If you're in Takoma Park schools...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:More tiresome Takoma Park hype -- and self congratulation -- about how their kids "are thriving in this diverse environment."

Truth is, what little racial interaction there is -- and there's not all that much -- for the most part is all done and dusted by middle school.

Take a walk around Takoma Park Middle School or Blair High School on a typical day, and peer into the classrooms. You'll find one classroom of kids who are predominantly (as in almost 100 percent save one or two) kids of color, and another next door that's nearly all white. And yes, I'm a member of the community, and know whereof I speak.

Just walk along the streets in downtown Takoma, Old Town Takoma -- for that matter, anywhere except the outer fringes of Takoma, and you'll see block after block where no people of color reside. The pattern is duplicated in the schools, where kids of color and kids who are white are educated separately for the most part.

Whether it's sports teams, recreation league activities, housing patterns within Takoma Park, social interaction within the school or after school, it's hard to imagine a more segregated set-up.
Yet, parents in Takoma Park continue to talk as if they're part of some sort of Rainbow Nation. The fact is their kids are educated in classrooms that are very nearly as homogeneous as those in Potomac or Bethesda.

Not that I begrudge them that. I suspect that had there been true diversity -- with people of color living as their next door neighbors and not in Langley Park or the apartment complexes of Maple Avenue -- many would never have been tempted to buy homes in Takoma Park.

My guess is that its the same with the schools: Create true integration of the classroom and see how long it takes for white flight to commence.
I tire of the readiness of folks in Takoma Park to try to have it both ways, giving lip service to the virtues of diversity, even while most -- with the exception of people they hire to watch their kids and clean their homes -- seem to have precious little interaction with people who don't look just like them.

So folks who have chosen to send their kids to private schools or to public ones in McLean -- don't let the TP folks guilt-trip you. They've made very much the same choices about whom their kids will be educated alongside. They've just disguised it in such a way as to be able to hang on to their "diversity" bragging rights.

I don't want to agree with this. I've lived in diverse places where it wasn't true.

But it is in Takoma Park. I didn't realize that until we started living here, sending kids to TPMS.

The kids segregate. And I get that. I grew up in a neighborhood that was much the same. But I started out raising my children in a different place, that wasn't like this, a place where recent immigrants and kids with family summer houses in Maine mixed easily.

I blame the smugness factor. I once thought Takoma Park was too much like Park Slope, but seeing the rest of DC made that seem appealing.

It's not. I've tried to make friends outside of my class, or station, or what have you. It's just "not done" here.

You still couldn't pay me to live in McLean, or Potomoc. I'd rather our family be shunned by crunchy granola types and Somali immigrants than nouveau riche mcmansion people, but TP. is not quite a paradise. It's just the best of a bunch of craptastic options.

Yes, it is. I know, I live here and have friends outside my class or "station." Keep trying. The thing that is the most craptastic is your attitude.

Nope - agree with PP, it is just not done. Even here, people tend to stick with their own. It is just the way it is.

So....I don't exist? I just told you that I have friends across class/culture lines.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As I'm sitting in a locally owned Takoma Park coffee shop during the lunch hour rush I remembered this thread.

In a busy cafe, with about 30 people sitting and eating, I count 5 pairs of inter racial diners, 3 African Americans dining alone, about a 50 50 split between whites and black that have taken food to go and the cafe is staffed by 2 white woman, one black man and one latino man.

So much for segregation.

I love my community.

This is my experience. I see it in Takoma each and every day, and why I'm skeptical as to motives of the fake SS poster.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The Takoma Park basher got me curious, so I did a little rudimentary research. It seems she's completely off target.

Here are Flickr pictures of TPMS. The classrooms look pretty diverse to me. No indication of segregation. http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=takoma%20park%20middle%20school

Oddly, pictures of classrooms from Blair High are harder to find. Lots were from the science magnet program, where there seems to be a lot of diversity, albeit but not much of it AA, FWIW. Someone else can look for one.
http://www.google.com/search?num=10&hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1280&bih=963&q=montgomery+blair+high+school&oq=montgomery+blair&gs_l=img.3.0.0l2j0i24l8.1665.6388.0.8706.20.19.1.0.0.0.357.2659.6j10j2j1.19.0.epsugrpq1high..0.0...1.1.zfPapdm_yTo#hl=en&tbo=d&site=imghp&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=montgomery+blair+high+school+class+&oq=montgomery+blair+high+school+class+&gs_l=img.12...0.0.2.208797.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0..0.0.epsugrpq1high..0.0...1.AZ2-a0C7TF0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&bvm=bv.1355534169,d.dmQ&fp=fb46fd1a353eac20&bpcl=40096503&biw=1280&bih=963
http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=all&q=montgomery+blair+school+&m=text

FWIW, here's a bunch of Blair students with Chris Cooley.


