How to help MCPS' lowest performing students?

[Anonymous]

According to my admin teachers are not allowed to speak other languages besides English unless you are teaching that language.

It could also just have just been some adult bullying as some rules are just there to apply to the nerds that will be pushed out of their employment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:According to my admin teachers are not allowed to speak other languages besides English unless you are teaching that language.

It could also just have just been some adult bullying as some rules are just there to apply to the nerds that will be pushed out of their employment.

We’ve had teachers do Spanish so that sounds wrong.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Free full day preschool starting at 3. And not just for poor students. It’s better that poorer students have normal classmates too and not just only poor classmates.

My kids are in a title one school (almost completely Hispanic, not AA if that matters. Different populations need different things) and the majority of her poor classmates didn’t go to preschool. They sat at home with grandma or an aunt watching TV. Or went along with their parents to their jobs and were given an iPad. THIS is the achievement gap. Middle class kids are all in full day preschools. Upper class kids all have energetic and creative Nannies or SAHMs who take them to enriching activities daily. My kids only screen time prior to K was an iPad on airplanes or car rides longer than 4 hours. My kids own hundreds of books and were read to nightly from age 2 (before 2 they weren’t as good of sitters and were sung to).

Our title one school is interesting because it’s 1.5-2m sfhs, 800k townhouses and then one apartment complex where 75% of the kids come from. The difference is stark and it’s all what happened before 5.

I think it’s also natural intelligence

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Serious answers only. How can schools raise performances of students at the lowest levels? Free meals help nourish brains and bodies, are they "healthy" is questionable. What else? It it sending home books (lots of books) for them to read? More math practice practice practice. Is it helping change their attitude towards learning, less screen time? Is it identifying learning disorders in Pre-K (if eligible) or by K? Parents/guardians of these students need assistance too but there is time and language and cultural barriers- getting them information about identifying learning issues, ELL services, attitude/views about learning?

You can't. Education is not valued by these parents and family - due to poverty, dysfunction, culture, language barrier etc. Parents themselves are ill-educated or uneducated. There is poverty and lot of neglect, abuse, abandonment of children. There is zero understanding of the value of education in the modern world and what opportunities it can make available for people.

This is the underclass population. And what needs to be done is to give them the training that can actually be of practical use to them for menial jobs that will not be taken over by AI.

Many of them have poor impulse control and executive function, they’d never pass a marshmallow test even if controlled for SES. They won’t be able to learn trades well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Students new to the country are placed in a classroom based on their age, and not their prior education. We used to have schools/classes for students new to the country to start learning English and get an educational plan in place prior to being placed in a general education classroom.

ELD is very rarely pulled out at this point and is definitely not enough to fill the gaps even if they have a 3x a week 30 minute newcomer class. That's a tiny amount of time to help kids adjust.

I am a 5th-grade teacher and in the past few years have started to get ridiculous placements in my classrooms. For example, imagine a student who has zero English, zero prior schooling, and does not know how to count to 5 even in his native language just being dropped in a 5th grade classroom and the teacher told to "catch him up." Or a student whose parent is illiterate and the child has already missed 2+ years of schooling while getting to the country and then just told to start reading and learning in English when the last time they were in school was in 1st grade in a different country where they were never learned even pre-reading skills such as how to hold a book.

Whenever I get these children, I feel so bad for them. But then I also realize how students like these are being dropped into high schools and teachers there are also told to just make it work. It's not possible.

Language is not normally the largest barrier- the lack of prior education is.

I think we need to go back to the old system of having students who are not prepared for the grade level in separate classes or schools to first get them ready for education before releasing them. It would benefit the children AND benefit society.

Bringing fewer students like this would surely help the rest of the kids

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here is the cold, hard truth. Even when billionaires like Paul Tudor Jones and LeBron James put in big money and resources to helping to improve the outcomes of low performing students, they can't. What makes you think mcps can do any better, other than with feel-good, do nothing programming?

The absolute only way that child do well is when their parents are well-educated.

The Soviet Union went from almost no literacy in the working class to 99% within one generation

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What do you think will happen to MCPS' lowest performing students/families with recent election results, will the county's population change, will priorities and initiatives change?

