Regional Model: Another BIBO Effort in Disguise

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So this is just consortiums for all? But with less busing?

LOL, no. Consortiums involve students making choices for themselves. This proposal is all application programs, where MCPS will control who gets into magnets. See, when kids choose for themselves, they don't pick career training pathways. They pick arts and humanities. MCPS is trying to shut that down.

About 80% of the new programs are designed to help MCPS meet the Blueprint goal of 45% percent of kids graduating with an apprenticeship or professional certification. The only programs designed to be purely for academic enrichment are humanities, SMCS, and IB. That's why the humanities programs are at the richest school in each region.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So this is just consortiums for all? But with less busing?

LOL, no. Consortiums involve students making choices for themselves. This proposal is all application programs, where MCPS will control who gets into magnets. See, when kids choose for themselves, they don't pick career training pathways. They pick arts and humanities. MCPS is trying to shut that down.

About 80% of the new programs are designed to help MCPS meet the Blueprint goal of 45% percent of kids graduating with an apprenticeship or professional certification. The only programs designed to be purely for academic enrichment are humanities, SMCS, and IB. That's why the humanities programs are at the richest school in each region.

Not true at all. Many also choose stem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Looking at the data for the examples provided for Region 4, each school gets about 135 magnet seats filled by students who are not local. That means roughly 520 students per school come from outside the attendance area.

In other words, one-quarter to one-third of all students at each high school are bused in from other parts of the region. That’s a massive amount of “bus in, bus out” activity. Interestingly the report says it results in only one net bus per year per school?

I have heard that the one extra bus per school is because kids will have to get to their local high school on their own to catch a bus to the other school they're attending. And then I guess that one bus will stop at all the other high schools in the region one by one, so kids will probably have to get to their local HS very early to catch the buses in many cases.

Would be good to get MCPS to confirm this at one of these info sessions...

Even that’s the case, 520 students need a lot more buses to accommodate. One bus can transport around 50.

Well year one of the new programs is only freshman, so one bus from each high school should fit everyone. The idea that they think an equal number of kids will leave each high school makes no sense since that is not at all what it looks like currently (for example Rockville currently sends 37 kids to criterion programs and Wootton sends 202). Unless they plan to only accept a certain number of students from each school to force the numbers to be even. Which I guess would be equality though certainly not equity.

135 students need more than 2 buses per school per year

Poor wording on my part - one bus per high school going to each other high school in the region (so Rockville would have three buses total - one bus to RM, one to Wootton, and one to Churchill).

That would be like 12 new buses for the region and they said 4. I think their idea is that Rockville has one bus with 3 stops (one at each of the other schools) and all the kids in the Rockville boundaries going to programs get on the same bus regardless of which school they're going to.

No I don’t think so. I think they get to 4 by “subtracting” magnet buses that exist now but would no longer need to run, like they would no longer need a bus from Takoma Park to RMIB. But the truth is that they haven’t actually explained any of this clearly. It seems like a pretty fundamental piece of info.

But those busses are shared with middle school magnets students so they will still need to run for the middle schools

Who even knows what they are planning to do with middle school magnets? It seems like they could change those, too, with the snap of a finger.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Looking at the data for the examples provided for Region 4, each school gets about 135 magnet seats filled by students who are not local. That means roughly 520 students per school come from outside the attendance area.

In other words, one-quarter to one-third of all students at each high school are bused in from other parts of the region. That’s a massive amount of “bus in, bus out” activity. Interestingly the report says it results in only one net bus per year per school?

Beyond the issue of busing, students who are not in magnet programs may be placed at a disadvantage, as a significant portion (a third or even a quarter) of the school’s population participates in magnet programs after this model is implemented. This imbalance can negatively affect their chances of college admission, as even state universities often prioritize students who take most challenging courses offered at the school, many of whom come from magnet programs with greater access to advanced coursework.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So this is just consortiums for all? But with less busing?

