Middle school magnet results?

[Anonymous]

RIP to the magnet program as we once knew it.

[Anonymous]

Select MCPS superintendent and all MCPS employees going forward by lottery.
What a mockery of the education system!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:RIP to the magnet program as we once knew it.

Yadda yadda yadda. You do realize that somebody has been saying this every year ... for years?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:RIP to the magnet program as we once knew it.

Yadda yadda yadda. You do realize that somebody has been saying this every year ... for years?

And now the data proves it too. Go find the students who reached the National level Mathcounts team in 2021. Traditionally, students from Takoma Park and Roberto Clemente represented in Mathcounts national team. In 2021, there were two students from Robert Frost, one from Hoover and only one from Takoma Park Middle School.
RIP magnet program!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am actually relieved about not getting into Eastern - I had one student go through the program and would not want the stress it entails for my rising 6th grader, but disappointed they were not selected for TMPS - they are a math loving kiddo with 99th percentile MAPS since Kindergarten.

Love of Math may be well served in the long term. If your child excels in Algebra, you may be able to double up on Hon Geometry and Alg II in 8th at home school, if you´re willing to take on the trip to the HS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am actually relieved about not getting into Eastern - I had one student go through the program and would not want the stress it entails for my rising 6th grader, but disappointed they were not selected for TMPS - they are a math loving kiddo with 99th percentile MAPS since Kindergarten.

Love of Math may be well served in the long term. If your child excels in Algebra, you may be able to double up on Hon Geometry and Alg II in 8th at home school, if you´re willing to take on the trip to the HS.

Great concept, but most if not all,mcps middle schools won’t allow it. Remember they are trying to close the achievement gap by pulling down the smart people instead of pulling up the dumbos.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am actually relieved about not getting into Eastern - I had one student go through the program and would not want the stress it entails for my rising 6th grader, but disappointed they were not selected for TMPS - they are a math loving kiddo with 99th percentile MAPS since Kindergarten.

Love of Math may be well served in the long term. If your child excels in Algebra, you may be able to double up on Hon Geometry and Alg II in 8th at home school, if you´re willing to take on the trip to the HS.

Great concept, but most if not all,mcps middle schools won’t allow it. Remember they are trying to close the achievement gap by pulling down the smart people instead of pulling up the dumbos.

Exactly, pull the smart ones down to close the achievement gap is MCPS motto!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How does MCPS conduct the lottery? Do they pick names out of a bowl?

Biggest fish bowl you've ever seen. 12,000 little pieces of paper folded up in there. And they only give the divers five minutes of air in their tanks.

On a serious note, how do they conduct lottery and how do we know it is a fair process. Randomization is important and results can easily be biased if the process is not fair.

I've never seen anything about how the lottery process is conducted. Why do you assume it is a random lottery? They've never stated it is a random lottery. My guess is that it is a weighted lottery.

I've always assumed it was weighted but there's no way to prove it, of course. Just as we can't ensure the process is fair to all. If your child is in the lottery pool, take comfort in knowing that they're going to be fine regardless of outcome. They're one of the lucky ones, whether by gift of native intelligence, familial resources, or combination therein.

The weighting only happens to be *in* the lottery:

IEP, 504, FARMS, ESOL get some weighting, but they've never disclosed the extent/algorithm.

Lower-performing schools get weighted, in effect, via local norming of the MAP %ile cutoff. Local norming in MCPS has been described as tranched -- 3 or 4 groupings of schools -- so a student's raw score is compared only to others coming from that tranche of similarly- performing schools when figuring the %ile. This is intended to correct for things like not having a peer group to allow teachers to push the envelope on content covered and the like, since MAP is a measure of what has been learned (vs. innate ability, which is more that at which CogAT aims), and kids can't really learn what they havent seen.

MCPS has said that once in the lottery, everyone has the same chance (unweighted).

[Anonymous]

Well, at least they changed the language on the website description of each program. It no longer claims it is for "highly able students". This is probably going to be a permanent change - in terms of the lottery, until they close the magnet programs completely.

https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/curriculum/specialprograms/middle/humanities.aspx

https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/curriculum/specialprograms/middle/math-sci-compsci.aspx

[Anonymous]

A lot more kids could benefit from the criteria-based programs (Centers/Middle Math & Humanities Magnets/HS Application Programs) than they have seats. Maybe not everyone at the 85th percentile+, and maybe not all flying through, but easily 2-3 times the number of spaces.

The tragedy is the lack of uniformly great local school enrichments. What they had pursued before for CES, with large high-ability local cohorts staying put (only moving outliers with no manageable peer group to the Centers), could have worked if they really put muscle into it to make sure the local programs were implemented equitably, with all identified students having roughly equivalent enrichment experiences. They hadn't gotten there yet due to relatively high local school autonomy in curricular matters (principals are too powerful) and the undercutting of the power of the central AEI office (no senior executive), despite that office being the one responsible for ensuring the state mandate to address GT need.

If MCPS isn't going to provide this, a more stringent state requirement, like an IEP, is needed. It would be much more burdensome to implement individually, so MCPS would, by economics, be likely to address it more holistically, expanding magnet programming and/or ensuring good local implementation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A lot more kids could benefit from the criteria-based programs (Centers/Middle Math & Humanities Magnets/HS Application Programs) than they have seats. Maybe not everyone at the 85th percentile+, and maybe not all flying through, but easily 2-3 times the number of spaces.

The tragedy is the lack of uniformly great local school enrichments. What they had pursued before for CES, with large high-ability local cohorts staying put (only moving outliers with no manageable peer group to the Centers), could have worked if they really put muscle into it to make sure the local programs were implemented equitably, with all identified students having roughly equivalent enrichment experiences. They hadn't gotten there yet due to relatively high local school autonomy in curricular matters (principals are too powerful) and the undercutting of the power of the central AEI office (no senior executive), despite that office being the one responsible for ensuring the state mandate to address GT need.

If MCPS isn't going to provide this, a more stringent state requirement, like an IEP, is needed. It would be much more burdensome to implement individually, so MCPS would, by economics, be likely to address it more holistically, expanding magnet programming and/or ensuring good local implementation.

Finally, someone who makes sense.

[Anonymous]

Whatever happened to the MCCPTA gifted ed committee efforts?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Whatever happened to the MCCPTA gifted ed committee efforts?

Anyone know?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:RIP to the magnet program as we once knew it.

Yadda yadda yadda. You do realize that somebody has been saying this every year ... for years?

And now the data proves it too. Go find the students who reached the National level Mathcounts team in 2021. Traditionally, students from Takoma Park and Roberto Clemente represented in Mathcounts national team. In 2021, there were two students from Robert Frost, one from Hoover and only one from Takoma Park Middle School.
RIP magnet program!

I've never understood the argument that the Magnets Are Dead because kids who engage in competition math are now distributed among other schools. To me, that says that they are still getting a strong math education outside the magnet, and that the new system of creating "cohorts" of high achieving kids is working.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Whatever happened to the MCCPTA gifted ed committee efforts?

Anyone know?

I'm on the mailing list and they didn't really ramp up their efforts until this fall, when it became clear that MCPS was comitted to getting rid of CoGAT and sticking with the lottery even now that the vast majority of kids are back in schools.