MCPS Is Broken What Are Your Ideas to Fix It?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:*These suggestions primarily relate to high school. Coming from a high school teacher.

- Require final exams at the end of each semester like we used to.
- At the high school level, eliminate Progress Checks given mid second and third quarters in favor of semester exams as listed above. We haven't even been allowed to count them as grades recently.
- Get rid of the due date/deadline nonsense and the 50% rule. Teach children the importance of meeting due dates.
- Calculate the semester transcript grade by adding first and second quarter percentages and dividing them by two.
- Calculate class rank and put it on the transcript.
- Have valedictorians and salutatorians at graduation and call them that.
- Reinstitute the loss of credit rule whereby students with a certain number of unexcused absences lose credit for high school courses.
- Get rid of all of these random days off. We hardly have a 5-day work week during the year. Once the year starts, keep it going.
- Incorporate virtual snow days so that instruction can continue in some form during inclement weather. This eliminates calendar changes, as well.
- Tweak SSL credit. Eliminate meaningless virtual means to earn SSL hours and allow SSL credit for students who do things like rake or shovel snow for people in their neighborhoods.
- Allow participate in club or varsity sports to count for PE credit to open up schedules for other courses.
- If high school students now have to take a full year of health, incorporate other life skills like financial literacy into this year-long course. Make it more of a healthy/functional living course.
- The student member of the board should not be a voting member as he/she is not elected by taxpayers.

Wow. These are all great ideas!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My personal view is that they need to return to a focus on high standards and expectations for both staff and students. This can be accomplished through a number of different ways, but the details are probably not that important right now. What are your ideas?

The only thing that's broken here is you. MCPS is doing great.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:*These suggestions primarily relate to high school. Coming from a high school teacher.

- Require final exams at the end of each semester like we used to.
- At the high school level, eliminate Progress Checks given mid second and third quarters in favor of semester exams as listed above. We haven't even been allowed to count them as grades recently.
- Get rid of the due date/deadline nonsense and the 50% rule. Teach children the importance of meeting due dates.
- Calculate the semester transcript grade by adding first and second quarter percentages and dividing them by two.
- Calculate class rank and put it on the transcript.
- Have valedictorians and salutatorians at graduation and call them that.
- Reinstitute the loss of credit rule whereby students with a certain number of unexcused absences lose credit for high school courses.
- Get rid of all of these random days off. We hardly have a 5-day work week during the year. Once the year starts, keep it going.
- Incorporate virtual snow days so that instruction can continue in some form during inclement weather. This eliminates calendar changes, as well.
- Tweak SSL credit. Eliminate meaningless virtual means to earn SSL hours and allow SSL credit for students who do things like rake or shovel snow for people in their neighborhoods.
- Allow participate in club or varsity sports to count for PE credit to open up schedules for other courses.
- If high school students now have to take a full year of health, incorporate other life skills like financial literacy into this year-long course. Make it more of a healthy/functional living course.
- The student member of the board should not be a voting member as he/she is not elected by taxpayers.

Wow. These are all great ideas!

Agreed. PP needs to run for the BOE!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:*These suggestions primarily relate to high school. Coming from a high school teacher.

- Require final exams at the end of each semester like we used to.
- At the high school level, eliminate Progress Checks given mid second and third quarters in favor of semester exams as listed above. We haven't even been allowed to count them as grades recently.
- Get rid of the due date/deadline nonsense and the 50% rule. Teach children the importance of meeting due dates.
- Calculate the semester transcript grade by adding first and second quarter percentages and dividing them by two.
- Calculate class rank and put it on the transcript.
- Have valedictorians and salutatorians at graduation and call them that.
- Reinstitute the loss of credit rule whereby students with a certain number of unexcused absences lose credit for high school courses.
- Get rid of all of these random days off. We hardly have a 5-day work week during the year. Once the year starts, keep it going.
- Incorporate virtual snow days so that instruction can continue in some form during inclement weather. This eliminates calendar changes, as well.
- Tweak SSL credit. Eliminate meaningless virtual means to earn SSL hours and allow SSL credit for students who do things like rake or shovel snow for people in their neighborhoods.
- Allow participate in club or varsity sports to count for PE credit to open up schedules for other courses.
- If high school students now have to take a full year of health, incorporate other life skills like financial literacy into this year-long course. Make it more of a healthy/functional living course.
- The student member of the board should not be a voting member as he/she is not elected by taxpayers.

