Is MCPS positioning to shut down the GT/magnet programs?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think MCPS sees the pull integration as necessary anymore. By definition that is a program designed to attract and support white/asian students into the magnets which at least on the surface seems to be the opposite of trying to equal things out. The schools with magnets don't need to them to survive. Poolesville, Blair and maybe RM are already over capacity -neither school would shut down if the magnets ended. It makes no sense to spend $$$ busing kids in from other areas to schools that are already overcrowded.

I predict that this may be the last year for the magnet program. MCPS needs money both for a curriculum replacement and to expand the extended school year program. The writing is on the wall that the money for this is going to come from shutting down the gifted/magnet programs across the county and having the new curriculum offer some sort of gifted level in the home schools.

Poolesville will survive, Blair will survive. Richard Montgomery will survive.

That is possible, but why do you think MCPS did the universal screening for the center and magnet programs? Wouldn't it have been easier to phase out a program that only 900 families new about? Any idea if they are doing universal testing for HS magnets?

Schools in the western half of the county are completely segregated I would imagine otherwise.

I agree - pull integration is here until the county's schools are less segregated. Decades of policies like red-lining or opting to confine section 8 housing to specific areas has led to this situation, and this is one of the few things they do to help offset the mistakes of the past.

The enriched classes provide a magnetlike option for many students who aren't outliers in their home school but are part of a high-achieving cohort. This doesn't honestly cost anything and is something the county should've been doing all along.

Magnets offer an experience unavailable elsewhere in the county and are for students who are outliers who don't have a peer group in their home school. It would not be fair to keep students of this caliber in their home schools.

This seems pretty reasonable to me, and as one W parent put it, if you don't like your school, you're free to move.

Is this what happened though? How did they identify the true outliers? I seem to remember many posters whose kids were in the 99th percentile across the board who did not get in This primarily impacted kids zoned for the most high achieving middle school cluster such as Frost, Hoover, Silver Spring international, Pyle and Sligo which saw huge drops in the numbers of students accepted especially from the CESs linked to these top clusters MCPS needs to reconsider their peer cohort policy.
If they truly selected the outliers they should disclose the median test scores of accepted students from each middle school cluster to prove their point.

[Anonymous]

It all depends on the outreach attempts play out. If they see no changes or only minor changes, MCPS will eventually shut it down. It is not going to spend money to provide special education to mostly middle class Asian and white kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think MCPS sees the pull integration as necessary anymore. By definition that is a program designed to attract and support white/asian students into the magnets which at least on the surface seems to be the opposite of trying to equal things out. The schools with magnets don't need to them to survive. Poolesville, Blair and maybe RM are already over capacity -neither school would shut down if the magnets ended. It makes no sense to spend $$$ busing kids in from other areas to schools that are already overcrowded.

I predict that this may be the last year for the magnet program. MCPS needs money both for a curriculum replacement and to expand the extended school year program. The writing is on the wall that the money for this is going to come from shutting down the gifted/magnet programs across the county and having the new curriculum offer some sort of gifted level in the home schools.

Poolesville will survive, Blair will survive. Richard Montgomery will survive.

That is possible, but why do you think MCPS did the universal screening for the center and magnet programs? Wouldn't it have been easier to phase out a program that only 900 families new about? Any idea if they are doing universal testing for HS magnets?

Schools in the western half of the county are completely segregated I would imagine otherwise.

I agree - pull integration is here until the county's schools are less segregated. Decades of policies like red-lining or opting to confine section 8 housing to specific areas has led to this situation, and this is one of the few things they do to help offset the mistakes of the past.

The enriched classes provide a magnetlike option for many students who aren't outliers in their home school but are part of a high-achieving cohort. This doesn't honestly cost anything and is something the county should've been doing all along.

Magnets offer an experience unavailable elsewhere in the county and are for students who are outliers who don't have a peer group in their home school. It would not be fair to keep students of this caliber in their home schools.

This seems pretty reasonable to me, and as one W parent put it, if you don't like your school, you're free to move.

Is this what happened though? How did they identify the true outliers? I seem to remember many posters whose kids were in the 99th percentile across the board who did not get in This primarily impacted kids zoned for the most high achieving middle school cluster such as Frost, Hoover, Silver Spring international, Pyle and Sligo which saw huge drops in the numbers of students accepted especially from the CESs linked to these top clusters MCPS needs to reconsider their peer cohort policy.
If they truly selected the outliers they should disclose the median test scores of accepted students from each middle school cluster to prove their point.

It stands to reason a disproportionate number of students at schools like Pyle applied in years past but with universal screening, admission is more competitive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It all depends on the outreach attempts play out. If they see no changes or only minor changes, MCPS will eventually shut it down. It is not going to spend money to provide special education to mostly middle class Asian and white kids.

Hyperbole much?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It all depends on the outreach attempts play out. If they see no changes or only minor changes, MCPS will eventually shut it down. It is not going to spend money to provide special education to mostly middle class Asian and white kids.

Hyperbole much?

