S/0 if you could improve low school performance, what would you do?

[Anonymous]

If you don't speak English - you need to learn before you attend an MCPS school. have one or two schools in the county that cater to those that don't speak English. If they can't pass a standardized entrance exam into MCPS school system after 1-2 years instruction, they need to pay for additional english lessons. If you are disruptive, you get sent to another school - maybe taught by rehabilited ex-inmates.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you don't speak English - you need to learn before you attend an MCPS school. have one or two schools in the county that cater to those that don't speak English.

FWIW I am an ESOL teacher. The majority of my students speak English fairly fluently when they enter Kindergarten -- probably 80%! Yet they qualify for ESOL services because their literacy scores are low.

These are the kids who are not managing to pass the MSA by grade 3. They don't need to learn English. They need to improve their reading and writing skills. They need extra tutoring and instruction, not English language classes. Your solution would not change much.

[Anonymous]

1. Meet the needs of all children...even if it means coding more kids and providing additional services to address their learning issues.

2. Address the issues related to socieconomics by embedding a social worker in title I and low performing schools...and making sure the social worker has access to appropriate resources.

3. Run the schools like the best private schools. All schools...not just the lower performing ones. Google Cristo Rey. It's a model that is working in inner cities across the country (Los Angeles is saving the poorest boys from gang central and getting them on grade level and then working with them to make sure all graduates go on to succeed in college. How do they do this? It's the standard private school model of setting the bar high, having high expectations, instilling respect and a work ethic, AND wrapping services around the students and families to help them achieve.) Honestly, smaller class sizes and a return to the traditional way of teaching all subjects (including text books and all subjects, not merely two big blocks of reading and math with social studies and science *Sometimes* added in in a small way) would benefit the majority of the kids.

4. This will get me flamed: get rid of the administrators and principals who we all know super suck. You know, the ones who are either well past their prime or who never should have been promoted in the first place (and can't be fired). If you are at a school with a super crummy principal, you know what I mean.

[Anonymous]

1. Smaller class size. Helps students get more and better feedback from teachers and peers. Makes it so our dedicated teachers don't get burnt out.

2. Raise teacher salaries and hire the most qualified professionals for the job. Keep standards high for teachers and students.

3. Mentoring programs for teachers and students.

4. Shorter summer break, more frequent short breaks throughout the year. Helps with retention and study skills.

[Anonymous]

1. Quality preschool for all.
2. Increase funding for special education staff so that co-teaching could be the norm not the exception. This helps all children.
3. Go back to ability groups for reading and math and actually teach every child for the whole block instead of for 15 minutes per day and then centers.
4. More resources/money for research based interventions and trained staff to implement them.

[Anonymous]

"3. Go back to ability groups for reading and math and actually teach every child for the whole block instead of for 15 minutes per day and then centers. "

+1
I fail to see how this would nt be hugely helpful to all levels so long as groups are fluid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

We can throw tons of resources (because smaller class sizes, additional teaching staff, free breakfasts all cost a lot) at the children but unless this effort is reinforced by parents who partner with the schools to educate their children, it will not help these children achieve their full potential.

If your assertion is true then any money spent on this group is a waste. Failing is failing so the county may as well re-allocate $$ back to the areas with higher performing students.

Parental involvement and home education is critical ONLY when the educational system is deficient, which is exactly what is going on here. We just don't want to admit t. Its far easier to call whatever we do a success on our part and a failure on the lower SES parent's part. This simply isn't true but its more convenient for us.

The lower performing schools where kids are receiving free before and aftercare have these kids for 11 hours a day. The 2 remaining hours in the day when the child is awake and with their parents does not need to be spent reading and coloring if the 11 hours are used effectively.

