Is it good or bad that MCPS placed Magnet schools in the lowest performing schools?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I have a lot to do with kids in the magnet programs, all three of my kids are products of the magnet programs in MCPS. But I did not make any assumption about poor, black and Hispanic kids - you did! I know a number of black and Hispanic students in magnet programs who are doing well. Yes, they are very small numbers, and most of the blacks are children of recent educated and affluent immigrants from Africa . The poor students are spread equally among the races in the magnet programs, but he majority of those who need financial help (fieldtrip costs mainly) are poor White and Hispanic students.

It is very interesting that the poverty among White students is swept under the rugs on this forum, and so does the ESOL needs of Asian students.

Since the Metis Report came, MCPS has changed the selection criteria and it is not the test performance anymore. The evidence is what was done to Takoma Park and Eastern MS admissions. So, now we can say that the Black and Hispanic students who got selected were not chosen because of their stellar qualifications but due to other factors.

Will they be able to do the work? Well, since they were not the top students, they certainly will drag down the pace and rigor of the entire class. Is that a terrible thing? I don;t know. You do not have to be intelligent to become the president of the US, so who are we to say that mediocre URM students should not at least get the stamp of magnet programs on them, even if they can't perform? After all US is not meritocracy anymore, it is idiocracy.

No, we can't. Or rather, we can say anything, but the facts don't back it up.

With your assumption that black and Hispanic students in the magnet programs are mediocre and will drag down the entire class -- please stay far away from the magnet programs.

[Anonymous]

MCPS IMO is on the right track by rethinking how merit is gauged. It should ultimately strengthen the program by identifying better candidates, not just alumni of Dr. Li's prep academy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

That would be illegal.

Yes it is and MCPS is going to have its ass handed to it in court. MCPS is just like Trump and his public admissions of collusion and then adamant denials. They are on record that in order to rebalance the racial and socio economic make up of the magnet programs they not only adopted universal testing but changed the admissions criteria lowering it to above 90% and blocking admission for students from a small set of schools that happen to be the ones with a majority or close to majority Asian American population. MCPS was disturbed that Asian American were represented in magnets at over twice their rate as a % of the general population.

Personally, I would be OK with lowering of the bar to 90% - still seems high enough to me to be able to perform- if this is what is needed to identify enough lower SES minority students. The students that don't deserve to be there over the Asian American students who scored high 90s though are the UMC/MC white students who scored under high 90s. MCPS did not want to take away white seats from DCC residents and they wanted to take away seats from Asian students in high performing districts.

This type of behavior really makes the magnets a liability not an asset. MCPS should start early programs that identify lower SES with high potential and offer intensive extra curriculum resources to these students. Many may have the potential to score high but they need more than 2.0 in the classroom all day. MCPS should be looking at increasing Magnet spots so that any child scoring in the mid to high 90s gains entrance.

MCPS needs to stop worrying about who moves where and simply focus on educating the top, middle and bottom performers.

Or you need to realize pulling out parent driven applications, expanding the pool, and changing the test meant certain students were no longer the best qualified on.....merit!!! Hey did you read the recent Economist article on how racist the culture is in one really large Asian country?

what?

Look MCPS should just come out and say point blank. If you are at a W school your kid is going to be fine. They don't need to be in a magnet. W schools are defacto magnets already due to high SES

Wait! Wasn't the goal to integrate schools? They wanted the affluent high performing kid from W schools to come to the ghetto schools and it had nothing to do with meeting the needs of high ability students. That was the premise of the "pull integration" in the Metis report. The magnets were not put in these schools to meet the needs of high achieving students of any race, it was plain and simple integration, and the lure to pull these affluent (mainly White and Asian students) was the highly competitive magnet programs and a rigorous curriculum. .

If the magnets are diluting the criteria for admissions to take in any tom, dick and harry of the right shade, (and excluding highest performing students from W schools), then frankly there remains no reason for W school students to come to the magnet schools. Without the extremely high performing cohort in the magnet schools, these magnet schools are just ghetto schools with a ton of problems and low performing kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

That would be illegal.

Yes it is and MCPS is going to have its ass handed to it in court. MCPS is just like Trump and his public admissions of collusion and then adamant denials. They are on record that in order to rebalance the racial and socio economic make up of the magnet programs they not only adopted universal testing but changed the admissions criteria lowering it to above 90% and blocking admission for students from a small set of schools that happen to be the ones with a majority or close to majority Asian American population. MCPS was disturbed that Asian American were represented in magnets at over twice their rate as a % of the general population.

