Robert Frost beats Takoma Park in Mathcounts

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Between the 4 ms magnets there are 1000 seats awarded to the top kids from a pool of 12000. By definition not all of them can be in the top 1%. Even just Takoma has 125 seats which is more than 1% of 12k. You people are basically insane.

1000 seats per grade at the four test in middle school magnets?

DP.. I thought there were only three MS test in magnets -- Clemente, TP and Eastern. And yea, for TP and Eastern, it's more like 125 each (x2 = 250). Not sure about Clemente but I doubt it's 750 kids there.

Even if that’s the case the point stands 750 / 12,000 is much higher than 1% so these arguments are absurd.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Between the 4 ms magnets there are 1000 seats awarded to the top kids from a pool of 12000. By definition not all of them can be in the top 1%. Even just Takoma has 125 seats which is more than 1% of 12k. You people are basically insane.

I thought there were 500 seats for the 4 magnets (125 each). So that would be about top 4%. Is it possible that top 4% of MCPS is top 1% nationally? Yes, but unlikely. There are multiple measures considered and the same kids aren’t necessarily top 1% in each measure, so it’s possible that most of the accepted kids are 99th %ile nationally in at least 1 measure. But MCPS data show there are kids getting in who are significantly lower on at least one measure.

Anything is possible but MCPS publishes how their MAP scores stack up with national norms. It’s available on the parent portal when you check your kids scores. Anyhow, it turns out MCPS map scores aren’t substantially higher than the national norms. In fact they’re similar so every indication we have suggests that even 2% of the student population scores 99% is an exaggeration at best.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Between the 4 ms magnets there are 1000 seats awarded to the top kids from a pool of 12000. By definition not all of them can be in the top 1%. Even just Takoma has 125 seats which is more than 1% of 12k. You people are basically insane.

I thought there were 500 seats for the 4 magnets (125 each). So that would be about top 4%. Is it possible that top 4% of MCPS is top 1% nationally? Yes, but unlikely. There are multiple measures considered and the same kids aren’t necessarily top 1% in each measure, so it’s possible that most of the accepted kids are 99th %ile nationally in at least 1 measure. But MCPS data show there are kids getting in who are significantly lower on at least one measure.

Anything is possible but MCPS publishes how their MAP scores stack up with national norms. It’s available on the parent portal when you check your kids scores. Anyhow, it turns out MCPS map scores aren’t substantially higher than the national norms. In fact they’re similar so every indication we have suggests that even 2% of the student population scores 99% is an exaggeration at best.

Which means a lot of kids in the top 4% don’t have straight 99s as some would have you believe

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow! There is so much prejudice and blatant racism/classism in this thread. Some of the PPs should be ashamed of themselves.

By all accounts it’s tougher to get into this program than ever. All fifth graders are accepted and the top 100 only (out of 11,000 are admitted). These mythical kids who get in with mediocre scores don’t exist. And this view that children of hr directors or non profit administrators are lesser than. WT actual F??!! Which of you think your choice of career makes you superior (or smarter) than others? What about the kids of teachers, firefighters, social workers? Do you look down on your friends and neighbors like this in real life? Wow. I had no idea. As a non scientist I’ve never felt inferior to those who choose different career paths or areas of academic focus — why would that make them “smarter”?!

"Top 100" based on peer cohort, and not the entire county. That is what many are upset about. -signed a non scientist.

It’s the top performers at each school. That’s the top 100 in my book.

Your book seems to be written in crayon.

You have a very simplistic view. The kids who have attended a school with top notch teaching and excellent administration already have an advantage. They should be expected to (and do) perform higher than at schools with less advantages. Therefore students are compared with those who have gone through the same schooling as themselves. This is absolutely the most equitable way to assign spots. The kid who gets into Harvard from a school that has never sent a kid to the Ivy League before has achieved much more than a kid who went to the top schools and has a family legacy.