I'm sure that TPMS and Blair have their fair share of racial struggles, just like every other school in America. But from my personal experience, and from what I see in these pictures, the Takoma Park basher is exaggerating severely.

Exactly! I also find hard facts like the images you posted more credible than unverifiable anecdotes posted anonymously by the TKPK hater.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you're in Takoma Park schools, do you wish you could send your kids to another MoCo or NW DC school instead? Why or why not? We are currently in TP and are interested in hearing people's experiences with the schools as our children aren't yet school-aged. Do you have concerns about the quality of education your child is receiving and/or their safety?

Not at all! The schools in Takoma Park are among the best the county has to offer if your children are bright and interested in STEM. This was summed up well a few weeks ago in another thread.

The PP's intent was to look past simple averages that GS uses which serve only to identify which high-schools draw a higher percentage of rich kids., and provide a better, refined analysis that looks at the granular data.

When you isolate for race which is proxy a for socioeconomic status there is not much of a disparity between the performance of kids of the same backgrounds across these schools.

For example, when you compare average SAT scores for MCPS schools for a larger demographic common to all these schools the great schools narrative begins to fall apart and it becomes clear they're not all that different.

Blair 1326
Walter Johnson 1275
Wooton 1262
Churchill 1257
Wheaton 1173
Einstein 1148

The data is for the largest cohort common to the aforementioned schools on page 10.
http://montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/shareda...c_Perf%20Class%20of%202017.pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
More tiresome Takoma Park hype -- and self congratulation -- about how their kids "are thriving in this diverse environment."

Truth is, what little racial interaction there is -- and there's not all that much -- for the most part is all done and dusted by middle school.

Take a walk around Takoma Park Middle School or Blair High School on a typical day, and peer into the classrooms. You'll find one classroom of kids who are predominantly (as in almost 100 percent save one or two) kids of color, and another next door that's nearly all white. And yes, I'm a member of the community, and know whereof I speak.

Just walk along the streets in downtown Takoma, Old Town Takoma -- for that matter, anywhere except the outer fringes of Takoma, and you'll see block after block where no people of color reside. The pattern is duplicated in the schools, where kids of color and kids who are white are educated separately for the most part.

Whether it's sports teams, recreation league activities, housing patterns within Takoma Park, social interaction within the school or after school, it's hard to imagine a more segregated set-up.
Yet, parents in Takoma Park continue to talk as if they're part of some sort of Rainbow Nation. The fact is their kids are educated in classrooms that are very nearly as homogeneous as those in Potomac or Bethesda.

Not that I begrudge them that. I suspect that had there been true diversity -- with people of color living as their next door neighbors and not in Langley Park or the apartment complexes of Maple Avenue -- many would never have been tempted to buy homes in Takoma Park.

My guess is that its the same with the schools: Create true integration of the classroom and see how long it takes for white flight to commence.
I tire of the readiness of folks in Takoma Park to try to have it both ways, giving lip service to the virtues of diversity, even while most -- with the exception of people they hire to watch their kids and clean their homes -- seem to have precious little interaction with people who don't look just like them.

So folks who have chosen to send their kids to private schools or to public ones in McLean -- don't let the TP folks guilt-trip you. They've made very much the same choices about whom their kids will be educated alongside. They've just disguised it in such a way as to be able to hang on to their "diversity" bragging rights.

I don't want to agree with this. I've lived in diverse places where it wasn't true.

But it is in Takoma Park. I didn't realize that until we started living here, sending kids to TPMS.

The kids segregate. And I get that. I grew up in a neighborhood that was much the same. But I started out raising my children in a different place, that wasn't like this, a place where recent immigrants and kids with family summer houses in Maine mixed easily.

I blame the smugness factor. I once thought Takoma Park was too much like Park Slope, but seeing the rest of DC made that seem appealing.

We lived in Silver Spring and had the EXACT same experience. The lack of real integration combined with self congratulatory were diverse comments was startling. While people sound smug, I don't think its smugness but a combination of being unaware and insecurity about being in lower performing school system in an area that is just over the top crazy about education.