Personally, I would be OK with lowering of the bar to 90% - still seems high enough to me to be able to perform- if this is what is needed to identify enough lower SES minority students. The students that don't deserve to be there over the Asian American students who scored high 90s though are the UMC/MC white students who scored under high 90s. MCPS did not want to take away white seats from DCC residents and they wanted to take away seats from Asian students in high performing districts.

This type of behavior really makes the magnets a liability not an asset. MCPS should start early programs that identify lower SES with high potential and offer intensive extra curriculum resources to these students. Many may have the potential to score high but they need more than 2.0 in the classroom all day. MCPS should be looking at increasing Magnet spots so that any child scoring in the mid to high 90s gains entrance.

MCPS needs to stop worrying about who moves where and simply focus on educating the top, middle and bottom performers.

Or you need to realize pulling out parent driven applications, expanding the pool, and changing the test meant certain students were no longer the best qualified on.....merit!!! Hey did you read the recent Economist article on how racist the culture is in one really large Asian country?

what?

Look MCPS should just come out and say point blank. If you are at a W school your kid is going to be fine. They don't need to be in a magnet. W schools are defacto magnets already due to high SES

Wait! Wasn't the goal to integrate schools? They wanted the affluent high performing kid from W schools to come to the ghetto schools and it had nothing to do with meeting the needs of high ability students. That was the premise of the "pull integration" in the Metis report. The magnets were not put in these schools to meet the needs of high achieving students of any race, it was plain and simple integration, and the lure to pull these affluent (mainly White and Asian students) was the highly competitive magnet programs and a rigorous curriculum. .

If the magnets are diluting the criteria for admissions to take in any tom, dick and harry of the right shade, (and excluding highest performing students from W schools), then frankly there remains no reason for W school students to come to the magnet schools. Without the extremely high performing cohort in the magnet schools, these magnet schools are just ghetto schools with a ton of problems and low performing kids.

You post shows incredible ignorance and bigotry.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:MCPS IMO is on the right track by rethinking how merit is gauged. It should ultimately strengthen the program by identifying better candidates, not just alumni of Dr. Li's prep academy.

I'd have to say I agree. I think the program is now more equitable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am an Asian-American parent, with kids who have been/are in the magnet programs. I do not mind that my kid is being bused to school that are lowest performing and I do not mind that my kid takes some classes with non-magnet students. I think it is a win-win for all - students, MCPS - that we have magnet schools that are placed in the lowest performing schools.

What I want to see is an expansion of the magnet program, more seats, and merit based selection. I want the test statistics of chosen students shared with everyone. I want the magnet programs to have more enrichment AND I want the magnet curriculum, projects and assignments to be freely available and shared with the entire county using MyMCPS portal.

I think keeping a portion of the seats for local students who show academic capability and competitive stats is a good thing. It attracts people to homes in these areas. The aim of magnet may have been integration, and now it seems that it has shifted to closing the achievement gap. Magnet programs are not the right tool to close achievement gaps.

What I would like to see is that magnet remains the vehicle for meeting the needs of all highly gifted students as well as providing them a cohort of similar ability students. I do believe that all students should be tested for these programs though. That is a good step.

We have merit-based selection.

No, we don't. Merit means academic performance in the classroom and the actual admission test. Merit does not mean race, gender, or low SES, or being zoned to poor performing schools. Please do not twist the meaning of merit to mean what you think it should mean. This is social engineering for a problem (achievement gap) that MCPS has failed to solve by actually teaching poor performing URM students. MCPS has played the race card very cleverly and divided the parent community. They have made highly gifted students and high performing racial groups the villains, whereas the truth is that they have failed to bring up the standards of education and achievement of URM students for years now. We have many students who are functionally illiterate and they are graduating out of MCPS. All MCPS cares is the optics that many delusional people buy. This is a way for MCPS to be absolved of all responsibilities to not bridge the achievement gap. In fact in the last 7 years the gap has widened.

