MCPS gutting humanities MS magnets and replacing with CKLA? (Are CESes next?)

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Why can’t they just offer enriched classes at all elementary and middle schools instead? They are already doing that, they just have an unfair and unwieldy regional program on top of it, where they’ve locked away a different curriculum behind a lottery. Why can’t they just pick what they want their enriched curriculum to be (the CES curriculum or ckla/ whatever they use at MS magnet vs whatever they use for enriched social studies) and then offer that at each elementary school and each middle school? This two tiered system is unfair and a mess.

Enrichment curriculum means totally different thing for CES/MS humanity magnet vs. CKLA enrichment. My kids had experienced the former, I've been attending and listening every BOE sessions since this year so am following the CKLA curriculum, and I've read posts here about first-hand user experience, so I think I have enough background knowledge to make a comparison.

CKLA enrichment is about answering a few more open-ended questions (e.g., do you like the title? If not, what title will you give? Do you agree with the author on their conclusions?). That's about it. For MS, it's certainly better than the current MS ELA curriculum in that at least CKLA requires students to read a full book every quarter, and write essays in its entirety. That sounds like bare minimum requirement to a middle schooler, right? But it was only reading chapters and writing paragraphs before. So it should technically be better in local MSs. For ESs, not the case. ELC collected a much better feedback so far.

For CES and MS humanity magnet, they use completely different curriculum, which is project-oriented, and is hence cross-pollinated to several classes. The requirements for writing are much higher standards. At 4th grade, kids are asked to write their own story about a hero they made up, from which they learn to construct personality, environment, and even changing their hero's characters along the story development. In 5th grade, they read Shakespeares (yes the original version with old English). In MS magnet, they will make documentaries which often win state or national recognitions.

For MCPS, CKLA enrichment is what they can easily implement to every ES and MS. Yet, I believe nearly every ES and MS adopt it without differentiation. The CES and MS humanity magnet curriculum requires much more effort in implementation, so they gut it out completely. That's MCPS' way to do enrichment: all stay at a lower level and no differentiation. And that's what they believe the ultimate solution for equity.

That’s a very long way of saying that your kid gets access to a superior curriculum than mine does because yours won a lottery. I’m sure there’s a way to provide advanced/enriched instruction to all the elementary and middle students who qualify in a way that can reasonably be implemented at all schools. These classes are not taught by wizards.

+1 This. I grew up in New York State and they had gifted pull out 3x a week for 2 hours where we did more advanced work. There were designated teachers for this who taught cohorts grouped together by grade levels. I would imagine this would be easier/cheaper to execute than the current CES system and you could assign material similar to that of CES but without the hassle of busing kids around.

You still don’t understand the problem. Your childhood positive experience came from a cohort of classmates of similar aptitude and level of comprehension. MCPS explicitly eliminates cohort model for ES and MS on EVERY course (except compact math). In a highly inhomogeneous class, the only thing teacher can do is to throw a bunch of worksheet to above-level student and call it “enrichment”.

Yes I understand the problem. I just fail to see why having CES for a very few kids in MoCo is deemed superior to using the resources spent on CES/transport to CES to have an accelerated cohort with a home elementary school.

The thing is, the reason they don't support and enrich/accelerate gifted kids in their home schools isn't because of the CES and other magnets. It's because they just don't want to. They literally went backwards on this from last year to this year, not because of money but because they claim that a homogeneous class using the grade-level CKLA curriculum with a bit of enrichment layered on is good enough. (This is what you get when there's no one in MCPS leadership who really understands gifted education and the importance of cohorting and above-level challenge for kids who need it.)

So getting rid of CES and magnets, or weakening them, wouldn't make things any better for kids in local schools. It would just mean that zero kids have a chance for something better, instead of too few kids having a chance for something better.

I’d be happy if they provide my DC a homogenous class. No they don’t. My DC is stuck in boredom, endless worksheet during WIN time, and teacher ignores them all the time as they are busy help other kids.

Yeah that was a typo, sorry. They argue that heterogenous (mixed-level) classes with "enrichment" are good enough. Eliminating magnets won't make that better. What we need is a real office of AEI with real knowledgeable leadership that understands gifted education and cares about serving them well (or at least in compliance with the freaking law, which they don't even do.)

That makes no sense. There are magnets starting at the age of 9 for kids, so clearly MCPS is fine with enrichment for a chosen few (never mind that the chosen few are based on a single data point for MAP-R), and that MAP is neither age-normed (way to give redshirted kids an advantage) nor a test of giftedness the way COGAT is.

I don't get your logic or what exactly you are asking for.

Changing from criteria to lottery is introduced because parents crying out loud that differentiating 99% and 98% kids using CoGAT and MAP-R are splitting-hair. AEI should evaluate the student performance metrics before and after lottery to evaluate whether lottery leads to watering-down of the magnet programs.

