Mathcounts results 2024 MoCo+PG
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Anonymous
No one is saying the sky would fall. People are saying it doesn't make sense to eliminate it, because it would not free up more out of bounds seats. Those 25 kids would be at TPMS no matter what. This is also pretty normal. Potomac ES has a whole immersion program essentially to themselves. Cold Spring ES gets a whole class of AIM. Kids zoned for RM can join the IB program junior year and get an outstanding education. There are slight variations and opportunities depending on the home school. The set-aside for TPMS is not an outlier. |
Anonymous
I do not have a problem with the set aside but people arguing that the program would go to 100 kids if the set asides disappeared tomorrow are being purposely obtuse. The program has a certain capacity right now. Teachers and classes are based off of the 125 number. There is no reason why MCPS could not get rid of the set aside tomorrow. I do see the point about why UMC white kids should benefit so much when seats in this magnet are so coveted and there are so many qualified kids who don't get a spot. My UMC white kid did get in from out of bounds pre-lottery so this change would be of no good for our family, and I'm not bitter about some past issue but there is a certain logic to getting rid of them. |
Anonymous
Yep, some parents with serious Blair envy but if they actually valued education, they'd have bought in TKPK to begin with. |
Anonymous
What your logic is missing is that teacher allocations and school capacity are based on the total school population. While there are specific magnet courses, if you look at the teacher allocations from the school board they are done by a formula that’s based on the # of students attending the school, not on the number of inbounds students vs out of bounds students. Similarly, school capacity is figured the same way- it does not separate inbounds vs out of bounds. So while you may have a statistically better chance of being chosen for the program from in bounds, removing the “set aside” would not increase the number of available slots. It would however, increase the competition for these slots because the inbounds kids would be included. |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
Total non sequitur, there. If the allocations are made based on total school population, and you shifted 15 of the magnet seats from TMPS in-bounds set-aside lottery to the out-of-bounds lottery, the 15 kids who didn't get an offer from in-bounds would go to TPMS anyway, sure, but the total school population would simply go up by 15, with 15 more coming from out-of-bounds. Which would increase the teacher allocation. The recent building expansion has meant that TPMS has capacity. More, it's likely, than many of the schools from which those extra 15 would be coming. Win-win. (Well, win-win for equity.) |
Anonymous
It is an outlier. So is Potomac, with its much larger set-aside as a proportion of the capacity of the Mandarin Immersion program hosted there. So is Stonegate, with its in-bounds-only CES (a couple of others in that situation, too). These are the exceptions. There are 130-something elementaries, 40 or so middles and nearly 30 high schools. The vast majority of these schools don't have overbooked-demand magnets, much less set-asides for them. Is there a set-aside for Rock Creek Forest's Full Spanish Immersion program? I don't think so. Cold Spring (and its MS/HS pyramid) is an example of inequity for a similar, but somewhat separate reason, as it isn't a magnet that is supposed to be drawing from a whole portion of the county. CSES administration genuflects to aggressive family push enabled by outside enrichment (not saying that enrichment is wrong, just that that's how they get scores to push a justification). The problem is not so much that, as it is that MCPS hides this fact and doesn't do what it should, given it is enabling this at CSES, to ensure equivalent identification/access for anyone outside of CSES demonstrating such capability. Back to TPMS and its set-aside. They got rid of or reduced some of the other set-asides (Eastern magnet or somewhere else?), didn't they? No reason they couldn't do so for TPMS. It would free up those spots to equilibrate access across the entire magnet catchment because they'd be keeping the program at 125. Not getting rid of 25 seats, just getting rid of 25 set-aside admissions spaces (or reducing the set-aside so that the proportion of set-aside admissions slots to total admission slots was the same as the proportion of the TPMS catchment to the whole magnet catchment). |
Anonymous
No, it would not free up spots. The program is 100 students. The 25 additional are pulled from students already attending as a way to expand a limited program without actually expanding it. It has been explained many times on thus board. Eliminating the set aside would mean that inboundary kids will compete for those 100 spots. The TPMS catchment cohort is very competitive. I know several incredibly smart kids who did not get in. (I taught them in ES). Trying to get rid of the set aside would just reduce seats overall and would hurt everyone. |
Anonymous
So by your logic, the 25 TPMS kids who are lotteried in are lotteried in to...basic TPMS?!? Not any specialized Math/Science/CS classes in a program built for such? Laughable. Is there a legal requirement in Maryland to keep any out-of-boundary population shift to 100 maximum per class year of which we are all unaware? That would bind MCPS such that it could not make the program 125? I'd be happy to revisit the thought if you can point me to such. (If it's an MCPS policy, that takes the same wave of the BOE's hand to change as would the shift from local set-aside seats to generally available seats.) |
Anonymous
The board has only agreed to expand TPMS by 100 kids per grade (300 total) out of bounds for the magnet. The new building was constructed to meet the needs of the local population. No there isn’t space for an extra 75 out of bounds kids and no there is no consideration in expanding the magnet. That’s the situation and there is zero chance it will change no matter how many times you post here that it’s unfair! |
Anonymous
You keep repeating yourself and this is most absurd argument I've heard about those UMC prepped Takoma kids. |
Anonymous
Congrats to these kids! |
Anonymous
Look at the capacities and utilizations in the most recent CIP: https://gis.mcpsmd.org/cipmasterpdfs/CIP25_AppendixE.pdf There's space for more than twice that many extra students at TPMS. Through 2029-30. If none of them qualified/lotteried in from the TPMS local catchment when the playing field was leveled. As suggested by the prior post, the BOE could just as easily say 150 as 100 per grade, if they wanted to and the space existed, in the same breath that they might say no to disproportionate in-catchment set-asides. They also could create additional magnets to meet the overall need, but that still doesn't mean they should be favoring one locality over another by keeping those disproportionate set-asides in the meantime. "Inequitable" -- the word is "inequitable". "Unfair" is what you use when you try to gaslight someone as whiney, trying to set them up for a, "Look, I'm sorry, but sometimes life's unfair!" rhetorically bankrupt rejoinder used by so many who seek to preserve an unjust and redressable status quo. |
Anonymous
I know. They're argument makes no sense. If anything they should increase the set-aside. |
Anonymous
You forgot the /sarcasm to cap your trollish and unsupported comment. |