Should MCPS be sued too?
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Anonymous
Yes, they did. It was explained on their website. They said it was a lottery. If you aren't sure what that means, try looking it up. |
Anonymous
But is it weighted or normalized in any way, and if so, how? |
Anonymous
They said it was a lottery not a weighted lottery. A lottery is when selection is made by randomly drawing winners from a pool. |
Anonymous
CES https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PGURwFaYuZpsVrxW0RbYYWlv49ZdrS960uNobJw3teA/preview What are locally normed scores? Gifted and talented experts recommend the use of local norms of assessment scores as an equitable approach to ensure equity and access in identification of students for program access. Additionally, the current draft of Gifted and Talented Definitions from the Maryland State Department of Education includes the use of local norms as part of the gifted and talented identification process. MCPS locally normed scores are designed to examine test takers in relation to one another within MCPS. As part of the CES identification process, scores obtained on the MAP R assessment will be locally normed. The socioeconomic status of elementary schools will be used to establish local norms for the MAP R. In establishing local norms, students in schools with similar FARMS rates were grouped together for comparison. (added 2/22/22) They've never really explained how the locally normed scores are done. MSMC https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/schools/msmagnet/about/faq.aspx#q8 No test is required for admission to MSMC schools. What criteria will be used for selecting students who live outside the Consortium? Montgomery County Public Schools considers a variety of factors when assigning students to MSMC schools. These factors include the number of available seats, rank order of choices, sibling preference, socioeconomic status, and gender. |
Anonymous
MCPS intentionally keeps the selection process confusing and the “lottery” selection is done behind closed doors so they can skew the selection to whatever preconceived makeup they want the students to have. |
Anonymous
You are deliberately comparing apples to bananas here in the hopes of whipping up anger. The CES lottery is pretty simple. Admission to the lottery is based on test scores, which are locally normed. After that, it's a blind lottery. Because the CES programs are regional, local norming doesn't have that much of an impact unless your child is at a school that is an outlier for the CES zone. So, a kid at Twinbrook might get into the lottery with a slightly lower MAP-R score than other kids in-bounds for Barnsley but that's the extent of it. The MSMC programs are not criteria-based and are open first to all kids in-bounds for an MSMC school, and then to kids outside that zone based on seats available. They are also whole-school magnets. So....yes, they consider factors like FARMS and gender in order to keep the overall school balanced. |
Anonymous
Scores are only used to determine admission to a lottery pool and well a lottery is just a lottery not some other thing you're fabricating to fit your conspiracy theory. |
Anonymous
Yes, some people are paid to stir up angst about these things by sewing misinformation. The whole process is very simple and nothing to get worked up over. |
Anonymous
| Although the lottery is fair in some ways, it's also not ideal. The problem is that the kids who need these programs the most will more often than not get selected, which kind of defeats the purpose. I hope they develop something better once this pilot is over. Although I'm not crazy about high-stakes testing, either, I felt the previous system was decent and an improvement over the older one that was easy to game. |
Anonymous
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The inequalities in MCPS extend way beyond the magnet programs, however, creating a lottery system in which no one sees the names being selected is a great place to start.
Next, look at the physical resources between schools. Some schools have state of the art athletic facilities while others are making due with facilities over 50 years old. Look also at the differences between female sports such a softball and male sports such as baseball and you can see how MCPS doesn’t treat genders equally. Then look at the lack of opportunities and lack of staffing for Special Education. Students with disabilities have fallen behind for three school years without extra resources to help them recover. |
Anonymous
Or even worse the schools that are able to raise big $$$ vs the poor ones whose bands wear paper bags... |
Anonymous
+1000 |
Anonymous
Why not make a visible lottery process. MCPS has been non-transparent and has an agenda to stack the selection for the percentages that they wish to be represented. If everything is on the up and up, have the lottery selection be a visible process. |
Anonymous
OMG. There is no process visible enough to pacify some people. What? You want them to draw numbers on live television like the Vietnam draft? They have explained the process. Weighted scores to get into the lottery, and then a lottery for each CES program after that. It's blind luck. You may not like the process, but I trust you can understand it if you try |
Anonymous
| I am an upper elementary teacher do the lottery impacts me in a different way than parents. My issue is that CES was developed as a place for kids who didn’t have a peer group at their home schools, but they also helped teachers by taking those outliers out of our classes. With the lottery system, it is not pulling those outliers. Instead, it is just pulling a few random higher students. We are still needing to meet the needs of any outliers who are not chosen AND those outliers still do not have a peer group. At this point, I don’t even understand the purpose of the program. |