No. Do you?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think MCPS sees the pull integration as necessary anymore. By definition that is a program designed to attract and support white/asian students into the magnets which at least on the surface seems to be the opposite of trying to equal things out. The schools with magnets don't need to them to survive. Poolesville, Blair and maybe RM are already over capacity -neither school would shut down if the magnets ended. It makes no sense to spend $$$ busing kids in from other areas to schools that are already overcrowded.

I predict that this may be the last year for the magnet program. MCPS needs money both for a curriculum replacement and to expand the extended school year program. The writing is on the wall that the money for this is going to come from shutting down the gifted/magnet programs across the county and having the new curriculum offer some sort of gifted level in the home schools.

Poolesville will survive, Blair will survive. Richard Montgomery will survive.

That is possible, but why do you think MCPS did the universal screening for the center and magnet programs? Wouldn't it have been easier to phase out a program that only 900 families new about? Any idea if they are doing universal testing for HS magnets?

Schools in the western half of the county are completely segregated I would imagine otherwise.

I agree - pull integration is here until the county's schools are less segregated. Decades of policies like red-lining or opting to confine section 8 housing to specific areas has led to this situation, and this is one of the few things they do to help offset the mistakes of the past.

The enriched classes provide a magnetlike option for many students who aren't outliers in their home school but are part of a high-achieving cohort. This doesn't honestly cost anything and is something the county should've been doing all along.

Magnets offer an experience unavailable elsewhere in the county and are for students who are outliers who don't have a peer group in their home school. It would not be fair to keep students of this caliber in their home schools.

This seems pretty reasonable to me, and as one W parent put it, if you don't like your school, you're free to move.

Is this what happened though? How did they identify the true outliers? I seem to remember many posters whose kids were in the 99th percentile across the board who did not get in This primarily impacted kids zoned for the most high achieving middle school cluster such as Frost, Hoover, Silver Spring international, Pyle and Sligo which saw huge drops in the numbers of students accepted especially from the CESs linked to these top clusters MCPS needs to reconsider their peer cohort policy.
If they truly selected the outliers they should disclose the median test scores of accepted students from each middle school cluster to prove their point.

It stands to reason a disproportionate number of students at schools like Pyle applied in years past but with universal screening, admission is more competitive.

If true MCPS should release the median scores of accepted students by middle school cluster.
The data they released showing how many qualified students they identified in each middle school cluster seems to indicate that there were around 3 times as many qualified candidates in the top 5 clusters (Hoover, SSIMs, Frost, Pyle, Sligo) compared to the five lowest performing middle school clusters
I thought universal screening was a brilliant idea but MCPS should have then let the chips fall as they may instead of using peer cohort as a way of trying to diminish the role of objective criteria in order to change the make up of the programs
I wish I could be less cynical but I have seen too many instances in recent years where MCPS has tried to close the achievement gap (a noble and worthwhile goal) by changing the way achievement is measured (the Algebra scandal where scores were increased to increase pass rates and the decision to do away with high school finals are just a couple of recent examples)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think MCPS sees the pull integration as necessary anymore. By definition that is a program designed to attract and support white/asian students into the magnets which at least on the surface seems to be the opposite of trying to equal things out. The schools with magnets don't need to them to survive. Poolesville, Blair and maybe RM are already over capacity -neither school would shut down if the magnets ended. It makes no sense to spend $$$ busing kids in from other areas to schools that are already overcrowded.

I predict that this may be the last year for the magnet program. MCPS needs money both for a curriculum replacement and to expand the extended school year program. The writing is on the wall that the money for this is going to come from shutting down the gifted/magnet programs across the county and having the new curriculum offer some sort of gifted level in the home schools.

Poolesville will survive, Blair will survive. Richard Montgomery will survive.

That is possible, but why do you think MCPS did the universal screening for the center and magnet programs? Wouldn't it have been easier to phase out a program that only 900 families new about? Any idea if they are doing universal testing for HS magnets?

Schools in the western half of the county are completely segregated I would imagine otherwise.

I agree - pull integration is here until the county's schools are less segregated. Decades of policies like red-lining or opting to confine section 8 housing to specific areas has led to this situation, and this is one of the few things they do to help offset the mistakes of the past.

The enriched classes provide a magnetlike option for many students who aren't outliers in their home school but are part of a high-achieving cohort. This doesn't honestly cost anything and is something the county should've been doing all along.

Magnets offer an experience unavailable elsewhere in the county and are for students who are outliers who don't have a peer group in their home school. It would not be fair to keep students of this caliber in their home schools.

This seems pretty reasonable to me, and as one W parent put it, if you don't like your school, you're free to move.

Is this what happened though? How did they identify the true outliers? I seem to remember many posters whose kids were in the 99th percentile across the board who did not get in This primarily impacted kids zoned for the most high achieving middle school cluster such as Frost, Hoover, Silver Spring international, Pyle and Sligo which saw huge drops in the numbers of students accepted especially from the CESs linked to these top clusters MCPS needs to reconsider their peer cohort policy.
If they truly selected the outliers they should disclose the median test scores of accepted students from each middle school cluster to prove their point.