LOL, no. Consortiums involve students making choices for themselves. This proposal is all application programs, where MCPS will control who gets into magnets. See, when kids choose for themselves, they don't pick career training pathways. They pick arts and humanities. MCPS is trying to shut that down.

About 80% of the new programs are designed to help MCPS meet the Blueprint goal of 45% percent of kids graduating with an apprenticeship or professional certification. The only programs designed to be purely for academic enrichment are humanities, SMCS, and IB. That's why the humanities programs are at the richest school in each region.

Not true at all. Many also choose stem.

But not the right kind of STEM. They want to take cool AP science classes, not classes to get certified in safe handling of laboratory equipment or becoming a pharmacy tech.

Not that lab and pharmacy techs aren't great careers. I just think it's unreasonable to expect 13 year old 8th graders to choose those career pathways and stick with them through all four years of high school.

[Anonymous]

My hometown has a crazy charter model where everyone is gong all over the place for “specialized” programs and they are basically all crap. I just think it is really really hard to pull off the kind of model and I don’t think McPS has any hope of doing this. It will be another example of them dumping a ton of money into someone’s bright idea and then in a few years they will move onto something else. Like the endless curricula changes. They just need to focus on improving the basics and attracting the best teachers, which historically was the foundation of their success — they paid a little more and had better benefits than surrounding jurisdictions and was generally a pleasant place to work so many teachers came here and stayed for decades. That is really the alpha and omega of a successful school system. Not aviation whatever and performing whatever else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Looking at the data for the examples provided for Region 4, each school gets about 135 magnet seats filled by students who are not local. That means roughly 520 students per school come from outside the attendance area.

In other words, one-quarter to one-third of all students at each high school are bused in from other parts of the region. That’s a massive amount of “bus in, bus out” activity. Interestingly the report says it results in only one net bus per year per school?

Beyond the issue of busing, students who are not in magnet programs may be placed at a disadvantage, as a significant portion (a third or even a quarter) of the school’s population participates in magnet programs after this model is implemented. This imbalance can negatively affect their chances of college admission, as even state universities often prioritize students who take most challenging courses offered at the school, many of whom come from magnet programs with greater access to advanced coursework.

Is this true for Blair or RM?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Looking at the data for the examples provided for Region 4, each school gets about 135 magnet seats filled by students who are not local. That means roughly 520 students per school come from outside the attendance area.

In other words, one-quarter to one-third of all students at each high school are bused in from other parts of the region. That’s a massive amount of “bus in, bus out” activity. Interestingly the report says it results in only one net bus per year per school?

Beyond the issue of busing, students who are not in magnet programs may be placed at a disadvantage, as a significant portion (a third or even a quarter) of the school’s population participates in magnet programs after this model is implemented. This imbalance can negatively affect their chances of college admission, as even state universities often prioritize students who take most challenging courses offered at the school, many of whom come from magnet programs with greater access to advanced coursework.

Is this true for Blair or RM?

It is not the case currently. Colleges treat Blair SMCS students separately from the rest Blair students, so do RMIB. Their coordinators submit a SMCS-only/RMIB-only program description/statistics sheet to colleges to make sure the correct "peers" are defined. I'm not sure if this is going to hold true for the future, if every HS has one or two "special programs" and 15-20% of students are enrolled.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Looking at the data for the examples provided for Region 4, each school gets about 135 magnet seats filled by students who are not local. That means roughly 520 students per school come from outside the attendance area.

In other words, one-quarter to one-third of all students at each high school are bused in from other parts of the region. That’s a massive amount of “bus in, bus out” activity. Interestingly the report says it results in only one net bus per year per school?

Beyond the issue of busing, students who are not in magnet programs may be placed at a disadvantage, as a significant portion (a third or even a quarter) of the school’s population participates in magnet programs after this model is implemented. This imbalance can negatively affect their chances of college admission, as even state universities often prioritize students who take most challenging courses offered at the school, many of whom come from magnet programs with greater access to advanced coursework.

Is this true for Blair or RM?