It’s bizarre how so many posters here deny their own privilege and think they are somehow superior to all and more deserving of a spot at a magnet. This implication that the kids from the east of the county are less deserving or not highly gifted is downright insulting, not to mention racist. You know they all scored 99th percentile too, right?

Although many are reluctant to admit this when it comes to magnet admissions, all you need to do is read a thread on the boundary study to see that a vast majority of people believe that some schools are vastly better than others and confer distinct advantages to those students. Only problem is they want to give their children advantages and don't want a handicap like cohort criteria to for offset this.

[Anonymous]

I think it continues to be a mistake to treat this as though it is a footrace based solely on the CoGAT. I have absolutely no knowledge of whether the 70% percentile poster is correct, but I can also imagine a variety of scenarios in which that would be true and also not mean the death of the magnets.

I can imagine a kid with a history of high scores who got in on appeal after the committee learned the took the test just before being diagnosed with mono.

I can also imagine a 2E kid who blew the lid off one sub-section, but did relatively poorly on the sub-section that was not as related to the magnet for which they were accepted.

Again, I have no idea if that number is correct, but I can think of a lot of scenarios in which it could both be true AND be totally unrelated to "cohort."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think it continues to be a mistake to treat this as though it is a footrace based solely on the CoGAT. I have absolutely no knowledge of whether the 70% percentile poster is correct, but I can also imagine a variety of scenarios in which that would be true and also not mean the death of the magnets.

I can imagine a kid with a history of high scores who got in on appeal after the committee learned the took the test just before being diagnosed with mono.

I can also imagine a 2E kid who blew the lid off one sub-section, but did relatively poorly on the sub-section that was not as related to the magnet for which they were accepted.

Again, I have no idea if that number is correct, but I can think of a lot of scenarios in which it could both be true AND be totally unrelated to "cohort."

There's a study by two economists published by MCPS that's been linked to previously on various MS magnet threads; my recollection was that it reviewed the process (very informative) and results of the first year that MCPS applied the cohort criteria. The data showed that, yes, a small fraction of the students at each of the Takoma Park and Eastern MS magnet programs had scores (I believe CoGAT, but might have been MAP) below 90%, and some below 80% (I believe there was one outlier in the 60-69% range), but in the "other" discipline - Takoma magnet kids overwhelmingly performed at the 95%+ level for quantitative, and vice-versa for Eastern. I suspect that MCPS fixed the optics of that this year by coming up with a MCPS percentage that is based on SES bands, so more students will have a higher performance percentage because they are benchmarked, however imperfectly, against their SES peers.

I can agree that there can be reasons for a low percentile, but I don't agree that it would be "totally unrelated to 'cohort'". We live in a high SES area, and our assumption was that DC had to have a perfect to virtually-perfect score on the relevant sections of the CoGAT to even have a chance, and that proved out. Invited at one magnet and waitpool at the other consistent with that, even though the scores were 99% in every section for age, grade and MCPS. Some areas likely had little to no margin of error, others likely more. I'm fine with that, because these are programs that have to be made available broadly across the county. The new process isn't perfect, but it's an improvement on the prior process in that regard. If that means that the magnets don't get the "best of the best of the best," that's fine. They weren't before, either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think it continues to be a mistake to treat this as though it is a footrace based solely on the CoGAT. I have absolutely no knowledge of whether the 70% percentile poster is correct, but I can also imagine a variety of scenarios in which that would be true and also not mean the death of the magnets.

I can imagine a kid with a history of high scores who got in on appeal after the committee learned the took the test just before being diagnosed with mono.

I can also imagine a 2E kid who blew the lid off one sub-section, but did relatively poorly on the sub-section that was not as related to the magnet for which they were accepted.

Again, I have no idea if that number is correct, but I can think of a lot of scenarios in which it could both be true AND be totally unrelated to "cohort."

I strongly believe the 70% poster is either mistaken or intentionally misstating this since the data that was posted on these boards last year about this indicated that one of the lowest scores was around 95% and that was rare since the vast majority were 99%.