Surprisingly nothing much changed?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here is the cold, hard truth. Even when billionaires like Paul Tudor Jones and LeBron James put in big money and resources to helping to improve the outcomes of low performing students, they can't. What makes you think mcps can do any better, other than with feel-good, do nothing programming?

The absolute only way that child do well is when their parents are well-educated.

The Soviet Union went from almost no literacy in the working class to 99% within one generation

The Eastern European population understands the value of education. Thats the difference.

[Anonymous]

AI. Will it disrupt your teaching ?

[Anonymous]

I grew up in Soviet Union. We would read a lot in school. For the summer break kids would get a list of books ( about 30 or more) that were required to read. Every day homework included writing a paragraph or more in cursive, and we would read way more in school year that I ever observed in MCPS. My DS is in 8th grade and reading is minimal, writing too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Parents, please speak up for teachers. Expecting us to differentiate while sticking to the same grade-level content for every student is unrealistic. Many kids are already several grade levels behind.

I'd love to help support you. What do you think we should advocate for instead?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I grew up in Soviet Union. We would read a lot in school. For the summer break kids would get a list of books ( about 30 or more) that were required to read. Every day homework included writing a paragraph or more in cursive, and we would read way more in school year that I ever observed in MCPS. My DS is in 8th grade and reading is minimal, writing too.

Same experience. Born in USSR, but went to school in the 90s when it collapsed. We were all poor back then. The education was top notch.

[Anonymous]

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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.

Teaching reading isn't harder than neurosurgery.

I'm not sure that is the right comparison. Teachers don't get the luxury of working 1-1 with a child who can't read, the way neurosurgeons completely focus on one patient at a time. They are also trying to treat and triage the other 24 students at the same time while following a curriculum, preparing kids for standardized tests, attending SO MANY IEP meetings, dealing with behaviors, etc. I think if a teacher were assigned to just remediate one kid's reading struggles at a time, they would be more successful...you know, like parents can. Even neurosurgeons would struggle if they had to operate on a brain while helping 20 other patients with a variety of issues at the same time.

This x one million! As a certified dyslexic practitioner and teacher, it’s not “hard” to teach kids how to read but if someone is dyslexic they likely need repeated exposure and practice of foundational phonics concepts in order for it to stick. It feels almost impossible to do this with a class of 25 other students who also have a range of academic and behavior issues.

[Anonymous]

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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.

Teaching reading isn't harder than neurosurgery.

I'm not sure that is the right comparison. Teachers don't get the luxury of working 1-1 with a child who can't read, the way neurosurgeons completely focus on one patient at a time. They are also trying to treat and triage the other 24 students at the same time while following a curriculum, preparing kids for standardized tests, attending SO MANY IEP meetings, dealing with behaviors, etc. I think if a teacher were assigned to just remediate one kid's reading struggles at a time, they would be more successful...you know, like parents can. Even neurosurgeons would struggle if they had to operate on a brain while helping 20 other patients with a variety of issues at the same time.

Most teachers don’t care nor do school admin. We’ve been trying to get an iep for years and do one every year and are told no because the kid is smart and has involved parents. This year we had to get an attorney. The vp basically only allows kids of specific races and other factors.

Kids aren’t getting the foundation. They don’t teach the basics anymore. They don’t flag learning disabilities till later and even so they regularly refuse ieps or don’t follow them. For esol, start teaching the kids in their language so they can keep up whike having intense English classes.

I agree that admin can be resistant if the student has good grades (which they are not allowed to do by law), and I agree that there needs to be more of an emphasis teaching foundational skills.

Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as “teach them in their native language.” I am at a Title I school with a very high percentage of MLL students. I would estimate at least 60% of our MLL students are not proficient in their native language, and would estimate less than 5% can read and write in their home language. What I think may be beneficial would be to have a transitional 3-6 month program for newcomer MLL students to acclimate them to the language and teach foundational skills. It wouldn’t be enough to close the gap but it may help establish a baseline foundation and give the students a soft landing for when they start MCPS. We get brand new students almost every week and it feels like we are reinventing the wheel every single time.