Did MCPS do a sneaky thing for the magnet lotteries?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

What happened to the OCD poster who kept insisting this was all a "straight" lottery?

You mean the crazy person who was insisting it was a weighted lottery when they expressly said it was a lottery.

Agree that poster kept trying to pretend it was a weighted lottery without a shred of evidence because it made them feel better to believe this. It made no sense. Moco stated they used criteria to establish a pool and then ran a lottery The evidence also supports this. Even my 6th grader who's at RM was frankly very lucky. Many kids in their CES had much higher MAP scores. Further, the demographics also seem to reflect exactly what I'd imagine the top 15% looks like rather than the top 2% from years past.

The weighted lottery conspiracy poster's implication is the county is secretly using race as the means by which the county is achieving its diversity goals. Of course, that would be crazy since they would be sued and lose.

MCPS has long admitted that they weight magnet admissions geographically so some kids from every school get into the magnet. This approach is 100% legal since it is not race-based even though it ends up being somewhat of a proxy for race.

People have to acknowledge that the top 2% from years past isn’t necessarily reflective of the truly brightest in the county. There are many factors of the previous admissions process that weigh in favor of privileged kids and against minorities, including test scores. Test scores are not privilege-neutral selectors.

That's actually false. Last year was very different. They admitted it was. a lottery which is a random draw by definition despite what the conspiracy poster wants to believe. However, the pool for the lottery was made up of students from the top 15% based on several criteria. This is perfectly clear and the data supports this.

You are drawing distinctions without a difference. They awarded seats based on a random lottery but put their thumbs on the scale for pool eligibility to make to increase mathematical odds of lottery selection for some groups over others. It is what it is, let’s not be naive. Let’s also not be naive enough to presume that if by random chance their lottery excluded girls or minority students (which is possible in a random chance lottery), that they would not put their thumb on the scale after the fact.

The truth is that they have not been transparent about the lottery process at all, so no one knows if it was even one lottery pool or whether they had separate pools for each sending school and allocated a number of seats per sending school.

It’s easy for people to presume bad faith with MCPS because of this lack of transparency and frequently when MCPS does things without transparency it’s obvious that they are trying to hide something.

They could clarify everything right now, but they won’t. I guess we’ll all find out soon enough as the lawsuit against them for bias against Asian students proceeds.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The "sneaky" is probably lurking in the words "locally normed" below. Likely they divided the schools into three groups based on FARMS percentiles. Now they are looking at the top 15% from each of those three groupings. The top 15% scores at a 80-90% FARMS school are likely different from those at a 10% FARMS school. This approach would pretty much explain the changes year over year. I support it, btw. No desire to return to parent initiated process.

"Multiple academic measures were used to identify students. Given the impact of COVID-19 school-building closures, both measures from the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 school years were included. To be placed in the humanities and communication lottery pool, an A in both reading and writing and an indication of above reading grade level on the report card from Grade 4, and a locally normed minimum of 85th percentile on either last year (winter) or this year’s (fall) MAP-R. For math, science or computer science, an A in both math and science and an indication of on level or higher for reading on the report card from Grade 4 and a locally normed minimum of 85th percentile on either last year (winter) or this year’s (fall) MAP-M."

I think it is worth talking about what this means, because the difference is not as large as one would imagine. It's not like they line the kids up by test score and take the top 15% at each school.

Rather, they use local norming against the huge pool of kids who have taken the MAP. On this board, people have shared MAP scores from various "bands" of schools and the same grade/quarter/raw scores did not move that much based on whether a child was at a wealthy school or a FARMS school.

That makes sense, because any large sample size is going to represent a bell curve and most kids will fall toward the middle, by definition. Not every wealthy school has sky-high schools, and not every high-needs school has rock bottom scores. Across the entire county, tens of thousands of kids, there are plenty of "average" kids.

So, let's talk about Fall MAP-M for 5th grade. Nationally, the 85th percentile is 225. With a big enough sample size, you are not going to see huge swings between the local norms. Maybe it is 227 in high wealth schools and 223 in Title I schools, but it's not a big difference.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

What happened to the OCD poster who kept insisting this was all a "straight" lottery?

You mean the crazy person who was insisting it was a weighted lottery when they expressly said it was a lottery.