[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, the PP pretty much summed this entire thread up nicely.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Between the 4 ms magnets there are 1000 seats awarded to the top kids from a pool of 12000. By definition not all of them can be in the top 1%. Even just Takoma has 125 seats which is more than 1% of 12k. You people are basically insane.

I thought there were 500 seats for the 4 magnets (125 each). So that would be about top 4%. Is it possible that top 4% of MCPS is top 1% nationally? Yes, but unlikely. There are multiple measures considered and the same kids aren’t necessarily top 1% in each measure, so it’s possible that most of the accepted kids are 99th %ile nationally in at least 1 measure. But MCPS data show there are kids getting in who are significantly lower on at least one measure.

The letter about acceptance says 100 spots at TPMS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Between the 4 ms magnets there are 1000 seats awarded to the top kids from a pool of 12000. By definition not all of them can be in the top 1%. Even just Takoma has 125 seats which is more than 1% of 12k. You people are basically insane.

I thought there were 500 seats for the 4 magnets (125 each). So that would be about top 4%. Is it possible that top 4% of MCPS is top 1% nationally? Yes, but unlikely. There are multiple measures considered and the same kids aren’t necessarily top 1% in each measure, so it’s possible that most of the accepted kids are 99th %ile nationally in at least 1 measure. But MCPS data show there are kids getting in who are significantly lower on at least one measure.

The letter about acceptance says 100 spots at TPMS.

100 out of boundary, 25 in boundary. So clearly, there must be some differences for the in boundary admits.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Between the 4 ms magnets there are 1000 seats awarded to the top kids from a pool of 12000. By definition not all of them can be in the top 1%. Even just Takoma has 125 seats which is more than 1% of 12k. You people are basically insane.

I thought there were 500 seats for the 4 magnets (125 each). So that would be about top 4%. Is it possible that top 4% of MCPS is top 1% nationally? Yes, but unlikely. There are multiple measures considered and the same kids aren’t necessarily top 1% in each measure, so it’s possible that most of the accepted kids are 99th %ile nationally in at least 1 measure. But MCPS data show there are kids getting in who are significantly lower on at least one measure.

The letter about acceptance says 100 spots at TPMS.

There are the additional 25 seats that come from those assigned to the school for a total of 125. This is true for most other the magnets as well. Many of those in boundary kids are also straight 99s at least mine were.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Between the 4 ms magnets there are 1000 seats awarded to the top kids from a pool of 12000. By definition not all of them can be in the top 1%. Even just Takoma has 125 seats which is more than 1% of 12k. You people are basically insane.

I thought there were 500 seats for the 4 magnets (125 each). So that would be about top 4%. Is it possible that top 4% of MCPS is top 1% nationally? Yes, but unlikely. There are multiple measures considered and the same kids aren’t necessarily top 1% in each measure, so it’s possible that most of the accepted kids are 99th %ile nationally in at least 1 measure. But MCPS data show there are kids getting in who are significantly lower on at least one measure.

The letter about acceptance says 100 spots at TPMS.

There are the additional 25 seats that come from those assigned to the school for a total of 125. This is true for most other the magnets as well. Many of those in boundary kids are also straight 99s at least mine were.

Mine too! But this extra 25 kids is nothing new, so clearly not evidence of any decline in standards!

[Anonymous]

There was definitely a study that showed a portion of the magnet admits the first year of universal screening/peer cohorts had scores in the 60-80th percentile. Can someone please find a link?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There was definitely a study that showed a portion of the magnet admits the first year of universal screening/peer cohorts had scores in the 60-80th percentile. Can someone please find a link?

I remember that but it more like 5 kids scored in the 240-248 range on the MAP-M where a 99% for Fall 5th grade was 249+.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There was definitely a study that showed a portion of the magnet admits the first year of universal screening/peer cohorts had scores in the 60-80th percentile. Can someone please find a link?

https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/sharedaccountability/reports/2019/Enriched%20and%20Accelerated%2028Jan2019%20FINAL.pdf