I didn't say it was a waste, I said it would be more effective if what the school does is reinforced at home. We work closely with our child on a daily basis to ensure his success. There are lots of parent with full time jobs who are able to do this. It isn't easy but it is possible if you make it a priority. The smaller class sizes, additional teaching staff etc. is essential and the achievement gap would no doubt be much wider in their absence but we aren't going to close it unless their families partner with the schools every single day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We moved from a DCC school to a W school. Teacher quality was the same, the admin. was similar, the curriculum was nearly identical. The DCC school had smaller class sizes and more children being pulled out for help with English and with reading. From what I saw, the teachers and admin were dedicated to having these children read and achieve English fluency. What I also saw however was low turnout on back to school nights. When I volunteered, I encountered children who did not have books at home or even crayons. Now, I did not know most of these families personally, but I find it hard to believe that it would beyond the ability of most families in MoCo to purchase a few used books and a packet of crayons for their child. We can throw tons of resources (because smaller class sizes, additional teaching staff, free breakfasts all cost a lot) at the children but unless this effort is reinforced by parents who partner with the schools to educate their children, it will not help these children achieve their full potential. I'm not sure how you "legislate" this! If there was one other thing the county could do, it might be universal preschool. Again though, the benefits of universal preschool would ideally be magnified and leveraged by parents.

I don't buy the "no books" "no crayons" thing. Sorry, low income kids routinely get free books sent home with them from various charities along with loads of other stuff throughout the year. They have them but the books are likely buried under a ton of other crap - plastic toys, barbies, xbox, etc.

That was my point - it is easy to get these things for the children if you want even if you are poor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you don't speak English - you need to learn before you attend an MCPS school. have one or two schools in the county that cater to those that don't speak English.

FWIW I am an ESOL teacher. The majority of my students speak English fairly fluently when they enter Kindergarten -- probably 80%! Yet they qualify for ESOL services because their literacy scores are low.

These are the kids who are not managing to pass the MSA by grade 3. They don't need to learn English. They need to improve their reading and writing skills. They need extra tutoring and instruction, not English language classes. Your solution would not change much.

Another ESOL teacher here. Agree. Speaking and listening are not much of an issue. It's the reading, writing and academic vocabulary that lag behind the oral language skills. About 90% of the 200 ESOL students in my school were born in the US and have oral English skills when they arrive in pre-k or k. But the language of school (academic) is very different than language used at home (social) for most of these kids and you can't cram in to one school year what should have been happening at home for the 4 or 5 years before arriving at school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you don't speak English - you need to learn before you attend an MCPS school. have one or two schools in the county that cater to those that don't speak English.

FWIW I am an ESOL teacher. The majority of my students speak English fairly fluently when they enter Kindergarten -- probably 80%! Yet they qualify for ESOL services because their literacy scores are low.

These are the kids who are not managing to pass the MSA by grade 3. They don't need to learn English. They need to improve their reading and writing skills. They need extra tutoring and instruction, not English language classes. Your solution would not change much.

Now is not the time for semantics.
Stop making excuses - - they can't read, write, or speak in English well. What they do know is from TV, thus they perform poorly on all the tests.
They are way below others and their peers. In fact, they cannot read, write or speak in any language well.
We are shoveling monetary and tangible resources at them for the last 10 years, we cannot keep up, it is overwhelming the system and no end is in sight. The new reputation of MoCo and MCPS is "focus on ELS students." It is the magnet district for the hemisphere. Bienvenidos.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Now is not the time for semantics.
Stop making excuses - - they can't read, write, or speak in English well. What they do know is from TV, thus they perform poorly on all the tests.
They are way below others and their peers. In fact, they cannot read, write or speak in any language well.
We are shoveling monetary and tangible resources at them for the last 10 years, we cannot keep up, it is overwhelming the system and no end is in sight. The new reputation of MoCo and MCPS is "focus on ELS students." It is the magnet district for the hemisphere. Bienvenidos.

It has very little to do with language. In most cases, these kids are reading and writing, quite frankly, at the same level as other kids of their same SES. I.E. they are from poor families, and like MANY (not all) kids from poor families, they don't have great academic background knowledge or high literacy skills.

I don't know how much money your school district is spending on teachers and resources for ESL students, because I live and work in a different county. But even if you fired all the ESL teachers and stopped the program completely, you would still have kids who were not reading and writing on grade level, although their oral fluency was fine. What do you want to do with all these kids (a ground which frankly, includes many poor children including African American ones, and other poor minorities, as well as the occasional poor white child in MoCo)?

