Reaction to "Study of Choice and Special Academic Programs: Report of Findings and Recommendations"

[Anonymous]

Key Finding 3: There are significant racial and socioeconomic disparities in the enrollment
and acceptance rates to academically selective programs, which suggest a need to revise the
criteria and process used to select students for these programs to eliminate barriers to
access for highly able students of all backgrounds.
Recommendation 3: .....use of non-cognitive criteria, group-specific norms that
benchmark student performance against school peers with comparable backgrounds,
and/or a process that offers automatic admissions to the programs for students in the
top 5-10% of sending elementary or middle schools in the district.

Any comment on this recommendation?
The public meeting will be held in April 6, 18, and May 5.

[Anonymous]

This has been discussed well in a whole other thread.

[Anonymous]

Can't imagine how many years it would take to define a "group" and their "norms". Increasing programs to the top 5 or 10% of all schools would require many more magnet classrooms programs. Most clusters would probably have their own (which might make them more segregated)

[Anonymous]

How are we determining top 5-10% with the ES/P system of grades? My DD's ES rarely gives ES for academic courses and other schools pass them out like halloween candy

[Anonymous]

Grades don't matter if the focus is non-cognitive skills.

Definition

Non-cognitive skills are any skills that are not cognitive, such as memory, attention, planning, language and thinking skills. Non-cognitive skills include emotional maturity, empathy, interpersonal skills and verbal and non-verbal communication. Non-cognitive skills influence the overall behavior of a person. For example, a nurse who is able to to easily comfort patients has non-cognitive skills.


Cognitive vs. Non-Cognitive

Non-cognitive skills are often not measurable, unlike cognitive skills, which educators can measure objectively with tests. As a result, educators can have a difficult time assessing non-cognitive skills and helping students develop these skills. Those who develop non-cognitive skills are more likely to develop cognitive skills, but not necessarily the other way around, according to Inequality in America.

[Anonymous]

Bad idea. It will force the programs to be dumbed down.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This has been discussed well in a whole other thread.

Multiple whole other threads, in fact. Please do a search, OP.

[Anonymous]

Discuss here: http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/543605.page

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How are we determining top 5-10% with the ES/P system of grades? My DD's ES rarely gives ES for academic courses and other schools pass them out like halloween candy

Strictly by the results of tests given to applicants.. Grades are irrelevant.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Grades don't matter if the focus is non-cognitive skills.

Definition

Non-cognitive skills are any skills that are not cognitive, such as memory, attention, planning, language and thinking skills. Non-cognitive skills include emotional maturity, empathy, interpersonal skills and verbal and non-verbal communication. Non-cognitive skills influence the overall behavior of a person. For example, a nurse who is able to to easily comfort patients has non-cognitive skills.


Cognitive vs. Non-Cognitive

Non-cognitive skills are often not measurable, unlike cognitive skills, which educators can measure objectively with tests. As a result, educators can have a difficult time assessing non-cognitive skills and helping students develop these skills. Those who develop non-cognitive skills are more likely to develop cognitive skills, but not necessarily the other way around, according to Inequality in America.

Then my child would never made it to magnet that is live saver for DC? Child has ADHD and is not orgnazied with obvious attention issues, and 3 year behind in maturity. But this child was taking Algebra in 6th grade in magnet and was straight A student.
I have other child with very high non-cognitive skills who is absolutely not good at technical subjects...
Above approach is complete BS.
Oh, by the way most genius people of last century were always non-organized and had many social issues (probably Asperger or ADHD). They would not dress properly, put different shoes on different feet etc.

[Anonymous]

I don't know what the right answer is but I would venture the idea that often the geniuses of the last century who were not organized and had social issues would not have benefited from a magnet school.

Education and the world have changed over the years. 50 or 100 years ago teachers wrote their own tests designed to separate the kids in their classes down into groups who should get each letter grade.

Today, there is much more bureaucratic work and tests are often written by the school district in order to find out who has mastered a certain level of information. Since mastering this certain level is easy for

someone like your DS, they need a magnet. In the old days, with tests written by their own teacher, the number one and number two students in any class could learn much more than every one else. They

learn more either by doing independent work or just by being able to struggle through the hardest of the homework examples. This allows them to compete to see who got the 93% and not the 90%. The

other kids, who may have only got 50% of the question right, would end up with scaled B grades.


When I write things about scaled grades on here many people really hate the idea that someone who only got a 50% gets an 85% on their report card. What you need to understand is that there are two

ways to scale a test. If you have a district wide test, you usually scale after all the grades are in. This leads to MCPSs crazy attempts to get final exams to fit the grade profile they want. In a single class,

where you know how much the students have learned by grading homework and quizes with many levels of difficulty on each, you can create a scale for a test by having 3 or 4 levels of questions. Everyone should

get the lowest level questions right and get a D on the test. The D students just won't be able to get all the C level questions right easily but might get some and so on. By the time you get to the top two

students, who need crazy hard questions to determine which one learned more, the B level students won't even understand what the A level questions are asking let alone have a chance to get them correct.


The geniuses of yesteryear, who might have been say 1 out of 1000, still has to do quite a bit of work to ALWAYS beat the kid who is just 1 out of 30. They can learn huge amounts as long as the homework, quizes

and tests are set up so that the teacher learns how much all of the kids learned and if the genius tried this week and not so that 24 kids out of 30 have a chance to meet a standard and get an A.

[Anonymous]

Using the non-cognitive skills for admission to HGC is such a bad idea. One reason behind HGC is highly gifted kids are often asynchronous in their development. They are highly capable of doing academic work but not socially mature enough to skip whole grades. Therefore, the typical school environment is difficult for them to navigate. I don't understand why the socially mature but cognitively in range kids need a different school environment.

[Anonymous]

Not this again... They want more Black/Latino kids and fewer Asian/White kids. That's the bottom line.

[Anonymous]

So leave the competitive programs as is and add non-competitive versions. RM has the competitive magnet and Rockville high, BCC and ?? are not competitive. There could be SMACS programs in other schools which are not test based.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: So leave the competitive programs as is and add non-competitive versions. RM has the competitive magnet and Rockville high, BCC and ?? are not competitive. There could be SMACS programs in other schools which are not test based.

+1 This is a good idea. They have something like it already at TP ES. Just create more programs like this in the DCC area. There are also Choice programs for MS that are lottery based. It's only the ES that don't have more options, other than immersion.