If they find the magnet programs have been watered down (which apparently is the case), they should evaluate whether to reinstall the criteria-based selection, or adding other metrics (e.g., CoGAT) for pool selection.

If they find the current magnet programs are prohibiting equitable access (e.g., what they claimed as the reason to push the regional model for HSs), they should develop ways and exchange communication with community how to spread the magnet curriculum to local school.

Instead, they did none of the above rationale procedures, but claim that magnet curriculum is bad and should be gutted out. Where does this logic come from?

But they're not claiming the magnet curriculum is bad and should be gutted out. They're claiming that they want to give more kids an opportunity, and in regional programs closer to home, which is more efficient and keeps kids from riding buses for 70 minutes each way to get to/from school. Cue the angry parents screaming "don't believe anything they say."

You are very confused and seem to be talking about the high school plan? Did you even read the first post of this thread or the action alert? https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vAnyPLxfh0vR9JMncj3SlqpM6R3N6JDYVx_-Y9Z2qtk/edit?tab=t.0 We are talking about middle school magnets, and gutting the curriculum is exactly what they are planning to do, and no expansion is planned for middle school magnets (I suspect they will eventually remove them.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why can’t they just offer enriched classes at all elementary and middle schools instead? They are already doing that, they just have an unfair and unwieldy regional program on top of it, where they’ve locked away a different curriculum behind a lottery. Why can’t they just pick what they want their enriched curriculum to be (the CES curriculum or ckla/ whatever they use at MS magnet vs whatever they use for enriched social studies) and then offer that at each elementary school and each middle school? This two tiered system is unfair and a mess.

Enrichment curriculum means totally different thing for CES/MS humanity magnet vs. CKLA enrichment. My kids had experienced the former, I've been attending and listening every BOE sessions since this year so am following the CKLA curriculum, and I've read posts here about first-hand user experience, so I think I have enough background knowledge to make a comparison.

CKLA enrichment is about answering a few more open-ended questions (e.g., do you like the title? If not, what title will you give? Do you agree with the author on their conclusions?). That's about it. For MS, it's certainly better than the current MS ELA curriculum in that at least CKLA requires students to read a full book every quarter, and write essays in its entirety. That sounds like bare minimum requirement to a middle schooler, right? But it was only reading chapters and writing paragraphs before. So it should technically be better in local MSs. For ESs, not the case. ELC collected a much better feedback so far.

For CES and MS humanity magnet, they use completely different curriculum, which is project-oriented, and is hence cross-pollinated to several classes. The requirements for writing are much higher standards. At 4th grade, kids are asked to write their own story about a hero they made up, from which they learn to construct personality, environment, and even changing their hero's characters along the story development. In 5th grade, they read Shakespeares (yes the original version with old English). In MS magnet, they will make documentaries which often win state or national recognitions.

For MCPS, CKLA enrichment is what they can easily implement to every ES and MS. Yet, I believe nearly every ES and MS adopt it without differentiation. The CES and MS humanity magnet curriculum requires much more effort in implementation, so they gut it out completely. That's MCPS' way to do enrichment: all stay at a lower level and no differentiation. And that's what they believe the ultimate solution for equity.

That’s a very long way of saying that your kid gets access to a superior curriculum than mine does because yours won a lottery. I’m sure there’s a way to provide advanced/enriched instruction to all the elementary and middle students who qualify in a way that can reasonably be implemented at all schools. These classes are not taught by wizards.

+1 This. I grew up in New York State and they had gifted pull out 3x a week for 2 hours where we did more advanced work. There were designated teachers for this who taught cohorts grouped together by grade levels. I would imagine this would be easier/cheaper to execute than the current CES system and you could assign material similar to that of CES but without the hassle of busing kids around.

You still don’t understand the problem. Your childhood positive experience came from a cohort of classmates of similar aptitude and level of comprehension. MCPS explicitly eliminates cohort model for ES and MS on EVERY course (except compact math). In a highly inhomogeneous class, the only thing teacher can do is to throw a bunch of worksheet to above-level student and call it “enrichment”.

Yes I understand the problem. I just fail to see why having CES for a very few kids in MoCo is deemed superior to using the resources spent on CES/transport to CES to have an accelerated cohort with a home elementary school.

The thing is, the reason they don't support and enrich/accelerate gifted kids in their home schools isn't because of the CES and other magnets. It's because they just don't want to. They literally went backwards on this from last year to this year, not because of money but because they claim that a homogeneous class using the grade-level CKLA curriculum with a bit of enrichment layered on is good enough. (This is what you get when there's no one in MCPS leadership who really understands gifted education and the importance of cohorting and above-level challenge for kids who need it.)