Agree that poster kept trying to pretend it was a weighted lottery without a shred of evidence because it made them feel better to believe this. It made no sense. Moco stated they used criteria to establish a pool and then ran a lottery The evidence also supports this. Even my 6th grader who's at RM was frankly very lucky. Many kids in their CES had much higher MAP scores. Further, the demographics also seem to reflect exactly what I'd imagine the top 15% looks like rather than the top 2% from years past.

The weighted lottery conspiracy poster's implication is the county is secretly using race as the means by which the county is achieving its diversity goals. Of course, that would be crazy since they would be sued and lose.

MCPS has long admitted that they weight magnet admissions geographically so some kids from every school get into the magnet. This approach is 100% legal since it is not race-based even though it ends up being somewhat of a proxy for race.

People have to acknowledge that the top 2% from years past isn’t necessarily reflective of the truly brightest in the county. There are many factors of the previous admissions process that weigh in favor of privileged kids and against minorities, including test scores. Test scores are not privilege-neutral selectors.

That's actually false. Last year was very different. They admitted it was. a lottery which is a random draw by definition despite what the conspiracy poster wants to believe. However, the pool for the lottery was made up of students from the top 15% based on several criteria. This is perfectly clear and the data supports this.

You are drawing distinctions without a difference. They awarded seats based on a random lottery but put their thumbs on the scale for pool eligibility to make to increase mathematical odds of lottery selection for some groups over others. It is what it is, let’s not be naive. Let’s also not be naive enough to presume that if by random chance their lottery excluded girls or minority students (which is possible in a random chance lottery), that they would not put their thumb on the scale after the fact.

The truth is that they have not been transparent about the lottery process at all, so no one knows if it was even one lottery pool or whether they had separate pools for each sending school and allocated a number of seats per sending school.

It’s easy for people to presume bad faith with MCPS because of this lack of transparency and frequently when MCPS does things without transparency it’s obvious that they are trying to hide something.

They could clarify everything right now, but they won’t. I guess we’ll all find out soon enough as the lawsuit against them for bias against Asian students proceeds.

They actually have been upfront about it but it seems like you're ignoring their statements mostly because it's not what you want to hear. They have explained it clearly on their website. You simply have to open your eyes to grasp this.

[Anonymous]

It's pretty easy. Just look at Takoma Park placed data this year:

Asian 20.8%
Black 20.8%
Hispanic 16.0%
White 37.6%

Is this how the MAP math 85%+ scorers are distributed downcounty?

If this is the case, there is no achievement gap in math.

The state used to publish PARCC scores in five levels distributed by race. If you compare that distribution with this distribution, you will see that this is a heavily manipulated outcome.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

MCPS has long admitted that they weight magnet admissions geographically so some kids from every school get into the magnet. This approach is 100% legal since it is not race-based even though it ends up being somewhat of a proxy for race.

People have to acknowledge that the top 2% from years past isn’t necessarily reflective of the truly brightest in the county. There are many factors of the previous admissions process that weigh in favor of privileged kids and against minorities, including test scores. Test scores are not privilege-neutral selectors.

People evidently do not have to acknowledge this, at least judging from the large number of posts over the last few years that have insisted the contrary.

This is not exactly the process that they use so I’m not sure why the knowing, snotty comment. And last year they devised a whole new process. So your insistence to expertise here is actually what’s bizarre.

DD was lucky enough to land at TPMS. She is strong at math but by no means an outlier. I think she scored in the high 240s on her MAP-M which probably wouldn't have made the cut in previous years. She's discussed tMAP-M scores with a number of her magnet classmates and according to her everyone, she's met fells between the low 230s to low 250s. Now I'm sure there are still a few outliers but with the random selection, it seems very rare this year based on her sample.

DS is also at TPMS and one of their magnet friends and their two friends claimed the highest possible MAP-M score was 250. When DC mentioned their score was higher they accused them of lying. It will be curious to see how this years class plays out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's pretty easy. Just look at Takoma Park placed data this year:

Asian 20.8%
Black 20.8%
Hispanic 16.0%
White 37.6%

Is this how the MAP math 85%+ scorers are distributed downcounty?

If this is the case, there is no achievement gap in math.

The state used to publish PARCC scores in five levels distributed by race. If you compare that distribution with this distribution, you will see that this is a heavily manipulated outcome.

