this issue, and they may well have and thought it was a good trade off.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
If MCPS puts the magnet curriculum where the highest performers are located (ie not TPMS) the problem is that this group simply gets even more farther ahead. There already is a huge gap, this would only highlight it more.

While I 100% agree that putting high average (not gifted or even the highest performers) white kids from HR directors or non-profit administrators into a rigorous magnet curriculum is beyond stupid. I do agree with MCPS that magnet education overall is not as important an impactful as focusing resources on low income kids. The current approach is just about placating white people so they will live in low performing school clusters and not flee. Their presence takes more away from the low income kids and now it appears that it takes away from the truly high performing kids in other areas.

I think MCPS should simply adopt the AAP model that have in Fairfax and redirect money that went into all the bussing around to CES and magnets into resources that bring up low income kids. MCPS could construct some program with UMD-college park or some type of on-line curriculum for the truly gifted or they could all simply do the John Hopkins CTY program.


1) The majority of the kids in the magnets are not white.
2) The magnets do benefit neighborhood kids who have access to classes they otherwise would not. Most magnet electives are open to anyone with pre-recs.
3) Fairfax still busses lots of kids for AAP and continually complains that it is not so different from the regular curriculum because it includes so many kids.
4) MCPS focuses tons of resources on lower income kids already. Do you have recommendations for new ideas?

We're talking about TPMS here. The majority of the students are overwhelming white and asian, though there are far more whites than asians there now thanks to MCPS changes. There are very very few low income kids who meet the pre-recs to get into a magnet class so again this is just helping the less qualified local white kids.

MCPS does not focus enough resources on low income kids. Add more teachers, add more counselors, add more quality after school programs, add summer school to low performing schools.

Too often resources at low income schools are being redirected to deal with the white kids and the CES programs that serve the white kids or dealing with wealthy parents.

Really? Last I knew Asians made up something like 14% of Montgomery county but took up close to 60% of all magnet seats. Not suggesting anything since admissions are race blind, but there hardly antying to complain about.