So getting rid of CES and magnets, or weakening them, wouldn't make things any better for kids in local schools. It would just mean that zero kids have a chance for something better, instead of too few kids having a chance for something better.

I’d be happy if they provide my DC a homogenous class. No they don’t. My DC is stuck in boredom, endless worksheet during WIN time, and teacher ignores them all the time as they are busy help other kids.

Yeah that was a typo, sorry. They argue that heterogenous (mixed-level) classes with "enrichment" are good enough. Eliminating magnets won't make that better. What we need is a real office of AEI with real knowledgeable leadership that understands gifted education and cares about serving them well (or at least in compliance with the freaking law, which they don't even do.)

That makes no sense. There are magnets starting at the age of 9 for kids, so clearly MCPS is fine with enrichment for a chosen few (never mind that the chosen few are based on a single data point for MAP-R), and that MAP is neither age-normed (way to give redshirted kids an advantage) nor a test of giftedness the way COGAT is.

I don't get your logic or what exactly you are asking for.

Changing from criteria to lottery is introduced because parents crying out loud that differentiating 99% and 98% kids using CoGAT and MAP-R are splitting-hair. AEI should evaluate the student performance metrics before and after lottery to evaluate whether lottery leads to watering-down of the magnet programs.

If they find the magnet programs have been watered down (which apparently is the case), they should evaluate whether to reinstall the criteria-based selection, or adding other metrics (e.g., CoGAT) for pool selection.

If they find the current magnet programs are prohibiting equitable access (e.g., what they claimed as the reason to push the regional model for HSs), they should develop ways and exchange communication with community how to spread the magnet curriculum to local school.

Instead, they did none of the above rationale procedures, but claim that magnet curriculum is bad and should be gutted out. Where does this logic come from?

But they're not claiming the magnet curriculum is bad and should be gutted out. They're claiming that they want to give more kids an opportunity, and in regional programs closer to home, which is more efficient and keeps kids from riding buses for 70 minutes each way to get to/from school. Cue the angry parents screaming "don't believe anything they say."

Jesus, have you passed your reading comprehension test? The doc is shared in the previous post: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vAnyPLxfh0vR9JMncj3SlqpM6R3N6JDYVx_-Y9Z2qtk/edit?tab=t.0

AEI officer's "intention" has been quoted there that they intend to remove the current humanity magnet curriculum at Eastern and Roberto Clemente, and AEI doesn't mention any "expansion" of the better magnet curriculum to local schools. How do you draw your opposite conclusion??

Yes, and in fact this will likely lead to worse options in local schools. My very strong suspicion is that once they come up with this weakened "CKLA plus enrichment" middle school curriculum for the magnets, they will then roll that out to local middle schools in place of the HIGH curriculum (rather than put in the effort to update HiGH to match the new state social studies standards) and go back to grade-level social studies for all kids.

I don't know why they love "CKLA plus enrichment" so much, but they sure do, and I suspect it will soon be the only option for advanced kids in grades 4-8 (besides accelerated math.). And at least so far this year, it is not a very good option at all.

[Anonymous]

Did CKLA publisher give the Sup or BOE a kickback?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why can’t they just offer enriched classes at all elementary and middle schools instead? They are already doing that, they just have an unfair and unwieldy regional program on top of it, where they’ve locked away a different curriculum behind a lottery. Why can’t they just pick what they want their enriched curriculum to be (the CES curriculum or ckla/ whatever they use at MS magnet vs whatever they use for enriched social studies) and then offer that at each elementary school and each middle school? This two tiered system is unfair and a mess.

Enrichment curriculum means totally different thing for CES/MS humanity magnet vs. CKLA enrichment. My kids had experienced the former, I've been attending and listening every BOE sessions since this year so am following the CKLA curriculum, and I've read posts here about first-hand user experience, so I think I have enough background knowledge to make a comparison.

CKLA enrichment is about answering a few more open-ended questions (e.g., do you like the title? If not, what title will you give? Do you agree with the author on their conclusions?). That's about it. For MS, it's certainly better than the current MS ELA curriculum in that at least CKLA requires students to read a full book every quarter, and write essays in its entirety. That sounds like bare minimum requirement to a middle schooler, right? But it was only reading chapters and writing paragraphs before. So it should technically be better in local MSs. For ESs, not the case. ELC collected a much better feedback so far.

For CES and MS humanity magnet, they use completely different curriculum, which is project-oriented, and is hence cross-pollinated to several classes. The requirements for writing are much higher standards. At 4th grade, kids are asked to write their own story about a hero they made up, from which they learn to construct personality, environment, and even changing their hero's characters along the story development. In 5th grade, they read Shakespeares (yes the original version with old English). In MS magnet, they will make documentaries which often win state or national recognitions.

