dislike MoCo and MCPS?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:this forum has arguments about multivariable calculus and still thinks MCPS sucks. It boggles the mind.

MV is important to some kids. If your kids get the opportunity to take it, shouldn't ours. Its not just the MV issue, its the academics. In ES, they don't teach the basics like spelling, grammar and math facts. You have to do it at home (hopefully with the new currriculum changes that will change). They don't use textbooks which is hard for visual learners and some teachers have them and still refuse to hand them out.

None of this is true anymore for ES. I will give you a break on the spelling/grammar since CKLA was new last year (although I think there was at least some of it in Benchmark too) but Eureka has been around for like 5 years and I'm pretty sure Eureka includes math facts practice/sprints almost every single day in most grades!

[Anonymous]

MCPS largely has very strong high schools program offerings. I wouldn’t bother moving if your kids are in or near high school. Hard to beat our high schools. For K-5 or arguably -8, I do think places with (affluent) town-based districts provide an advantage over MCPS (but typically lack diversity and a lot of offerings). Do the other school districts offer 7 periods to middle schoolers with both band and orchestra choices? Most don’t.

I think about moving from time to time but I haven’t found a place with better weather and comparable schools that isn’t more expensive. But I’m interested.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I liked it for awhile, but have completely disliked everything MoCo has done in the last 15 years or so. So we just retired and moved this year. I still have 1 adult child in the area.

Things MoCo/MCPS did: Drove away high tech businesses, built more and more homes with no additional road infrastructure, followed some trendy schooling idea which added nothing (and it all started with Character Counts! which I thought silly) and changing classroom discipline and grad requirements that are dumbing down our kids...

and most of all I hated the TRAFFIC (related to a few things above). It took a half hour to get from one side of Gaithersburg to the other side.

I do not miss any of i now. And I love being able to drive 10 miles in about 15 mins.

Can you share where you moved?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sorry, MCPS was always a substandard educational system - even 36 years ago. It was shocking for me to come from India - a 3rd world country- and see how terrible MCPS was and how dumb the teachers were. Then I also checked out the private schools. And their education sucked worse than MCPS.

I had to become very hands-on with my kids education and put in hours daily to give them a well-rounded education (even when my kids were in the magnet pipeline) outside of the school hours.

Do I dislike that MoCo has become a sanctuary county? For sure. Do I dislike the diversity? Not at all. Were Blacks and Hispanics and poor people always doing terribly? Yes. I would say that MCPS has always given poor education to students - but it is also a reflection of how uneducated the parents are. Most cannot help their kids with ES and MS level Math.

It is just that when a lot of "high achieving" (in comparison to the natives) immigrants, whose families prioritized education, started to do way better than the natives in measurable ways, everyone started talking of achievement gap as a racial injustice. The achievement gap always existed because standards of K-12 education in America has sucked balls for past several decades, and people get by only because of their accent or skin color.

I actually like MoCo. MCPS may be better than many school systems. But, if you think that without your intervention your kid can get a world-class education in MCPS? Nope.

I’m always amused when people from India trash the US educational system. India refuses to participate in international academic assessment test like the PISA because when they do they score absolutely abysmally. The last time India participated they ranked 73rd out of 74 countries; barely beating out Kazakhstan. They were slated to take it in 2022 but pulled out at the last minute.

You have to look at the wealthier areas and compare, not the impoverished area. Their higher level schools are far superior. But, most parents here wouldn't tolerate strict no nonsense teaching.

Majority of India is still impoverished. But, the UMC population has increased rapidly too in recent years, and they are the ones who are comparable to the citizens of wealthy nations. The quality of education for this population is extremely high. You have to open your eyes and see that "Educated In India" folks are going all over the world to become the richest ex-pat community.

NO you have to look at it all, because US schools systems have to educated all kids, impoverished and wealthy.

What is the use though of this substandard education that is producing so many functional illiterates? Even among the most privileged - White men - only 30% even go to college. But, your delusions are great for the rest of the world.

Only 30% go as they aren’t as privileged as you think and many cannot afford it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It comes down to money. Are people willing to support a supplemental tax to give MCPS the budget they requested from MoCo? Or an increase in property taxes? Are people willing to acknowledge that some kids need remedial help and need a longer school day to accomplish that? Everyone does not enter MCPS with the same educational background—if we acknowledge that, MCPS could provide a better education for everyone.