I hardly think that this is some ploy for MCPS to "close" the achievement gap. First of all the gap is pretty intractable. Second, closing the gap in small segment of the school population (ie magnets) does nothing for the overall gap. That is not the reason MCPS is doing this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:MCPS IMO is on the right track by rethinking how merit is gauged. It should ultimately strengthen the program by identifying better candidates, not just alumni of Dr. Li's prep academy.

Actually, 2.0 did more harm to URM students. They are worse off in their understanding and knowledge of content. But when you are riding the gravy train of affirmative action, and when MCPS itself has become less than mediocre then optics matter more than reality.

Let MCPS make public the test scores of every student who took the test, and let them show that they took the top students. MCPS cannot identify better candidates by playing the race card. Being Dr. Li's alumni is not a bad thing. What is bad is students who do not work hard at school, who are aspiring to have careers in being the dregs of the society. I hope parents and students choose academics over other things.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am an Asian-American parent, with kids who have been/are in the magnet programs. I do not mind that my kid is being bused to school that are lowest performing and I do not mind that my kid takes some classes with non-magnet students. I think it is a win-win for all - students, MCPS - that we have magnet schools that are placed in the lowest performing schools.

What I want to see is an expansion of the magnet program, more seats, and merit based selection. I want the test statistics of chosen students shared with everyone. I want the magnet programs to have more enrichment AND I want the magnet curriculum, projects and assignments to be freely available and shared with the entire county using MyMCPS portal.

I think keeping a portion of the seats for local students who show academic capability and competitive stats is a good thing. It attracts people to homes in these areas. The aim of magnet may have been integration, and now it seems that it has shifted to closing the achievement gap. Magnet programs are not the right tool to close achievement gaps.

What I would like to see is that magnet remains the vehicle for meeting the needs of all highly gifted students as well as providing them a cohort of similar ability students. I do believe that all students should be tested for these programs though. That is a good step.

We have merit-based selection.

No, we don't. Merit means academic performance in the classroom and the actual admission test. Merit does not mean race, gender, or low SES, or being zoned to poor performing schools. Please do not twist the meaning of merit to mean what you think it should mean. This is social engineering for a problem (achievement gap) that MCPS has failed to solve by actually teaching poor performing URM students. MCPS has played the race card very cleverly and divided the parent community. They have made highly gifted students and high performing racial groups the villains, whereas the truth is that they have failed to bring up the standards of education and achievement of URM students for years now. We have many students who are functionally illiterate and they are graduating out of MCPS. All MCPS cares is the optics that many delusional people buy. This is a way for MCPS to be absolved of all responsibilities to not bridge the achievement gap. In fact in the last 7 years the gap has widened.

I hardly think that this is some ploy for MCPS to "close" the achievement gap. First of all the gap is pretty intractable. Second, closing the gap in small segment of the school population (ie magnets) does nothing for the overall gap. That is not the reason MCPS is doing this.

Then you must be sleeping through all those hearings on Metis report. The Metis report is all about how URMs are not in these magnet programs proportionally. It recommended specific group norms. That is exactly what the middle school magnet pilot did this year.

The interesting thing is MCPS made clear that they are not doing anything to the high school magnet programs this year. And there is no immediate plan to change the high school magnet tests. I heard some grumble about changes in admission standard but not much. I wonder whether MCPS is too scared to change the composition of Blair SMAC or RM IB too much.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I hardly think that this is some ploy for MCPS to "close" the achievement gap. First of all the gap is pretty intractable. Second, closing the gap in small segment of the school population (ie magnets) does nothing for the overall gap. That is not the reason MCPS is doing this.

Of course, MCPS cannot close the achievement gap. As you said, the gap is intractable. However, it is the optics of this step. MCPS can "pretend" they are being equitable, while at the same time distracting people from the fact that they are failing everybody with their curriculum and the ever widening gap. Magnets are convenient scapegoats and a good distraction.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MCPS IMO is on the right track by rethinking how merit is gauged. It should ultimately strengthen the program by identifying better candidates, not just alumni of Dr. Li's prep academy.

Actually, 2.0 did more harm to URM students. They are worse off in their understanding and knowledge of content. But when you are riding the gravy train of affirmative action, and when MCPS itself has become less than mediocre then optics matter more than reality.

Let MCPS make public the test scores of every student who took the test, and let them show that they took the top students. MCPS cannot identify better candidates by playing the race card. Being Dr. Li's alumni is not a bad thing. What is bad is students who do not work hard at school, who are aspiring to have careers in being the dregs of the society. I hope parents and students choose academics over other things.