It is not the case currently. Colleges treat Blair SMCS students separately from the rest Blair students, so do RMIB. Their coordinators submit a SMCS-only/RMIB-only program description/statistics sheet to colleges to make sure the correct "peers" are defined. I'm not sure if this is going to hold true for the future, if every HS has one or two "special programs" and 15-20% of students are enrolled.

500 non local seats and unknown number of local seats (maybe 150-200), so it’s more like 1/3 of the school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Looking at the data for the examples provided for Region 4, each school gets about 135 magnet seats filled by students who are not local. That means roughly 520 students per school come from outside the attendance area.

In other words, one-quarter to one-third of all students at each high school are bused in from other parts of the region. That’s a massive amount of “bus in, bus out” activity. Interestingly the report says it results in only one net bus per year per school?

Beyond the issue of busing, students who are not in magnet programs may be placed at a disadvantage, as a significant portion (a third or even a quarter) of the school’s population participates in magnet programs after this model is implemented. This imbalance can negatively affect their chances of college admission, as even state universities often prioritize students who take most challenging courses offered at the school, many of whom come from magnet programs with greater access to advanced coursework.

Is this true for Blair or RM?

It is not the case currently. Colleges treat Blair SMCS students separately from the rest Blair students, so do RMIB. Their coordinators submit a SMCS-only/RMIB-only program description/statistics sheet to colleges to make sure the correct "peers" are defined. I'm not sure if this is going to hold true for the future, if every HS has one or two "special programs" and 15-20% of students are enrolled.

500 non local seats and unknown number of local seats (maybe 150-200), so it’s more like 1/3 of the school.

But most of those won't be criteria based programs right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Looking at the data for the examples provided for Region 4, each school gets about 135 magnet seats filled by students who are not local. That means roughly 520 students per school come from outside the attendance area.

In other words, one-quarter to one-third of all students at each high school are bused in from other parts of the region. That’s a massive amount of “bus in, bus out” activity. Interestingly the report says it results in only one net bus per year per school?

Beyond the issue of busing, students who are not in magnet programs may be placed at a disadvantage, as a significant portion (a third or even a quarter) of the school’s population participates in magnet programs after this model is implemented. This imbalance can negatively affect their chances of college admission, as even state universities often prioritize students who take most challenging courses offered at the school, many of whom come from magnet programs with greater access to advanced coursework.

Is this true for Blair or RM?

It is not the case currently. Colleges treat Blair SMCS students separately from the rest Blair students, so do RMIB. Their coordinators submit a SMCS-only/RMIB-only program description/statistics sheet to colleges to make sure the correct "peers" are defined. I'm not sure if this is going to hold true for the future, if every HS has one or two "special programs" and 15-20% of students are enrolled.

500 non local seats and unknown number of local seats (maybe 150-200), so it’s more like 1/3 of the school.

But most of those won't be criteria based programs right?

Most will be.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So this is just consortiums for all? But with less busing?

LOL, no. Consortiums involve students making choices for themselves. This proposal is all application programs, where MCPS will control who gets into magnets. See, when kids choose for themselves, they don't pick career training pathways. They pick arts and humanities. MCPS is trying to shut that down.

About 80% of the new programs are designed to help MCPS meet the Blueprint goal of 45% percent of kids graduating with an apprenticeship or professional certification. The only programs designed to be purely for academic enrichment are humanities, SMCS, and IB. That's why the humanities programs are at the richest school in each region.

Not true at all. Many also choose stem.

But not the right kind of STEM. They want to take cool AP science classes, not classes to get certified in safe handling of laboratory equipment or becoming a pharmacy tech.

Not that lab and pharmacy techs aren't great careers. I just think it's unreasonable to expect 13 year old 8th graders to choose those career pathways and stick with them through all four years of high school.