I can only speak from my perspective of having a child in a non public placement. This placement is viewed as a last resort, detrimental to a child’s academic success, the place no one wants their kid to go. But it’s the right fit for my kid, it’s the place where he is successful and happy, where he’s grown to enjoy school and learning. Keeping him in a mainstream classroom in the name of equity would have been a horrible outcome. Different kids need different things.

We just approved the largest budget increase in MCPS history. How is it that you're honing in on taxpayer willingness as the problem here?

The budget is currently over $3 billion. If that's not enough, what is? And if we fund it at whatever amount above what we're currently funding, what accountability measures are in place to give we, the taxpayers, any semblance of ROI?

Ask yourself what you want for your kid and then assume that 100K others kids should get the same. What would you be willing to pay for that. Speaking only to the PPP who before has a kid in a non-public placement, imaging that their are other kids in the system for who this would also be beneficial. Now imagine the school district having to pay 40-50K for each of those kids tuition, because that's what happens.

People hear 3.4Billion and it seems like a huge number. But divide that by 160K students and its only 21K per student. That's less than tuition at many good private schools in the area, and MCPS has to account for things they don't like transportations, nurses, special education, non-private placement, and the maintenance of 212 buildings.

So the question is what would be a good amount per pupil to spend? 10k, 15k, 18k? And what are you willing to give up to decrease the budget to that?

Mcps has it in the budget. These kids are not the issue. Those schools are about $100k plus transportation. Imagine having such special needs that you have to go to one. It means mcps failed then.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It comes down to money. Are people willing to support a supplemental tax to give MCPS the budget they requested from MoCo? Or an increase in property taxes? Are people willing to acknowledge that some kids need remedial help and need a longer school day to accomplish that? Everyone does not enter MCPS with the same educational background—if we acknowledge that, MCPS could provide a better education for everyone.

I can only speak from my perspective of having a child in a non public placement. This placement is viewed as a last resort, detrimental to a child’s academic success, the place no one wants their kid to go. But it’s the right fit for my kid, it’s the place where he is successful and happy, where he’s grown to enjoy school and learning. Keeping him in a mainstream classroom in the name of equity would have been a horrible outcome. Different kids need different things.

We just approved the largest budget increase in MCPS history. How is it that you're honing in on taxpayer willingness as the problem here?

The budget is currently over $3 billion. If that's not enough, what is? And if we fund it at whatever amount above what we're currently funding, what accountability measures are in place to give we, the taxpayers, any semblance of ROI?

Ask yourself what you want for your kid and then assume that 100K others kids should get the same. What would you be willing to pay for that. Speaking only to the PPP who before has a kid in a non-public placement, imaging that their are other kids in the system for who this would also be beneficial. Now imagine the school district having to pay 40-50K for each of those kids tuition, because that's what happens.

People hear 3.4Billion and it seems like a huge number. But divide that by 160K students and its only 21K per student. That's less than tuition at many good private schools in the area, and MCPS has to account for things they don't like transportations, nurses, special education, non-private placement, and the maintenance of 212 buildings.

So the question is what would be a good amount per pupil to spend? 10k, 15k, 18k? And what are you willing to give up to decrease the budget to that?

Mcps has it in the budget. These kids are not the issue. Those schools are about $100k plus transportation. Imagine having such special needs that you have to go to one. It means mcps failed then.

No arents particularly the ones complaining about MCPS did the stupidest things are the problem. Maga is the propaganda machine that has destroyed MCPS nothing else but moms 4 Liberty spewing sane crap over and over again.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:this forum has arguments about multivariable calculus and still thinks MCPS sucks. It boggles the mind.

That's all you think makes a school system not "suck?"

Their kids have access to ap classes and higher level math so they don’t see why other kids might want it too.

You aren’t understanding. The baseline for discussions here assumes a certain level of 1) student ability, and 2) entitlement to advanced classes. This is not the baseline in most other school districts.

[Anonymous]

Everyone should just take a spin through the threads for the other school district forums.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:this forum has arguments about multivariable calculus and still thinks MCPS sucks. It boggles the mind.

That's all you think makes a school system not "suck?"

Their kids have access to ap classes and higher level math so they don’t see why other kids might want it too.

You aren’t understanding. The baseline for discussions here assumes a certain level of 1) student ability, and 2) entitlement to advanced classes. This is not the baseline in most other school districts.