There is some of that but it is still about as integrated as the suburbs come. Even if it is street by street, it is better than not at all like Potomac. I will admit that the rush towards “enrichment” has its origin in “peer group”. Me thinks they protest too much

This

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you're in Takoma Park schools, do you wish you could send your kids to another MoCo or NW DC school instead? Why or why not? We are currently in TP and are interested in hearing people's experiences with the schools as our children aren't yet school-aged. Do you have concerns about the quality of education your child is receiving and/or their safety?

Not at all! The schools in Takoma Park are among the best the county has to offer if your children are bright and interested in STEM. This was summed up well a few weeks ago in another thread.

The PP's intent was to look past simple averages that GS uses which serve only to identify which high-schools draw a higher percentage of rich kids., and provide a better, refined analysis that looks at the granular data.

When you isolate for race which is proxy a for socioeconomic status there is not much of a disparity between the performance of kids of the same backgrounds across these schools.

For example, when you compare average SAT scores for MCPS schools for a larger demographic common to all these schools the great schools narrative begins to fall apart and it becomes clear they're not all that different.

Blair 1326
Walter Johnson 1275
Wooton 1262
Churchill 1257
Wheaton 1173
Einstein 1148

The data is for the largest cohort common to the aforementioned schools on page 10.
http://montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/shareda...c_Perf%20Class%20of%202017.pdf

This really clears things up for me. Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you're in Takoma Park schools, do you wish you could send your kids to another MoCo or NW DC school instead? Why or why not? We are currently in TP and are interested in hearing people's experiences with the schools as our children aren't yet school-aged. Do you have concerns about the quality of education your child is receiving and/or their safety?

Not at all! The schools in Takoma Park are among the best the county has to offer if your children are bright and interested in STEM. This was summed up well a few weeks ago in another thread.

The PP's intent was to look past simple averages that GS uses which serve only to identify which high-schools draw a higher percentage of rich kids., and provide a better, refined analysis that looks at the granular data.

When you isolate for race which is proxy a for socioeconomic status there is not much of a disparity between the performance of kids of the same backgrounds across these schools.

For example, when you compare average SAT scores for MCPS schools for a larger demographic common to all these schools the great schools narrative begins to fall apart and it becomes clear they're not all that different.

Blair 1326
Walter Johnson 1275
Wooton 1262
Churchill 1257
Wheaton 1173
Einstein 1148

The data is for the largest cohort common to the aforementioned schools on page 10.
http://montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/shareda...c_Perf%20Class%20of%202017.pdf

This really clears things up for me. Thanks!

Those scores are meaningless. It is only for the white kids and most of those are magnet students shipped in from OOB. If you look at Blair’s overall score it is among the lowest in MoCo. Oh wait minority kids don’t count, sorry I forgot

[Anonymous]

Those scores are meaningless. It is only for the white kids and most of those are magnet students shipped in from OOB. If you look at Blair’s overall score it is among the lowest in MoCo. Oh wait minority kids don’t count, sorry I forgot

This is empirically not true. Someone else can bring the numbers, but the percentage of Blair magnet students who come from "Westside schools" is nowhere near as high as folks on DCUM seem to think. There are a lot of in-bounds kids, some kids from other DCC schools, etc.

[Anonymous]

Those scores also don’t show all the schools above them, even with the magnet skewing the results

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Those scores are meaningless. It is only for the white kids and most of those are magnet students shipped in from OOB. If you look at Blair’s overall score it is among the lowest in MoCo. Oh wait minority kids don’t count, sorry I forgot

This is empirically not true. Someone else can bring the numbers, but the percentage of Blair magnet students who come from "Westside schools" is nowhere near as high as folks on DCUM seem to think. There are a lot of in-bounds kids, some kids from other DCC schools, etc.

Your reading comprehension isn’t up to snuff. OOB just means not native to Blair. There is a much higher concentration of white and Asian kids in the magnet than is represented in the demographics that feed to Blair in-bounds. The white kids trumpeted in that outdated stat represent a contingent of kids that are disproportionately represented by kids specifically brought in to mask test scores and are only a tiny percentage of the schools population.