You can't just dismiss them from school -- seriously, that's not allowed by federal law. If your county provides a free public education to residents, you aren't legally allowed to just exclude a bunch of kids because they have poor background knowledge and low literacy scores in preK. Putting them all into a special school to learn English won't actually help the problem, because they already speak English.... especially the African American ones, who really don't speak Spanish, you know?

So you are going to have to provide SOME remediation and special programs to bring them up to speed. If you don't, your scores in Montgomery County are going to continue to go down, down, down, and your property values will be dragged down with them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Now is not the time for semantics.
Stop making excuses - - they can't read, write, or speak in English well. What they do know is from TV, thus they perform poorly on all the tests.
They are way below others and their peers. In fact, they cannot read, write or speak in any language well.
We are shoveling monetary and tangible resources at them for the last 10 years, we cannot keep up, it is overwhelming the system and no end is in sight. The new reputation of MoCo and MCPS is "focus on ELS students." It is the magnet district for the hemisphere. Bienvenidos.

It has very little to do with language. In most cases, these kids are reading and writing, quite frankly, at the same level as other kids of their same SES. I.E. they are from poor families, and like MANY (not all) kids from poor families, they don't have great academic background knowledge or high literacy skills.

I don't know how much money your school district is spending on teachers and resources for ESL students, because I live and work in a different county. But even if you fired all the ESL teachers and stopped the program completely, you would still have kids who were not reading and writing on grade level, although their oral fluency was fine. What do you want to do with all these kids (a ground which frankly, includes many poor children including African American ones, and other poor minorities, as well as the occasional poor white child in MoCo)?

You can't just dismiss them from school -- seriously, that's not allowed by federal law. If your county provides a free public education to residents, you aren't legally allowed to just exclude a bunch of kids because they have poor background knowledge and low literacy scores in preK. Putting them all into a special school to learn English won't actually help the problem, because they already speak English.... especially the African American ones, who really don't speak Spanish, you know?

So you are going to have to provide SOME remediation and special programs to bring them up to speed. If you don't, your scores in Montgomery County are going to continue to go down, down, down, and your property values will be dragged down with them.

Remediate them at one location. don't mix these kids with the kids that are higher performers if they can't keep up. no one wins.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Remediate them at one location. don't mix these kids with the kids that are higher performers if they can't keep up. no one wins.

It's 20% of the school population that failed the MSA last year in Montgomery County. You want them all in one location for remediation??

And it's not just poor brown kids who failed the MSA.

9% of all white MOCO 7th graders failed the 7th grade MSA this year.

http://www.mdreportcard.org/MsaTrends.aspx?PV=1:7:15:AAAA:2:N:12:13:2:2:1:1:1:1:3

You want to send all those white kids to a "special school" for a year to be remediated until they can be brought up to speed? With all those poor brown and Hispanic kids?

44% of the Hispanic kids failed the 7th grade Math MSA last year.

http://www.mdreportcard.org/MsaTrends.aspx?PV=1:7:15:AAAA:2:N:7:13:2:2:1:1:1:1:3

43% of African American Kids failed the 7th grade Math MSA last year

http://www.mdreportcard.org/MsaTrends.aspx?PV=1:7:15:AAAA:2:N:10:13:2:2:1:1:1:1:3

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Remediate them at one location. don't mix these kids with the kids that are higher performers if they can't keep up. no one wins.

And what is your proposal for kids who fail the Math MSA but are on grade level for Reading??

Do you just bus them to their "special remediation school" for one subject but bus them back to their neighborhood school to be with their peers for the other subjects?

Or does everyone who ever fails the MSA get sent to the "remediation" school? Do you realize how much this would cost in busing? And that the "special remediation schools" would be about 90% brown skinned children?

[Anonymous]

I teach ESOL students in a high poverty school and unless the student is brand new, they perform at the same level as the average white and AA students in our school. These native English speakers don't have good vocabularies, don't read at home, etc. When the ESOL students test out of our program, the majority of them surpass their native speaking peers.