I feel like MCPS is turning my DC into a robot...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Teachers are becoming robots too... So sad.

Please understand that this is not our choice. I'm a teacher and a single parent. I cannot afford to leave my job for another profession and neither can most of my colleagues. Like many, we just smile and nod much of the time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sort of off topic, but our school does not share MAP-P results. In fact it seems the teachers do not want to say. Not sure what it takes to get them but I know you could submit some sort of formal requests.

So the person that does not have test results is not a bad parent.

I agree - my child's teachers never gave me the MAP-P results at the parent-teacher conferences for K-2. But now, with my child in third grade, the teacher sent home the MAP-R and MAP-M results.

To get your child's MAP-P results, send an e-mail to your child's teacher asking for them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sort of off topic, but our school does not share MAP-P results. In fact it seems the teachers do not want to say. Not sure what it takes to get them but I know you could submit some sort of formal requests.

So the person that does not have test results is not a bad parent.

I agree - my child's teachers never gave me the MAP-P results at the parent-teacher conferences for K-2. But now, with my child in third grade, the teacher sent home the MAP-R and MAP-M results.

To get your child's MAP-P results, send an e-mail to your child's teacher asking for them.

We asked about the MAP-P scores at the parent-teacher conference (1st grade). The teacher didn't have them readily available but said she would email them to us. We got the email within a week with the score and a brief breakdown of what it meant. You should only have to ask.

[Anonymous]

I am the PP at 7:20, and I should clarify that I didn't ask for my child's MAP-P results at the parent-teacher conferences for K-2. If I had asked, I'm sure the teacher would have provided them. My point was just that the teacher didn't volunteer anything about the MAP-P testing, so if my child hadn't told me, I wouldn't have known that there was such a thing.

[Anonymous]

I have asked for the MAP-P results. Teachers made it seem like they didn't have them, which I know not to be true since my child told me the teacher entered all the scores into either a computer or some sort of log. Very weird. I did not get results until grade 3 for MAP-M/R.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have asked for the MAP-P results. Teachers made it seem like they didn't have them, which I know not to be true since my child told me the teacher entered all the scores into either a computer or some sort of log. Very weird. I did not get results until grade 3 for MAP-M/R.

I also find they are quite reluctuant to give out the MAP-P results and for the one result I did receive they sent a huge disclaimer with it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am the PP at 7:20, and I should clarify that I didn't ask for my child's MAP-P results at the parent-teacher conferences for K-2. If I had asked, I'm sure the teacher would have provided them. My point was just that the teacher didn't volunteer anything about the MAP-P testing, so if my child hadn't told me, I wouldn't have known that there was such a thing.

I didn't know about these tests until DD was in first grade and I read about it on DCUM. The school told us NOTHING.

[Anonymous]

I don't think anyone was trying to say you're a bad parent if you don't have the results. I think someone was saying there's something really off if you have no clue that there has been any standardized testing at all in K which is what one PP said.

I'm very involved but our teacher was reluctant to share the results except to say everything is fine (a bit above the mean) and I was happy with that and didn't press further.

Anonymous wrote:Sort of off topic, but our school does not share MAP-P results. In fact it seems the teachers do not want to say. Not sure what it takes to get them but I know you could submit some sort of formal requests.

So the person that does not have test results is not a bad parent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teachers are becoming robots too... So sad.

Please understand that this is not our choice. I'm a teacher and a single parent. I cannot afford to leave my job for another profession and neither can most of my colleagues. Like many, we just smile and nod much of the time.

Not the PP, but I completely understand. I think teachers have it so tough. I feel like MCPS has taken all the fun and joy out of your jobs!

I volunteer a ton in my ES kids' classrooms and have gotten to know some fantastic teachers. They are smart, creative and wonderful with the kids. But, they're limited by the school system, IMO!

[Anonymous]

Ken Robinson - How Schools Kill Creativity. Watch the TED talk and then enroll dc Ina different school.

[Anonymous]

http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity?language=en

Forgot the link.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Four months isn't too short to make an assessment of her child's experience. It would be foolish to just keep waiting around for some miraculous change that isn't going to happen. If private is an option for the OP then she should look into it for next year. Now is the time when private schools start doing open houses and admissions season will start soon for next year.

OP- many people in MCPS can't swing the cost of private. There is a lot of bitterness and denial. People want to believe that they scored a great deal on free education or don't want to believe that they wasted money moving to the burbs for a mediocre school system. There are also a lot of people who just don't care and this is fine too. MCPS isn't horrible but it doesn't provide a great learning environment. The goals and incentives are just very different for MCPS employees than they are at a private school. You are not going to change MCPS. You won't be able to influence anything and you are basically at their whims because in the end they aren't accountable to the students or the parents.

You can search through all the threads but you'll see a trend in problems with the curriculum, very large class sizes with a wide range of abilities, no acceleration, overwhelmed teachers who don't have time to grade or provide meaningful feedback, lots of seat work and worksheets, limited access to the school, no textbooks and very little substantive material on what your child is doing, no real grading until middle school, bad math program, inconsistent reading program, and a crap shoot on whether you get a good, mediocre or terrible teacher. If you believe, like some do, that your child can learn independently despite all this, then MCPS is a better deal. If you believe, like many others do, that your child needs a more professional learning environment focused on actual learning then go private.

Wow PP. Do you have actual experience with MCPS? Am also unsure of what you mean by many in MCPS cannot swing the cost of private and thus have to settle for an inferior education for their children. Is your assessment of MCPS based solely on your reading from DCUM threads or on some actual data to substantiate your assessment?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You sound like a really poor parent. How can you not know that they have already done their fall round of standardized testing and are now starting with the winter round?
It's required in all MCPS kindergarteners.

Anonymous wrote:I have a kindergartener in MCPS and they have not gotten any report cards yet (they only get 2/year unlike older kids.) Nor have they done any standardized testing. I'm sure OP is volunteering precisely for the purposes of ascertaining where her daughter stands in the fierce academic pecking order of K, but it's a pointless effort. Anyone who has older kids knows how much changes in these first few years of schooling, and many of the kids who may seem to be "at the bottom of the class" (!) in K wind up in a very different place by grades 3 or 4, much less when it matters in HS.

To the point of her post - yes, K spends a lot of time on socialization and teaching kids the rules of the institution. You may not like it OP, but if you were teaching a classroom of 5/6yos - whether it's 18 or 28 of them - it's essential that they learn to operate within the classroom setting, which is quite different than a home setting and most private preschools.

So OP, stop worrying about where your child ranks - you are the one who is turning her into a robot, not the school system.

Think what you want of me, I don't really care. In my (2 PhD parent) household, we don't equate obsession with standardized tests for 5yos with good parenting. If you have different priorities, so be it. To each their own. My approach has done just fine for my high-achieving older children.