Let's repeat this. Dr. Li or any other prep schools don't have access to the tests. They just prepare the kids by teaching them the material and do more practice problems. There is no cheating going on. Hardworking kids shouldn't be demonized and punished.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MCPS IMO is on the right track by rethinking how merit is gauged. It should ultimately strengthen the program by identifying better candidates, not just alumni of Dr. Li's prep academy.

Actually, 2.0 did more harm to URM students. They are worse off in their understanding and knowledge of content. But when you are riding the gravy train of affirmative action, and when MCPS itself has become less than mediocre then optics matter more than reality.

Let MCPS make public the test scores of every student who took the test, and let them show that they took the top students. MCPS cannot identify better candidates by playing the race card. Being Dr. Li's alumni is not a bad thing. What is bad is students who do not work hard at school, who are aspiring to have careers in being the dregs of the society. I hope parents and students choose academics over other things.

This is an incredibly ignorant statement. There are multiple criteria involved in this process. It's not simply a matter of one test score. Before spewing garbage it would help if you learned at least a little about the subject.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MCPS IMO is on the right track by rethinking how merit is gauged. It should ultimately strengthen the program by identifying better candidates, not just alumni of Dr. Li's prep academy.

Actually, 2.0 did more harm to URM students. They are worse off in their understanding and knowledge of content. But when you are riding the gravy train of affirmative action, and when MCPS itself has become less than mediocre then optics matter more than reality.

Let MCPS make public the test scores of every student who took the test, and let them show that they took the top students. MCPS cannot identify better candidates by playing the race card. Being Dr. Li's alumni is not a bad thing. What is bad is students who do not work hard at school, who are aspiring to have careers in being the dregs of the society. I hope parents and students choose academics over other things.

Listen to yourself, PP.

[Anonymous]

There's a lot of pushback on this since the affluent can no longer easily game the system. This also clearly shows the new criteria is doing what it was meant to accomplish - find the best candidates by leveling the playing field.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MCPS IMO is on the right track by rethinking how merit is gauged. It should ultimately strengthen the program by identifying better candidates, not just alumni of Dr. Li's prep academy.

Actually, 2.0 did more harm to URM students. They are worse off in their understanding and knowledge of content. But when you are riding the gravy train of affirmative action, and when MCPS itself has become less than mediocre then optics matter more than reality.

Let MCPS make public the test scores of every student who took the test, and let them show that they took the top students. MCPS cannot identify better candidates by playing the race card. Being Dr. Li's alumni is not a bad thing. What is bad is students who do not work hard at school, who are aspiring to have careers in being the dregs of the society. I hope parents and students choose academics over other things.

This is an incredibly ignorant statement. There are multiple criteria involved in this process. It's not simply a matter of one test score. Before spewing garbage it would help if you learned at least a little about the subject.

Just stop. We have all read/heard the same set of facts. You may not agree with me but it doesn't make me less informed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MCPS IMO is on the right track by rethinking how merit is gauged. It should ultimately strengthen the program by identifying better candidates, not just alumni of Dr. Li's prep academy.

Actually, 2.0 did more harm to URM students. They are worse off in their understanding and knowledge of content. But when you are riding the gravy train of affirmative action, and when MCPS itself has become less than mediocre then optics matter more than reality.

Let MCPS make public the test scores of every student who took the test, and let them show that they took the top students. MCPS cannot identify better candidates by playing the race card. Being Dr. Li's alumni is not a bad thing. What is bad is students who do not work hard at school, who are aspiring to have careers in being the dregs of the society. I hope parents and students choose academics over other things.

Listen to yourself, PP.

Listen to yourself. Transparency is needed. Schools are about learning and not MCPS changing criteria for students admissions to competitive programs based on the color of their skin. Shame on MCPS and shame on the dotard who gave money to Metis for this study. They need to make public the scores of students who got in. This is a standard practice around the world. That way you know if you have earned a spot because of your abilities vs your race. It casts a shadow in the achievement of any URM student who actually gets in because of their merit because they get painted by the brush of being a product of affirmative action. You think this does not create divisions and suspicion? You think as prospective employers people will not be wary of the qualification of URM students? There are repercussions that will continue for a long time.