Say what you will but all of that is fact, the stats also don’t list the many schools above them. So if the sample group is weighted and the nonconforming (higher) results omitted, how are those stats not meaningless? Ask a magnet kid if you don’t understand what any of that means.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you're in Takoma Park schools, do you wish you could send your kids to another MoCo or NW DC school instead? Why or why not? We are currently in TP and are interested in hearing people's experiences with the schools as our children aren't yet school-aged. Do you have concerns about the quality of education your child is receiving and/or their safety?

Not at all! The schools in Takoma Park are among the best the county has to offer if your children are bright and interested in STEM. This was summed up well a few weeks ago in another thread.

The PP's intent was to look past simple averages that GS uses which serve only to identify which high-schools draw a higher percentage of rich kids., and provide a better, refined analysis that looks at the granular data.

When you isolate for race which is proxy a for socioeconomic status there is not much of a disparity between the performance of kids of the same backgrounds across these schools.

For example, when you compare average SAT scores for MCPS schools for a larger demographic common to all these schools the great schools narrative begins to fall apart and it becomes clear they're not all that different.

Blair 1326
Walter Johnson 1275
Wooton 1262
Churchill 1257
Wheaton 1173
Einstein 1148

The data is for the largest cohort common to the aforementioned schools on page 10.
http://montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/shareda...c_Perf%20Class%20of%202017.pdf

This really clears things up for me. Thanks!

Do not lie!

The data presented are false. The link doesnt work. For class 2016, Sat mean scores: Weaton Hs 914/1352; Blair: 1163/1730: Wooton: 1224/1818; Whitman: 1270/1897. You can find the i formation bt googling mcps SAT score . The score are RM/RMW.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Those scores are meaningless. It is only for the white kids and most of those are magnet students shipped in from OOB. If you look at Blair’s overall score it is among the lowest in MoCo. Oh wait minority kids don’t count, sorry I forgot

This is empirically not true. Someone else can bring the numbers, but the percentage of Blair magnet students who come from "Westside schools" is nowhere near as high as folks on DCUM seem to think. There are a lot of in-bounds kids, some kids from other DCC schools, etc.

Your reading comprehension isn’t up to snuff. OOB just means not native to Blair. There is a much higher concentration of white and Asian kids in the magnet than is represented in the demographics that feed to Blair in-bounds. The white kids trumpeted in that outdated stat represent a contingent of kids that are disproportionately represented by kids specifically brought in to mask test scores and are only a tiny percentage of the schools population.

Say what you will but all of that is fact, the stats also don’t list the many schools above them. So if the sample group is weighted and the nonconforming (higher) results omitted, how are those stats not meaningless? Ask a magnet kid if you don’t understand what any of that means.

Everyone needs a hobby, but I will never understand why somebody would choose for their hobby to be, denigrating Blair on the Internet. Wouldn't knitting or gardening or collecting polka 45s from the 1960s be more rewarding?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you're in Takoma Park schools, do you wish you could send your kids to another MoCo or NW DC school instead? Why or why not? We are currently in TP and are interested in hearing people's experiences with the schools as our children aren't yet school-aged. Do you have concerns about the quality of education your child is receiving and/or their safety?

Not at all! The schools in Takoma Park are among the best the county has to offer if your children are bright and interested in STEM. This was summed up well a few weeks ago in another thread.

The PP's intent was to look past simple averages that GS uses which serve only to identify which high-schools draw a higher percentage of rich kids., and provide a better, refined analysis that looks at the granular data.

When you isolate for race which is proxy a for socioeconomic status there is not much of a disparity between the performance of kids of the same backgrounds across these schools.

For example, when you compare average SAT scores for MCPS schools for a larger demographic common to all these schools the great schools narrative begins to fall apart and it becomes clear they're not all that different.

Blair 1326
Walter Johnson 1275
Wooton 1262
Churchill 1257
Wheaton 1173
Einstein 1148

The data is for the largest cohort common to the aforementioned schools on page 10.
http://montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/shareda...c_Perf%20Class%20of%202017.pdf

That's a great analysis, and your scores are correct. However, the original data is at this link:
http://montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/sharedaccountability/reports/2017/1771102HS%20Princ_SAT%20Partic_Perf%20Class%20of%202017.pdf

[Anonymous]

I see Blair 1326 on page 8. Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
the percentage of Blair magnet students who come from "Westside schools" is nowhere near as high as folks on DCUM seem to think. There are a lot of in-bounds kids, some kids from other DCC schools, etc.

Roughly 40% of the 81 OOB magnet kids who took SAT's at Blair belong to the cohort if someone wants to figure it out.