It stands to reason a disproportionate number of students at schools like Pyle applied in years past but with universal screening, admission is more competitive.

If true MCPS should release the median scores of accepted students by middle school cluster.
The data they released showing how many qualified students they identified in each middle school cluster seems to indicate that there were around 3 times as many qualified candidates in the top 5 clusters (Hoover, SSIMs, Frost, Pyle, Sligo) compared to the five lowest performing middle school clusters
I thought universal screening was a brilliant idea but MCPS should have then let the chips fall as they may instead of using peer cohort as a way of trying to diminish the role of objective criteria in order to change the make up of the programs
I wish I could be less cynical but I have seen too many instances in recent years where MCPS has tried to close the achievement gap (a noble and worthwhile goal) by changing the way achievement is measured (the Algebra scandal where scores were increased to increase pass rates and the decision to do away with high school finals are just a couple of recent examples)

Why stop at the median test scores?

How about they post responses from the free response questions which were also part of the application process by cluster?

Going by DCUM, I would be curious to know how classist and asinine some of the responses are...

[Anonymous]

I'm glad that MCPS is revamping the GT/magnet programs. My kids are not magnet age yet, but I was shocked that the previous selection process had only kids who were nominated by their parents get screened for the program, which is the ultimate in regressive education policy. I'm glad they're screening a much larger pool. I'd be fine if they shut down the programs and did more enrichment at the home schools. Less time on buses, and it will cost less, so the schools can probably bring more kids up to the "enriched level."

[Anonymous]

Median scores for one of several criteria wouldn’t be helpful. This would only Telll us things we already know like which schools have the highest concentration of wealth or least poverty. It wouldn’t give any insight into outliers or the existence of a strong peer cohort.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think adding some focus to the top 25% to the curriculum at all schools is a good thing..but the top 3-5% will lose out if the centers disappear.

That’s BS. I scored 99th percentile in every test I took as a kid. I did enriched programs at my home school and was perfectly fine. I think you really don’t know that many kids in those percentiles. The only kids who truly need something completely removed from all other groups of kids are the ones with IQs in the 160s and above. By definition, those are few and far between.

+1. And even for the kids with IQ scores in the 160s, unless you are trying to Dougie Howser them and send them to Harvard at age 11, they are better off working in their social skills in a mainstreamed K-8. Those kids will be fine academically but do need a lot of social skills scaffolding. The trick is to give them energy ugh challenge that they don’t check out altogether. A good enriched program can do that. Even giving more teachers GT training would help. My kid’s teacher (at his regular home school) had a GT masters and the difference in his approach was notable. It made all the difference for that year.

WTH are you talking about?

None of what you assert is supported by research.

No, i don't have research to support it, but I'd actually love to see cites to contrary research, or research either way, really. I was speaking as someone who spent 6 years in GT magnet programs, went to top college/grad school with a lot of high IQ kids, and have high IQ kids in magnet program in MCPS. (I did enrichment in-school until 6th grade, then bus-ed to magnets.) At the K-8 level, a smart kid can self-enrich a lot, especially if they have a teacher that is trained to recognize and guide them.
PS, not sure why my iphone auto-corrected "enough" to "energy ugh".

You are the one who posted this crazy stuff. You do the research and provide cites.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Median scores for one of several criteria wouldn’t be helpful. This would only Telll us things we already know like which schools have the highest concentration of wealth or least poverty. It wouldn’t give any insight into outliers or the existence of a strong peer cohort.

So how did MCPS gain this "insight" that enabled them to identify the outliers when they screened so many kids. They have shared test scores of accepted students for past years

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It all depends on the outreach attempts play out. If they see no changes or only minor changes, MCPS will eventually shut it down. It is not going to spend money to provide special education to mostly middle class Asian and white kids.

Hyperbole much?

No. Do you?

I guess I’m just waiting for any supporting evidence for your large leaps in logic. Without that, what you’re saying is hyperbole.

[Anonymous]

GT/magnet programs are only about 1% of kids in MCPS, right? Why are their parents writing 99% of the posts on this in the Maryland schools forum?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Median scores for one of several criteria wouldn’t be helpful. This would only Telll us things we already know like which schools have the highest concentration of wealth or least poverty. It wouldn’t give any insight into outliers or the existence of a strong peer cohort.

So how did MCPS gain this "insight" that enabled them to identify the outliers when they screened so many kids. They have shared test scores of accepted students for past years

Yes they have, which leads anybody with an ounce of common sense to believe that they're not doing it now because they don't like what the data will show.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Why stop at the median test scores?

How about they post responses from the free response questions which were also part of the application process by cluster?

Going by DCUM, I would be curious to know how classist and asinine some of the responses are...

Right. Obviously the only thing to do is for MCPS to release each individual application, as well as the decision on it and the justification for the decision. Because transparency! Or, um, something.

But seriously, the PPs are peddling a conspiracy theory. Nothing MCPS can do or say will disprove it. Everything will just be further proof of the conspiracy theory. That's how conspiracy theories work.