Brookings Institution article about the new MCPS middle school magnet selection process

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it possible that mcps is finally moving towards a magnet program for the best and brightest per test scores rather than skewing heavily towards privileged kids with parents equipped to advocate?

And, is there anything wrong with that?

Is this failed sarcasm? Did you actually read the *****g article?

You must be one of the "parents equipped to advocate."

Aren't we all... My point is the article makes it clear that lots of kids with high test scores at certain schools are no longer getting in per the data points, exactly opposite of what the poster said.

MCPS's aim appears to be to water down the magnet programs by keeping lots of high score kids in their base schools and bringing a few enrichment classes to them. Which is essentially the AAP program in FCPS... About the only good to this is to reduce long bus rides to those who don't get in, but that's a small expense if the overall quality suffers (both in the magnets and the enrichment classes they are adding to schools).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it possible that mcps is finally moving towards a magnet program for the best and brightest per test scores rather than skewing heavily towards privileged kids with parents equipped to advocate?

And, is there anything wrong with that?

Is this failed sarcasm? Did you actually read the *****g article?

You must be one of the "parents equipped to advocate."

Anyone who has been following this knows the county moved to universal merit-based selection and away from the older system where students were nominated by their parents. Some people don't like this because admissions are more competitive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it possible that mcps is finally moving towards a magnet program for the best and brightest per test scores rather than skewing heavily towards privileged kids with parents equipped to advocate?

And, is there anything wrong with that?

Is this failed sarcasm? Did you actually read the *****g article?

You must be one of the "parents equipped to advocate."

Aren't we all... My point is the article makes it clear that lots of kids with high test scores at certain schools are no longer getting in per the data points, exactly opposite of what the poster said.

MCPS's aim appears to be to water down the magnet programs by keeping lots of high score kids in their base schools and bringing a few enrichment classes to them. Which is essentially the AAP program in FCPS... About the only good to this is to reduce long bus rides to those who don't get in, but that's a small expense if the overall quality suffers (both in the magnets and the enrichment classes they are adding to schools).

But that's a big deal to a lot of people, especially for younger aged kids. Why bus them around when you can get 80% of the way at the home school? Perhaps the education won't be quite as stellar, but 1.5 hours per day in commute time is nothing to dismiss lightly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it possible that mcps is finally moving towards a magnet program for the best and brightest per test scores rather than skewing heavily towards privileged kids with parents equipped to advocate?

And, is there anything wrong with that?

Is this failed sarcasm? Did you actually read the *****g article?

You must be one of the "parents equipped to advocate."

Anyone who has been following this knows the county moved to universal merit-based selection and away from the older system where students were nominated by their parents. Some people don't like this because admissions are more competitive.

OMG, will you stop with this?! MCPS will not release any admissions data because high metrics (the so-called 99%ers) were not the chief criteria. "Peer cohort" was used to weed out many top-achieving W-feeder school students to keep them in their home schools with two token "enriched" courses. This was done in order to admit more students from underachieving schools, as a proxy for race (which did not work as well as MCPS had hoped). Very few of even the self-reported scores on DCUM indicated top metrics for admitted students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it possible that mcps is finally moving towards a magnet program for the best and brightest per test scores rather than skewing heavily towards privileged kids with parents equipped to advocate?

And, is there anything wrong with that?

Is this failed sarcasm? Did you actually read the *****g article?

You must be one of the "parents equipped to advocate."

Anyone who has been following this knows the county moved to universal merit-based selection and away from the older system where students were nominated by their parents. Some people don't like this because admissions are more competitive.

they also changed admissions criteria based on "cohort". That's the part parents are not happy with, not the universal screening. Show me one post where the parent stated that they are against universal screening.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it possible that mcps is finally moving towards a magnet program for the best and brightest per test scores rather than skewing heavily towards privileged kids with parents equipped to advocate?

And, is there anything wrong with that?

Is this failed sarcasm? Did you actually read the *****g article?

You must be one of the "parents equipped to advocate."

Anyone who has been following this knows the county moved to universal merit-based selection and away from the older system where students were nominated by their parents. Some people don't like this because admissions are more competitive.

they also changed admissions criteria based on "cohort". That's the part parents are not happy with, not the universal screening. Show me one post where the parent stated that they are against universal screening.

+1 Pretty sure the PP did not read the article!

[Anonymous]

But that's a big deal to a lot of people, especially for younger aged kids. Why bus them around when you can get 80% of the way at the home school? Perhaps the education won't be quite as stellar, but 1.5 hours per day in commute time is nothing to dismiss lightly.

You could easily still provide this AND let the magnet programs really be the highest performers. Many parents would opt to stay in their home schools because only the truly dedicated want to get a middle schooler to a bus stop before 6:30 am. Let the students who scored the highest and are willing to spend 2-3 hours a day on a bus go there. Put the "enriched classes" in every school and offer as many sections as there are students who meet that bar. Its not rocket science to be fair. It only gets complicated when your intentions are to be unfair and avoid getting caught.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it possible that mcps is finally moving towards a magnet program for the best and brightest per test scores rather than skewing heavily towards privileged kids with parents equipped to advocate?

And, is there anything wrong with that?

Is this failed sarcasm? Did you actually read the *****g article?

You must be one of the "parents equipped to advocate."

Anyone who has been following this knows the county moved to universal merit-based selection and away from the older system where students were nominated by their parents. Some people don't like this because admissions are more competitive.