Why is it considered an entitlement? How hard is it to teach a college English 101 or Calc 101 course. Can you seriously not find enough competent teachers to do that for students that are otherwise well behaved and motivated? In most colleges and universities those are taught by a TA in a giant lecture hall. Here's the book go do the problems.

I always thought teachers like teaching those classes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Everyone should just take a spin through the threads for the other school district forums.

Would you mind sharing the highlights of what you think we'd find if we did, for those of us who don't have time to?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's just not an environment for quality learning for many kids. If people are scared of violence and teachers are scared that admin is pushing them out for not being able to do miracles or frauding the numbers...yeah it's toxic and corrupted.

Are you a teacher or is this your child’s actual experience on a day-to-day basis? I have read (on this site) or occasional articles… but they are rare.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think it’s a nice area. I’m from the middle of the country but I think people here are generally nice, are pretty thoughtful, value education (sadly not true everywhere in the country), and are respectful of religious and other differences (also not true everywhere). People have such interesting jobs and backgrounds. People aren’t obsessed with physical looks or fancy clothes lol they are in some areas of the country. I meet people from all over the world who work in non profits or do environmental protection for fed government or work for the fbi in counter terrorism etc etc. I really didn’t get that in my home town.

The public schools have some issues but public education is in an awful state in this country and will only get worse under this administration. There are lots of reasons for that.

If I was looking just for good public schools I might look in Massachusetts wheee it’s all town based. Or maybe certain higher income suburbs stoned the country (Cleveland heights?).

Agree. Or, northern suburbs of Chicago or NYC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sorry, MCPS was always a substandard educational system - even 36 years ago. It was shocking for me to come from India - a 3rd world country- and see how terrible MCPS was and how dumb the teachers were. Then I also checked out the private schools. And their education sucked worse than MCPS.

I had to become very hands-on with my kids education and put in hours daily to give them a well-rounded education (even when my kids were in the magnet pipeline) outside of the school hours.

Do I dislike that MoCo has become a sanctuary county? For sure. Do I dislike the diversity? Not at all. Were Blacks and Hispanics and poor people always doing terribly? Yes. I would say that MCPS has always given poor education to students - but it is also a reflection of how uneducated the parents are. Most cannot help their kids with ES and MS level Math.

It is just that when a lot of "high achieving" (in comparison to the natives) immigrants, whose families prioritized education, started to do way better than the natives in measurable ways, everyone started talking of achievement gap as a racial injustice. The achievement gap always existed because standards of K-12 education in America has sucked balls for past several decades, and people get by only because of their accent or skin color.

I actually like MoCo. MCPS may be better than many school systems. But, if you think that without your intervention your kid can get a world-class education in MCPS? Nope.

Yikes. May your relationship with your children survive!

[Anonymous]

We are very grateful to MCPS for all the free services and accommodations they provided to our child with special needs. It's a great school system, if you know how to work it and are prepared to argue your case with documentation. And it's also a great school system for neurotypical kids.

I am slightly disappointed with the English curriculum and very concerned about gun safety in high school (because of several incidents we've had in my kids' high school). But STEM courses, and all the rest, are really phenomenal for a public school system. MCPS and FCPS have the reputation of being in the top public school systems in the US. I can well believe it.

Now do I like the hot and humid and mosquitoed summers? NO!!!!!!! I can't wait to leave when my youngest graduates, for cooler year-round weather!


- parent of young adult and teen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are very grateful to MCPS for all the free services and accommodations they provided to our child with special needs. It's a great school system, if you know how to work it and are prepared to argue your case with documentation. And it's also a great school system for neurotypical kids.

I am slightly disappointed with the English curriculum and very concerned about gun safety in high school (because of several incidents we've had in my kids' high school). But STEM courses, and all the rest, are really phenomenal for a public school system. MCPS and FCPS have the reputation of being in the top public school systems in the US. I can well believe it.

Now do I like the hot and humid and mosquitoed summers? NO!!!!!!! I can't wait to leave when my youngest graduates, for cooler year-round weather!


- parent of young adult and teen.

You are very lucky as our IEP was a joke as were the services and we pay a fortune privately for therapies and tutors. Its great for some kids at some schools and not for others. We don't have a lot of stem classes. Science were regular, not AP and had zero labs or hands on. No textbooks. We had to buy our own books in english as they were pdf's or audiobooks that they listen to in class, etc.