MCPS is cuttting compacted math and cohorted literacy enrichment

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Equity is about making sure every child has what they need to thrive to their fullest potential. The board and district are not doing equity. Instead they're cutting gifted students off at the knees. This isn't okay.

Keep voting the Apple Ballot! This is their goal.

Oh come on. Stop blaming teachers, they don't like this either. It's central office's fault, not classroom staff.

(And yes, theoretically MCEA should be endorsing BOE members who will hold central office accountable. But apparently it is impossible to find people like that. Year after year, when they're candidates they sound like they're going to take on MCPS and make things better, and then they get into office and roll over. Not sure there's anything else MCEA can do about that.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Shame on Niki Porter. You already went and ruined access to CES and magnets with your ridiculous lottery, and dismantled ELC, which people loved. You’re watering down the most successful high school programs. And now this.

Teachers DO NOT differentiate. Their classes are too big, they are pressured by admin to focus on the students below grade level, who exist in every school even the better resourced schools. No one is giving them any time, resources or incentive to provide acceleration or enrichment in a mixed ability classroom and there is no accountability mechanism to check and see.

What I would love to hear out of Niki Porter is why. Why why why do you want to keep preventing the kids demonstrating academic need and readiness for above grade level instruction from accessing appropriate learning and instruction. We test these kids up the wazoo and you have plenty of data indicating lexile levels, mastery of algebraic concepts, etc. The data shows you are teaching them using materials well below where you should be. Lumping all kids together regardless of readiness helps NO ONE. Why why why do you want to do that which harms kids and helps no one?!

You can't really expect an understanding or concern about academic rigor from someone with an education degree, especially advanced education degrees. They're joke degrees given to the dumbest people you can imagine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Equity is about making sure every child has what they need to thrive to their fullest potential. The board and district are not doing equity. Instead they're cutting gifted students off at the knees. This isn't okay.

There is no such thing as equity.

[Anonymous]

The new state guidance requires schools to do Individualized Acceleration Plans and hold IAP meetings (with a committee including a "school administrator, mathematics educator, counselor, family member, the student, and a gifted specialist when available") for all kids in accelerated math, which is a good idea in theory but probably will be very time-consuming. No wonder they want to decrease the numbers.

https://marylandpublicschools.org/about/documents/dcaa/math/sample-individualized-acceleration-plan-a.pdf
https://marylandpublicschools.org/about/documents/dcaa/math/math-acceleration-guidance-a.pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So, there will be compacted math & advanced languages (CES) for rising 4th grader in the fall 2026 & rising ENROLLED compacted math CES 5th graders? When is the final decisions?

For now the CES program still exists, but the writing on the wall for the CES is coming...

In non-magnet schools there will only be mixed-skill CKLA classes with "enrichment" (no more cohorting). And it appears no compacted math for any grade, CES or not.

They will kill CES. No reading novels for anyone now.

My non CES kid is reading novels during FIT time

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Equity is about making sure every child has what they need to thrive to their fullest potential. The board and district are not doing equity. Instead they're cutting gifted students off at the knees. This isn't okay.

Keep voting the Apple Ballot! This is their goal.

Oh come on. Stop blaming teachers, they don't like this either. It's central office's fault, not classroom staff.

(And yes, theoretically MCEA should be endorsing BOE members who will hold central office accountable. But apparently it is impossible to find people like that. Year after year, when they're candidates they sound like they're going to take on MCPS and make things better, and then they get into office and roll over. Not sure there's anything else MCEA can do about that.)

Year after year the Apple Ballot pre-selects their candidates. They don't want to look at anyone who says they will hold MCPS accountable. Their endorsements this year were months before the filing deadline.

