Middle school magnets - criteria-based
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Anonymous
Opposite view. Our child felt AIM Was NBD, not challenging, not interesting, not difficult, same old. Your child is not missing much. |
Anonymous
It is supposed to be the school they attend, not their home elementary. Otherwise they might just use a student's individual FARMS status. They use the school FARMS rate as a proxy for the difficulty in providing depth/enrichment in a particular class. It's not that high-SES kids are naturally better at Math, per se (though they might be), but that large cohorts of them tend to be easier to manage with enrichment/depth, due both to the lower variation in exposure to material within the a class/school and to supports available at home (e.g., education level of parents, ease of access to tutoring/likelihood of utilizing outside enrichment, etc.). This difference is reflected in things like MAP scores, which overwhelmingly skew towards level of exposure rather than underlying ability. Whether that proxy is appropriate to serve that purpose is valid for debate. |
Anonymous
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Honest question: are all of these kids really this curious about mathematics, or is math beyond calculus essential for all college admissions now, or are people seeing broader STEM potential in their kids that they are trying to support with math study, or are there other thoughts/motivations at work? Why is everyone so fixated on accelerating?
Boredom in class when classmates cannot execute whatever is afoot does not _necessarily_ equal curiosity, aptitude, or readiness for more or faster math. If there were a way to knock out the entire math curriculum a year or more ahead of time in HS in order to leave space for other things, I could completely see that. But since MCPS requires math every single year no matter what, what's the real incentive? If your kid loves math and is hungry for more, or is forecasting a deeply STEM career, total respect. But beyond that I'm not following the obsession. I don't actually want my kid accelerating in math only to end up in a level they can't handle later. |
Anonymous
This is actually why I wish there was greater focus on enrichment than acceleration and this is what I feel places like RSM provide. You don't have to go beyond Calculus for college admissions, but having Calc BC in HS really smooths things out for you in college if you want to do almost anything STEM-related (for example, if you only take Calc AB you may need to spend an extra year in college if you're in engineering.) Also, at the college and grad school level, the truth is that kids will have classmates who are drawn from some of the best across the world and many of those kids will come in with a strong background (as will many of the professors!) |
Anonymous
Great questions. Boredom in class is part of the problem. Here in the States, we end up having too few going into STEM, and a lot of that is because math starts to lack challenge by the middle of elementary school. Kids get turned off to it. Acceleration and enrichment (true enrichment) are options to increase challenge, but the former is far easier to implement for most elementary teachers, not to mention the system. So there are kids who are distinctly math-inclined or so able across subjects that, yes, getting to something beyond calculus in high school is desired (and can be important to their higher education/career options if they aim for that involving higher-level math. Then there are a much larger number of kids that need the challenge through about Algebra II just to maintain interest. Math 4/5, Math 5/6, AIM and even 6+ and 7+ can offer this. A problem is that post-Algebra II phase. MD requires a math class in each year of high school. That means either a course beyond Calc or one, like Stats, that is perceived as an off-ramp by some, despite stats being extremely useful in most people's lives. At the same time, colleges (or college Math dapartments) often prefer their own delivery of post-Calc courses to that given in high school. Making things even more difficult is that many admissions offices will also look at Stats or the like in senior year as "taking it easy" vs. pursuing rigor. Taking Stats after Algebra II and before the Calc courses might make sense, but there is a progression from Algebra topics to Pre-calc and Calc that gets lost, a bit, from a year of Stats in between -- though if taught in a particular way, Stats and Calc have concepts that would support an understanding of each other. So, what to do? Modifying the MD a-year-of-math-each-year-in-high-school requirement to except any student who had successfully completed a college-level courae (AP Calc or AP Stats) would seem to be a no-brainer; MD only requires completion of Algebra and Geometry, anyway (not even Algebra II, which is among the MCPS aims). Engaging with the college admissions community to encourage a more favorable view of alternatives, like Stats, to post-Calc coursework would be great (and important!), but is a long-term fix with uncertain adoption. Changing the standard secondaey curriculum to integrate the Algebras with Geometry and the Calcs with Stats would be visionary, but likely infeasible from a political standpoint. Elimimating or reducing access.to the accelerated elementary/middle courses, though, would, IMO, be the worst option -- kids wouldn't be taught where they are and would, as a result, be increasingly turned off to the subject. |
Anonymous
| So it sounds like letters will be going out to provide the results of the lottery. But was there any prior communication to let parents know if a child made it pass the central review and placed into the lottery? |
Anonymous
No you are wrong. They explained this clearly in the past. Home school FARMS status as proxy for SES. Middle school home school as proxy for peer cohort. |
Anonymous
2 years ago, it was just one notification of whether they were placed in the lottery and the results of the lottery. |
Anonymous
Weird because DC was scoring in the 290s on their map-m at the time and felt the class helped them tremendously with foundational concepts. |
Anonymous
Your middle school doesn't have it. That's your school's decision, but the course is still available. At curriculum night, someone specifically asked if AIM was eliminated, and they said no; only IM was. For an example of a school that is offering AIM next year, see the Frost middle school catalog: https://docs.google.com/document/d/16dv-ZiklinnpWZ5Xm0QiGY67olk8KbORSlOcb2YQk5Y/edit Page has the math pathways for next year - AIM is an option from math 5/6, but IM is no longer an option from 7th. |
Anonymous
I’m the PP who you think is disagreeing with you. We agree on some things, but not others, hence my post. Also, if you want people to read and take in what you’re trying to say, it might be helpful to be less condescending. Don’t lead with “you’re conflating a whole lot of things,” at least, not if you expect them to be open to what you’re saying. There are lot of intersections between these various issues. I actually don’t think that every child placed into the lottery could necessarily benefit from magnet-level enrichment; MCPS’ tactics for identifying “gifted” students are too coarse, as I said above. If I had my druthers, MCPS would get rid of the CES and middle school magnets entirely and focus instead on better assessing students at individual schools and providing differentiated instruction at those schools. |
Anonymous
| North Bethesda also offers AIM, see slide 18: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ytTiPuNbLUDPZ89HmhlEbMd_RXX803fAKdpPNtxaZ80/edit#slide=id.g4d3ead23b9_2_404 |
Anonymous
| PP who posted about Cabin John here. I'm not saying individual schools may not be keeping AIM (for now, since PP noted that it may no longer be part of the curriculum MCPS uses), but that I felt gaslit when I said our school no longer offers it and some people said "That's not true, AIM is still being offered." Trust me, I know what my school offers... |
Anonymous
No, it'a the elementary school attended. In the FAQ (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CD-zDANEJAR5X-g5pMijtx9sCd4JS1IGPEB1VL-0-9Y) the answer to question 2 about local norming says, "In establishing local norms, students in schools with similar FARMS rates were grouped together for comparison." Not "in catchments" or "in home schools," but "in schools," as in "in attendance at schools." There are 5 FARMS rate categories they use, with more at the low-FARMS (presumed high SES/more easily managed student cohorts) end of the scale than the opposite. You can take my word for it or contact MCPS to confirm. |
Anonymous
I see the logic there but I don’t know if it’s true. If it is, it’s a little unfair. For instance, say you have a kid whose home school is Carderock, with a very low FARMS pop, who is at the CCES magnet. CCES is low-moderate, so a different SES band, but the vast majority of FARMS students are in the gen Ed program and have no classes with the CES student. So a different student who remained at Carderock bc he didn’t win the CES lottery would be held to a higher standard to enter the middle school pool. They could literally be next door neighbors. Doesn’t seem fair. |