Good points. One thing to keep in mind with the downcounty MS magnets is that from my experience very few kids from ‘W’ cluster schools elect to attend, at least I know this for Eastern. Maybe TPMS is different for Asian students who want to proceed to Blair? But in our case, coming out of CES, every parent from a ‘W’ cluster is except WJ would not consider the magnet or actually declined a seat when selected. Maybe you miss some computer science, but you still take AIM at your home school and MCPS has been increasing the number of “advanced” courses offered at home schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's pretty easy. Just look at Takoma Park placed data this year:

Asian 20.8%
Black 20.8%
Hispanic 16.0%
White 37.6%

Is this how the MAP math 85%+ scorers are distributed downcounty?

If this is the case, there is no achievement gap in math.

The state used to publish PARCC scores in five levels distributed by race. If you compare that distribution with this distribution, you will see that this is a heavily manipulated outcome.

Good points. One thing to keep in mind with the downcounty MS magnets is that from my experience very few kids from ‘W’ cluster schools elect to attend, at least I know this for Eastern. Maybe TPMS is different for Asian students who want to proceed to Blair? But in our case, coming out of CES, every parent from a ‘W’ cluster is except WJ would not consider the magnet or actually declined a seat when selected. Maybe you miss some computer science, but you still take AIM at your home school and MCPS has been increasing the number of “advanced” courses offered at home schools.

Not so sure it's all that good a point unless the state published PARCC data so that it could be locally normed otherwise it's just a very rough guess that tells us little.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

What happened to the OCD poster who kept insisting this was all a "straight" lottery?

You mean the crazy person who was insisting it was a weighted lottery when they expressly said it was a lottery.

Agree that poster kept trying to pretend it was a weighted lottery without a shred of evidence because it made them feel better to believe this. It made no sense. Moco stated they used criteria to establish a pool and then ran a lottery The evidence also supports this. Even my 6th grader who's at RM was frankly very lucky. Many kids in their CES had much higher MAP scores. Further, the demographics also seem to reflect exactly what I'd imagine the top 15% looks like rather than the top 2% from years past.

The weighted lottery conspiracy poster's implication is the county is secretly using race as the means by which the county is achieving its diversity goals. Of course, that would be crazy since they would be sued and lose.

MCPS has long admitted that they weight magnet admissions geographically so some kids from every school get into the magnet. This approach is 100% legal since it is not race-based even though it ends up being somewhat of a proxy for race.

People have to acknowledge that the top 2% from years past isn’t necessarily reflective of the truly brightest in the county. There are many factors of the previous admissions process that weigh in favor of privileged kids and against minorities, including test scores. Test scores are not privilege-neutral selectors.

That's actually false. Last year was very different. They admitted it was. a lottery which is a random draw by definition despite what the conspiracy poster wants to believe. However, the pool for the lottery was made up of students from the top 15% based on several criteria. This is perfectly clear and the data supports this.

There is NO WAY if you know the first thing about probability that 20% of kids who are FARMS made it in and a much lower percentage of other groups if it was a completely random lottery. Please study some math before you post nonsense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's pretty easy. Just look at Takoma Park placed data this year:

Asian 20.8%
Black 20.8%
Hispanic 16.0%
White 37.6%

Is this how the MAP math 85%+ scorers are distributed downcounty?

If this is the case, there is no achievement gap in math.

The state used to publish PARCC scores in five levels distributed by race. If you compare that distribution with this distribution, you will see that this is a heavily manipulated outcome.

Good points. One thing to keep in mind with the downcounty MS magnets is that from my experience very few kids from ‘W’ cluster schools elect to attend, at least I know this for Eastern. Maybe TPMS is different for Asian students who want to proceed to Blair? But in our case, coming out of CES, every parent from a ‘W’ cluster is except WJ would not consider the magnet or actually declined a seat when selected. Maybe you miss some computer science, but you still take AIM at your home school and MCPS has been increasing the number of “advanced” courses offered at home schools.

I don't think this parent actually has a student at Eastern because if you did you'd know the buses from BCC, Whitman and Churchill area are completely full and there are many kids going to Eastern not just TPMS and Blair. If you look at the directory, a very large number are Potomac or Bethesda addresses.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's pretty easy. Just look at Takoma Park placed data this year:

Asian 20.8%
Black 20.8%
Hispanic 16.0%
White 37.6%

Is this how the MAP math 85%+ scorers are distributed downcounty?