OMG, will you stop with this?! MCPS will not release any admissions data because high metrics (the so-called 99%ers) were not the chief criteria. "Peer cohort" was used to weed out many top-achieving W-feeder school students to keep them in their home schools with two token "enriched" courses. This was done in order to admit more students from underachieving schools, as a proxy for race (which did not work as well as MCPS had hoped). Very few of even the self-reported scores on DCUM indicated top metrics for admitted students.

And haven't there been umpteen threads that the ability of COGAT and other standardized tests to distinguish between 99% and 97% is pretty minimal. I wouldn't get so worked up about a poor kid earning a 92% (who hasn't had all the advantages in life of his richer peer) "sneaking" his way into the gifted program.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it possible that mcps is finally moving towards a magnet program for the best and brightest per test scores rather than skewing heavily towards privileged kids with parents equipped to advocate?

And, is there anything wrong with that?

Is this failed sarcasm? Did you actually read the *****g article?

You must be one of the "parents equipped to advocate."

Anyone who has been following this knows the county moved to universal merit-based selection and away from the older system where students were nominated by their parents. Some people don't like this because admissions are more competitive.

OMG, will you stop with this?! MCPS will not release any admissions data because high metrics (the so-called 99%ers) were not the chief criteria. "Peer cohort" was used to weed out many top-achieving W-feeder school students to keep them in their home schools with two token "enriched" courses. This was done in order to admit more students from underachieving schools, as a proxy for race (which did not work as well as MCPS had hoped). Very few of even the self-reported scores on DCUM indicated top metrics for admitted students.

And haven't there been umpteen threads that the ability of COGAT and other standardized tests to distinguish between 99% and 97% is pretty minimal. I wouldn't get so worked up about a poor kid earning a 92% (who hasn't had all the advantages in life of his richer peer) "sneaking" his way into the gifted program.

DP.. then why not let the 99% in and not the 97% if you shouldn't get so worked up about a few % points.

[Anonymous]

I'm not the PP but I would be fine giving a bump to truly low SES kids. A poor kid scoring 92% that is willing to do the work and ride the bus for 2-3 hours can get in. However a kid who is MC and white who gets a 95% should not be bumping out a kid who is asian and gets a 99%.

The way you would do it would be to give extra % points for being poor and then choose the top students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not the PP but I would be fine giving a bump to truly low SES kids. A poor kid scoring 92% that is willing to do the work and ride the bus for 2-3 hours can get in. However a kid who is MC and white who gets a 95% should not be bumping out a kid who is asian and gets a 99%.

The way you would do it would be to give extra % points for being poor and then choose the top students.

Why not? Whites are a monitory according to the article. Hispanics are the plurality.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

But that's a big deal to a lot of people, especially for younger aged kids. Why bus them around when you can get 80% of the way at the home school? Perhaps the education won't be quite as stellar, but 1.5 hours per day in commute time is nothing to dismiss lightly.

You could easily still provide this AND let the magnet programs really be the highest performers. Many parents would opt to stay in their home schools because only the truly dedicated want to get a middle schooler to a bus stop before 6:30 am. Let the students who scored the highest and are willing to spend 2-3 hours a day on a bus go there. Put the "enriched classes" in every school and offer as many sections as there are students who meet that bar. Its not rocket science to be fair. It only gets complicated when your intentions are to be unfair and avoid getting caught.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not the PP but I would be fine giving a bump to truly low SES kids. A poor kid scoring 92% that is willing to do the work and ride the bus for 2-3 hours can get in. However a kid who is MC and white who gets a 95% should not be bumping out a kid who is asian and gets a 99%.

The way you would do it would be to give extra % points for being poor and then choose the top students.

maybe.. but is that what happened? Do they know which child is on FARMs? Hard to tell without seeing the numbers. What we do know is that they used "peer cohort". So say that a low income student from a W cluster (yes, they do have a few) got a 93% but had a peer group at the W school. Based on MCPS admission criteria, that low income child would've been denied.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I stopped caring when I got to the statistic that the middle school magnets used to be 45% Asian and have now dropped 8%. This, in a county that is 15% Asian. First world problems.

I care. Mainly because the number of Asian kids who could benefit from magnet education and have all the academic record to prove this are not being given the chance.

Yes, it is great that the few AA and HI kids who have academic credentials are picked up for the program - as they should. But there are hundreds of Asian kids with the exact same credentials that are not being picked.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste - regardless of race.

For every Asian magnet student who is selected for the program there are many more who are not. Just because they are Asians.

My only hope is that these Asian students will remember this injustice when they graduate from their academic career and move on to their professional lives. They will all be in a position to influence lives, careers and employment. Remember what it feels like when merit is disregarded for race. Remember and use your position and influence.

I agree with your point, but what should MCPS do? What is the solution to the problem?

Pick the most qualified kids and don't worry about demographics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it possible that mcps is finally moving towards a magnet program for the best and brightest per test scores rather than skewing heavily towards privileged kids with parents equipped to advocate?

And, is there anything wrong with that?

Is this failed sarcasm? Did you actually read the *****g article?

You must be one of the "parents equipped to advocate."

Anyone who has been following this knows the county moved to universal merit-based selection and away from the older system where students were nominated by their parents. Some people don't like this because admissions are more competitive.

+1