How to help MCPS' lowest performing students?

[Anonymous]

What work do the lowest performing students receive to work on at home prior to snow days?

[Anonymous]

You can't help someone who doesn't want to help themselves/their kids.

If the parents wanted, they could get their kid to school in time.

[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.

In order to qualify for an IEP your child needs to have a documented disability or delay that impacts their academics or behavior at school. You could also consider a 504 plan

[Anonymous]

The biggest problem is unless these families have an advocate, they likely have no idea the services that are available to their children. A The lower income free pre-k is in the school I teach at and these kids do so much better than kids starting school who didn’t have it. The curriculum is excellent and the non english speaking students make improvements in their english language abilities so so fast! As with most things, they have no idea it’s here unless someone tells them and helps them register. And I don’t know how to fix that.