If teachers don't like this, they should demand action from their union and if they don't like the union, stop paying dues. It is a choice. The Apple Ballot has a lot of power. Teachers don't get to wield the power and then say it's not them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The new state guidance requires schools to do Individualized Acceleration Plans and hold IAP meetings (with a committee including a "school administrator, mathematics educator, counselor, family member, the student, and a gifted specialist when available") for all kids in accelerated math, which is a good idea in theory but probably will be very time-consuming. No wonder they want to decrease the numbers.

https://marylandpublicschools.org/about/documents/dcaa/math/sample-individualized-acceleration-plan-a.pdf
https://marylandpublicschools.org/about/documents/dcaa/math/math-acceleration-guidance-a.pdf

That said, if your kid scores a 4 on the MCAP they have to do one of these for them, so folks in that situation should insist on one, convene the team, and push for the acceleration you think your kid needs. The guidance is pretty clear that acceleration is appropriate for kids who've already mastered all grade-level standards. (Not sure if this requirement kicks in next year or the year after, though, but you can try for it for next year.)

[Anonymous]

Well that's very sad. One of my kids went to the CES, and the other had acceleration in their home school in 4th and 5th grade. It was exactly what they needed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The new state guidance requires schools to do Individualized Acceleration Plans and hold IAP meetings (with a committee including a "school administrator, mathematics educator, counselor, family member, the student, and a gifted specialist when available") for all kids in accelerated math, which is a good idea in theory but probably will be very time-consuming. No wonder they want to decrease the numbers.

https://marylandpublicschools.org/about/documents/dcaa/math/sample-individualized-acceleration-plan-a.pdf
https://marylandpublicschools.org/about/documents/dcaa/math/math-acceleration-guidance-a.pdf

That said, if your kid scores a 4 on the MCAP they have to do one of these for them, so folks in that situation should insist on one, convene the team, and push for the acceleration you think your kid needs. The guidance is pretty clear that acceleration is appropriate for kids who've already mastered all grade-level standards. (Not sure if this requirement kicks in next year or the year after, though, but you can try for it for next year.)

Is there guidance for acceleration other than in math?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So, making current 4th graders repeat content is annoying, but parents may want to keep their eye on the ball here when it comes to math.

The REAL issue is that this model has kids doing Pre-Calculus in 9th grade, but then Calculus A/B and B/C in succession.

For a highly able kid, it makes zero sense to take both A/B and B/C, and pretending that it does make sense is likely covering up the fact that MCPS does not intend to provide those kids with a real math track beyond 10th grade.

I don’t think the standard “honors” math pathway should be BC in 10th, multivariate in 11th and what, linear algebra? differential equations? In 12th? Expecting MCPS to teach 3 years of college math is unreasonable. I was a good math student. I took Calc AB senior year. I never took any math beyond that and have never regretted it. Was I capable of it? Probably. But why force it on kids because there’s a 4 year HS math requirement? I think the AB then BC in sequence makes sense. If that’s “easy” for your kid, great! They get to spend more time on a subject that’s harder for them or another enriching outside activity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The new state guidance requires schools to do Individualized Acceleration Plans and hold IAP meetings (with a committee including a "school administrator, mathematics educator, counselor, family member, the student, and a gifted specialist when available") for all kids in accelerated math, which is a good idea in theory but probably will be very time-consuming. No wonder they want to decrease the numbers.

https://marylandpublicschools.org/about/documents/dcaa/math/sample-individualized-acceleration-plan-a.pdf
https://marylandpublicschools.org/about/documents/dcaa/math/math-acceleration-guidance-a.pdf

That said, if your kid scores a 4 on the MCAP they have to do one of these for them, so folks in that situation should insist on one, convene the team, and push for the acceleration you think your kid needs. The guidance is pretty clear that acceleration is appropriate for kids who've already mastered all grade-level standards. (Not sure if this requirement kicks in next year or the year after, though, but you can try for it for next year.)

Is there guidance for acceleration other than in math?

Not really. There's a brief reference in the upcoming grades 4-12 literacy policy ("Include differentiation and access to complex texts for diverse learners—including gifted and talented students (appropriate acceleration/extension), multilingual learners
(discipline-specific language supports), and students with disabilities (accessible materials and accommodations)" but that's about it as far as subject-specific stuff as far as I know.