If this is the case, there is no achievement gap in math.

The state used to publish PARCC scores in five levels distributed by race. If you compare that distribution with this distribution, you will see that this is a heavily manipulated outcome.

Good points. One thing to keep in mind with the downcounty MS magnets is that from my experience very few kids from ‘W’ cluster schools elect to attend, at least I know this for Eastern. Maybe TPMS is different for Asian students who want to proceed to Blair? But in our case, coming out of CES, every parent from a ‘W’ cluster is except WJ would not consider the magnet or actually declined a seat when selected. Maybe you miss some computer science, but you still take AIM at your home school and MCPS has been increasing the number of “advanced” courses offered at home schools.

Not so sure it's all that good a point unless the state published PARCC data so that it could be locally normed otherwise it's just a very rough guess that tells us little.

The “good point” is that to have an outcome that results in a racial demographic that mirrors the county’s racial demographic for Black and Hispanic students would presume that those demographics were reflected as such in the lottery pool. Since the pool is the “top 15%” then the top 15% of student is highly racially balanced. That means that there is no achievement gap. Or it means that there is an achievement gap but MCPS put a thumb on the scale to ensure a racially balanced cohort. It cannot be both. If people want to keep saying “random lottery” then the implication is that there is no achievement gap.

[Anonymous]

All-
Read this PP's explanation. It's an excellent and really shows that either MCPS had its thumb on the scales as someone put it so well or that the whole premise that there is an achievement gap is wrong. You can't have both and have numbers come out like that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All-
Read this PP's explanation. It's an excellent and really shows that either MCPS had its thumb on the scales as someone put it so well or that the whole premise that there is an achievement gap is wrong. You can't have both and have numbers come out like that.

But you can try to have it both ways by lowering the minimum test scores (85% in ONE of two semester tests is not exactly a high benchmark) and weighting FARMS heavily. 85% is not enough to make people scream too much but that is bright not high achieving, and there is a significant difference when compared to a straight A kid who tests 99% across the board. I was p*ssed to learn the smartest kid in my 3rd grader's class, an outlier by any definition of the word, did not get into the magnet program. I had no skin in the game because I knew my child wasn't highly competitive for a slot, but I truly could not believe it when her brilliant classmate did not get in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All-
Read this PP's explanation. It's an excellent and really shows that either MCPS had its thumb on the scales as someone put it so well or that the whole premise that there is an achievement gap is wrong. You can't have both and have numbers come out like that.

The achievement gap is real. Look at Math 5 Performance Level 5 for various races:
https://reportcard.msde.maryland.gov/Graphs/#/Assessments/MathPerformance/2MA/5/12/3/1/15/XXXX/2019

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All-
Read this PP's explanation. It's an excellent and really shows that either MCPS had its thumb on the scales as someone put it so well or that the whole premise that there is an achievement gap is wrong. You can't have both and have numbers come out like that.

But you can try to have it both ways by lowering the minimum test scores (85% in ONE of two semester tests is not exactly a high benchmark) and weighting FARMS heavily. 85% is not enough to make people scream too much but that is bright not high achieving, and there is a significant difference when compared to a straight A kid who tests 99% across the board. I was p*ssed to learn the smartest kid in my 3rd grader's class, an outlier by any definition of the word, did not get into the magnet program. I had no skin in the game because I knew my child wasn't highly competitive for a slot, but I truly could not believe it when her brilliant classmate did not get in.

Their explanation seems a bit off. They're assuming a lot of things that aren't we simply don't know. For example, I there's no reason to believe the top 15% mirrors the county's demographic distribution. If i had to guess though it would be a lot like the distribution they ended up with.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All-
Read this PP's explanation. It's an excellent and really shows that either MCPS had its thumb on the scales as someone put it so well or that the whole premise that there is an achievement gap is wrong. You can't have both and have numbers come out like that.

The achievement gap is real. Look at Math 5 Performance Level 5 for various races:
https://reportcard.msde.maryland.gov/Graphs/#/Assessments/MathPerformance/2MA/5/12/3/1/15/XXXX/2019

But if these scores were locally norned the distribution would look very different so I'm not sure this tells us anything about their admissions.