Wow. These are all great ideas!

I'd have more student members of the board since this is about them. Also many of these draconian ideas, would negatively impact what the students actually learn. A few of these ideas are fine but many are just not helpful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The answer has been right in front of us all along:

Break up the county.
Too big to thrive.

There aren’t too many large school districts that are high-performing.

Most of the large urban public school districts aren’t all that great. And with the push to urbanize MoCo, it will just get worse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:👏👏👏+1000 to everyone who responded. I soo wish folks would stop acting like complex issues are easily solved. I soo wish people would be willing to put in the same amount of time to help fix issues as they do in complaining about them. And I really wish people would stop saying MCPS is broken when in reality it has challenges or areas of improvement like any organization, but on the whole is doing much better than most school districts.

My child hasn't learned how to properly capitalize in writing. She's 14.
Don't tell me the system isn't broken.

There are not that many rules for capitalization. Most of them should be pretty well learned by lots of reading. What are they missing? Seems like you could find a good list on line and solve that issue quickly.

[Anonymous]

Frankly the SMOB often seems like the best member— they take it very seriously and are very prepared. Look at the last board meeting for example.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The answer has been right in front of us all along:

Break up the county.
Too big to thrive.

There aren’t too many large school districts that are high-performing.

Most of the large urban public school districts aren’t all that great. And with the push to urbanize MoCo, it will just get worse.

This sounds bad but I actually agree with it. I have not looked too thoroughly but from what I can tell 60,000 students seems to be the limit for high performing school districts, which basically allows for breaking MCPS up into thirds: east, west and north. The benefit of this is that each of the new districts will be better placed to serve the needs of their districts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:*These suggestions primarily relate to high school. Coming from a high school teacher.

- Require final exams at the end of each semester like we used to.
- At the high school level, eliminate Progress Checks given mid second and third quarters in favor of semester exams as listed above. We haven't even been allowed to count them as grades recently.
- Get rid of the due date/deadline nonsense and the 50% rule. Teach children the importance of meeting due dates.
- Calculate the semester transcript grade by adding first and second quarter percentages and dividing them by two.
- Calculate class rank and put it on the transcript.
- Have valedictorians and salutatorians at graduation and call them that.
- Reinstitute the loss of credit rule whereby students with a certain number of unexcused absences lose credit for high school courses.
- Get rid of all of these random days off. We hardly have a 5-day work week during the year. Once the year starts, keep it going.
- Incorporate virtual snow days so that instruction can continue in some form during inclement weather. This eliminates calendar changes, as well.
- Tweak SSL credit. Eliminate meaningless virtual means to earn SSL hours and allow SSL credit for students who do things like rake or shovel snow for people in their neighborhoods.
- Allow participate in club or varsity sports to count for PE credit to open up schedules for other courses.
- If high school students now have to take a full year of health, incorporate other life skills like financial literacy into this year-long course. Make it more of a healthy/functional living course.
- The student member of the board should not be a voting member as he/she is not elected by taxpayers.

Wow. These are all great ideas!

I'd have more student members of the board since this is about them. Also many of these draconian ideas, would negatively impact what the students actually learn. A few of these ideas are fine but many are just not helpful.

Putting teenagers in charge of billions of dollars is not a great idea. It’s actually a very irresponsible proposal.

[Anonymous]

It's what the HS teacher said.

Plus consequences in school (get rid of Restorative justice whoch just revictomises the victom), and, more respect and money for teachers and schools. Now that women can be anything, and not just nurses and teachers, the best and the brightest are going elsewhere. Want them back in teaching, men too? We need to respect our teachers, by paying them enough to live here, and not have them teaching 35 students per class in run down buidings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:*These suggestions primarily relate to high school. Coming from a high school teacher.