It's hilarious that you believe that AP science class are cool ones and not the ones that offer practical skill like safe handling of laboratory equipment or becoming a pharmacy tech. . Also you neglect to understand that kids that go on to work at NIH, become PharmDs, or even MDs can actually use these classes and skills to both help them get into college and pay for college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My hometown has a crazy charter model where everyone is gong all over the place for “specialized” programs and they are basically all crap. I just think it is really really hard to pull off the kind of model and I don’t think McPS has any hope of doing this. It will be another example of them dumping a ton of money into someone’s bright idea and then in a few years they will move onto something else. Like the endless curricula changes. They just need to focus on improving the basics and attracting the best teachers, which historically was the foundation of their success — they paid a little more and had better benefits than surrounding jurisdictions and was generally a pleasant place to work so many teachers came here and stayed for decades. That is really the alpha and omega of a successful school system. Not aviation whatever and performing whatever else.

+1000

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So this is just consortiums for all? But with less busing?

LOL, no. Consortiums involve students making choices for themselves. This proposal is all application programs, where MCPS will control who gets into magnets. See, when kids choose for themselves, they don't pick career training pathways. They pick arts and humanities. MCPS is trying to shut that down.

About 80% of the new programs are designed to help MCPS meet the Blueprint goal of 45% percent of kids graduating with an apprenticeship or professional certification. The only programs designed to be purely for academic enrichment are humanities, SMCS, and IB. That's why the humanities programs are at the richest school in each region.

Not true at all. Many also choose stem.

But not the right kind of STEM. They want to take cool AP science classes, not classes to get certified in safe handling of laboratory equipment or becoming a pharmacy tech.

Not that lab and pharmacy techs aren't great careers. I just think it's unreasonable to expect 13 year old 8th graders to choose those career pathways and stick with them through all four years of high school.

It's hilarious that you believe that AP science class are cool ones and not the ones that offer practical skill like safe handling of laboratory equipment or becoming a pharmacy tech. . Also you neglect to understand that kids that go on to work at NIH, become PharmDs, or even MDs can actually use these classes and skills to both help them get into college and pay for college.

I would hope AP classes have labs. Why do you insist others take those jobs? Have your kids do them. Our HS doesn't have any labs or hands on experiments. If they are lucky the teachers do stuff for the entire class. Very little hands on. So, yes, kids want that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So this is just consortiums for all? But with less busing?

LOL, no. Consortiums involve students making choices for themselves. This proposal is all application programs, where MCPS will control who gets into magnets. See, when kids choose for themselves, they don't pick career training pathways. They pick arts and humanities. MCPS is trying to shut that down.

About 80% of the new programs are designed to help MCPS meet the Blueprint goal of 45% percent of kids graduating with an apprenticeship or professional certification. The only programs designed to be purely for academic enrichment are humanities, SMCS, and IB. That's why the humanities programs are at the richest school in each region.

Not true at all. Many also choose stem.

But not the right kind of STEM. They want to take cool AP science classes, not classes to get certified in safe handling of laboratory equipment or becoming a pharmacy tech.

Not that lab and pharmacy techs aren't great careers. I just think it's unreasonable to expect 13 year old 8th graders to choose those career pathways and stick with them through all four years of high school.

It's hilarious that you believe that AP science class are cool ones and not the ones that offer practical skill like safe handling of laboratory equipment or becoming a pharmacy tech. . Also you neglect to understand that kids that go on to work at NIH, become PharmDs, or even MDs can actually use these classes and skills to both help them get into college and pay for college.

Here’s wheaton’s current biomed program:

https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/schools/wheatonhs/academies/Applicationprograms/

MCPS’s biomedical pathway is in this slide deck.

https://go.boarddocs.com/mabe/mcpsmd/Board.nsf/files/DMJHXR4AA9BD/$file/Boundary%20Studies%20Program%20Analysis%20Update%20251016%20PPT%20REV.pdf

This is the state-approved biomedical pathway.

https://www.marylandpublicschools.org/programs/Documents/CTE/standards/HHS_Biomedical_Science-A.pdf


These are the descriptions for AP chem and bio.

https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/courses/ap-chemistry

https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/courses/ap-biology

MCPS trying to replicate good programs. They’re trying to get kids to take certification exams. That’s the whole goal.