There's also the general gifted and talented policies, but they provide a lot of flexibility to schools: https://marylandpublicschools.org/programs/documents/gifted-talented/criteria-for-excellence-gifted-and-talented-education-program-a.pdf https://marylandpublicschools.org/programs/documents/gifted-talented/maryland-model-of-gifted-and-talented-education-a.pdf

[Anonymous]

Some people get education degrees to teach math and science. Those degrees are very much more rigorous than people that get education degree who never studied content such as a lot of admin. People that study math and science are typically nerdy people that will be bullied by admin because those people are adverse to lying and frauding the data which is a big modus in education.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Except in the wealthier schools, many of our kids never got anything in ES or MS.

When CM was really for the advanced kids, and not for those whose parents were pushy, the 5 or 6 kids in our ES took a bus to the MS for acceleration.

Then some parents pushed for their kids to be in CM, so more than half the grade got pushed into CM which they then offered at the ES. I volunteered there, and it was clear that many kids did not belong in that class. I was thinking my youngest should probably be on track, not accelerated, but the teacher told me that because so many kids were pushed into CM, the kids left in the "on track" class were very behind, and my kid would be completely bored. It became opposite extremes with nothing in the middle.

That said, I'm super glad my kids will be out of MCPS. CM was necessary for one of my kids, who is now in college as a dual math/STEM major, getting a 4.0.

The dumbing down of MoCo kids. This will hurt those whom MCPS is trying to help the most. Some parents will just get tutors or teach their kids at home so their kids will be more advanced come HS so that they can take AP BC calc in 11th grade. It's the kids whose parents don't have the means/will to do the same who will suffer the most in the end.

This perfectly illustrates the problem with MCPS, which is constantly lurching from idea to idea rather than using proven change management tools.

In the early 2010s (and before), CM was truly only for a handful of kids per school. It might have been a little too tightly gate-kept, but not by much.

Then they lurched to throwing it open for every kid at or above grade level, so most of the kids in a lot of schools. They could have just opened it up a touch, but they threw open the gates entirely. SHOCKER - it did not set kids up for success, but the by time that cohort of kids started spinning out (usually pre-calculus), we'd already gone through two superintendents.

So now they are lurching back, without any sort of change management (buffer year) or any in-between approaches. It's just so dumb and avoidable.

Compact math was hastily created after parent outcry when the implementation of Curriculum 2.0 was announced at the end of the 2009 school year. with no acceleration options (because classroom teachers were expected to just accerelate kids where they needed it in large multilevel classrooms). It was never well thought out. Previous to that kids were just accelerated 1 or even 2 years ahead in math. My kid (and many others) had to repeat 3rd grade math, and we were assured that the curriculum 2.0 was much harder than the previous curriculum so it was no big deal for accelerated kids to repeat 3rd grade math. My kid literally had to go back to learning 1+1 (math facts he had memorized in preschool and kindergarten). Compact Math in my kids school was heavily gate kept for the first 2-3 years (we only had 6-8 kids in the class), then opened up to full classrooms as the years progressed. Some schools always had 1-2 full classrooms of compact math. It was principal discretion (just like we are struggling with today). MCPS has been a joke curriculum-wise for YEARS regarding acceleration. I'm sorry current parents are still dealing with this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The new state guidance requires schools to do Individualized Acceleration Plans and hold IAP meetings (with a committee including a "school administrator, mathematics educator, counselor, family member, the student, and a gifted specialist when available") for all kids in accelerated math, which is a good idea in theory but probably will be very time-consuming. No wonder they want to decrease the numbers.

https://marylandpublicschools.org/about/documents/dcaa/math/sample-individualized-acceleration-plan-a.pdf
https://marylandpublicschools.org/about/documents/dcaa/math/math-acceleration-guidance-a.pdf

Insanity. More useless meetings and documentation that will take time and money away from actually implementing enrichment opportunities.

[Anonymous]

Theoretically mcea is suppose to protect and preserve the rights of teacher who don't want to fraud the data and need support, security, and protection to teach.