- Require final exams at the end of each semester like we used to.
- At the high school level, eliminate Progress Checks given mid second and third quarters in favor of semester exams as listed above. We haven't even been allowed to count them as grades recently.
- Get rid of the due date/deadline nonsense and the 50% rule. Teach children the importance of meeting due dates.
- Calculate the semester transcript grade by adding first and second quarter percentages and dividing them by two.
- Calculate class rank and put it on the transcript.
- Have valedictorians and salutatorians at graduation and call them that.
- Reinstitute the loss of credit rule whereby students with a certain number of unexcused absences lose credit for high school courses.
- Get rid of all of these random days off. We hardly have a 5-day work week during the year. Once the year starts, keep it going.
- Incorporate virtual snow days so that instruction can continue in some form during inclement weather. This eliminates calendar changes, as well.
- Tweak SSL credit. Eliminate meaningless virtual means to earn SSL hours and allow SSL credit for students who do things like rake or shovel snow for people in their neighborhoods.
- Allow participate in club or varsity sports to count for PE credit to open up schedules for other courses.
- If high school students now have to take a full year of health, incorporate other life skills like financial literacy into this year-long course. Make it more of a healthy/functional living course.
- The student member of the board should not be a voting member as he/she is not elected by taxpayers.

Wow. These are all great ideas!

Agree with all points!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Frankly the SMOB often seems like the best member— they take it very seriously and are very prepared. Look at the last board meeting for example.

The current one (O'Looney) is doing a very good job. The previous one just sat there and lobbed softball questions.

But a 17 yo w/o a full formed brain should be able to offer input but not be able to vote

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The answer has been right in front of us all along:

Break up the county.
Too big to thrive.

There aren’t too many large school districts that are high-performing.

Most of the large urban public school districts aren’t all that great. And with the push to urbanize MoCo, it will just get worse.

This sounds bad but I actually agree with it. I have not looked too thoroughly but from what I can tell 60,000 students seems to be the limit for high performing school districts, which basically allows for breaking MCPS up into thirds: east, west and north. The benefit of this is that each of the new districts will be better placed to serve the needs of their districts.

Yes. And if we're being perfectly honest, there are cultural differences between TKPK and Poolesville/Damascus.

It would def be more expensive to break into 3 systems, but I do think that's the right decision.

Plus, one major bonus: snow decisions would be regional!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Frankly the SMOB often seems like the best member— they take it very seriously and are very prepared. Look at the last board meeting for example.

The current one (O'Looney) is doing a very good job. The previous one just sat there and lobbed softball questions.

But a 17 yo w/o a full formed brain should be able to offer input but not be able to vote

DCUM makes it clear that age has little to do with how well a fully formed adult brain works.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:*These suggestions primarily relate to high school. Coming from a high school teacher.

- Require final exams at the end of each semester like we used to.
- At the high school level, eliminate Progress Checks given mid second and third quarters in favor of semester exams as listed above. We haven't even been allowed to count them as grades recently.
- Get rid of the due date/deadline nonsense and the 50% rule. Teach children the importance of meeting due dates.
- Calculate the semester transcript grade by adding first and second quarter percentages and dividing them by two.
- Calculate class rank and put it on the transcript.
- Have valedictorians and salutatorians at graduation and call them that.
- Reinstitute the loss of credit rule whereby students with a certain number of unexcused absences lose credit for high school courses.
- Get rid of all of these random days off. We hardly have a 5-day work week during the year. Once the year starts, keep it going.
- Incorporate virtual snow days so that instruction can continue in some form during inclement weather. This eliminates calendar changes, as well.
- Tweak SSL credit. Eliminate meaningless virtual means to earn SSL hours and allow SSL credit for students who do things like rake or shovel snow for people in their neighborhoods.
- Allow participate in club or varsity sports to count for PE credit to open up schedules for other courses.
- If high school students now have to take a full year of health, incorporate other life skills like financial literacy into this year-long course. Make it more of a healthy/functional living course.
- The student member of the board should not be a voting member as he/she is not elected by taxpayers.

Wow. These are all great ideas!

Agree with all points!

This is all too sensible. And I had to add I really really hate the due date/deadline nonsense. It just confuses kids, and this isn’t how life works. The 50% rule is also perverse.