For MCPS, CKLA enrichment is what they can easily implement to every ES and MS. Yet, I believe nearly every ES and MS adopt it without differentiation. The CES and MS humanity magnet curriculum requires much more effort in implementation, so they gut it out completely. That's MCPS' way to do enrichment: all stay at a lower level and no differentiation. And that's what they believe the ultimate solution for equity.

That’s a very long way of saying that your kid gets access to a superior curriculum than mine does because yours won a lottery. I’m sure there’s a way to provide advanced/enriched instruction to all the elementary and middle students who qualify in a way that can reasonably be implemented at all schools. These classes are not taught by wizards.

+1 This. I grew up in New York State and they had gifted pull out 3x a week for 2 hours where we did more advanced work. There were designated teachers for this who taught cohorts grouped together by grade levels. I would imagine this would be easier/cheaper to execute than the current CES system and you could assign material similar to that of CES but without the hassle of busing kids around.

You still don’t understand the problem. Your childhood positive experience came from a cohort of classmates of similar aptitude and level of comprehension. MCPS explicitly eliminates cohort model for ES and MS on EVERY course (except compact math). In a highly inhomogeneous class, the only thing teacher can do is to throw a bunch of worksheet to above-level student and call it “enrichment”.

Yes I understand the problem. I just fail to see why having CES for a very few kids in MoCo is deemed superior to using the resources spent on CES/transport to CES to have an accelerated cohort with a home elementary school.

The thing is, the reason they don't support and enrich/accelerate gifted kids in their home schools isn't because of the CES and other magnets. It's because they just don't want to. They literally went backwards on this from last year to this year, not because of money but because they claim that a homogeneous class using the grade-level CKLA curriculum with a bit of enrichment layered on is good enough. (This is what you get when there's no one in MCPS leadership who really understands gifted education and the importance of cohorting and above-level challenge for kids who need it.)

So getting rid of CES and magnets, or weakening them, wouldn't make things any better for kids in local schools. It would just mean that zero kids have a chance for something better, instead of too few kids having a chance for something better.

I’d be happy if they provide my DC a homogenous class. No they don’t. My DC is stuck in boredom, endless worksheet during WIN time, and teacher ignores them all the time as they are busy help other kids.

Yeah that was a typo, sorry. They argue that heterogenous (mixed-level) classes with "enrichment" are good enough. Eliminating magnets won't make that better. What we need is a real office of AEI with real knowledgeable leadership that understands gifted education and cares about serving them well (or at least in compliance with the freaking law, which they don't even do.)

How do we get new leadership in AEI? This seems doomed with the current trajectory.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Did CKLA publisher give the Sup or BOE a kickback?

They aren’t paying for CKLA in MS. It is a free curriculum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why can’t they just offer enriched classes at all elementary and middle schools instead? They are already doing that, they just have an unfair and unwieldy regional program on top of it, where they’ve locked away a different curriculum behind a lottery. Why can’t they just pick what they want their enriched curriculum to be (the CES curriculum or ckla/ whatever they use at MS magnet vs whatever they use for enriched social studies) and then offer that at each elementary school and each middle school? This two tiered system is unfair and a mess.

Enrichment curriculum means totally different thing for CES/MS humanity magnet vs. CKLA enrichment. My kids had experienced the former, I've been attending and listening every BOE sessions since this year so am following the CKLA curriculum, and I've read posts here about first-hand user experience, so I think I have enough background knowledge to make a comparison.

CKLA enrichment is about answering a few more open-ended questions (e.g., do you like the title? If not, what title will you give? Do you agree with the author on their conclusions?). That's about it. For MS, it's certainly better than the current MS ELA curriculum in that at least CKLA requires students to read a full book every quarter, and write essays in its entirety. That sounds like bare minimum requirement to a middle schooler, right? But it was only reading chapters and writing paragraphs before. So it should technically be better in local MSs. For ESs, not the case. ELC collected a much better feedback so far.

For CES and MS humanity magnet, they use completely different curriculum, which is project-oriented, and is hence cross-pollinated to several classes. The requirements for writing are much higher standards. At 4th grade, kids are asked to write their own story about a hero they made up, from which they learn to construct personality, environment, and even changing their hero's characters along the story development. In 5th grade, they read Shakespeares (yes the original version with old English). In MS magnet, they will make documentaries which often win state or national recognitions.

For MCPS, CKLA enrichment is what they can easily implement to every ES and MS. Yet, I believe nearly every ES and MS adopt it without differentiation. The CES and MS humanity magnet curriculum requires much more effort in implementation, so they gut it out completely. That's MCPS' way to do enrichment: all stay at a lower level and no differentiation. And that's what they believe the ultimate solution for equity.

That’s a very long way of saying that your kid gets access to a superior curriculum than mine does because yours won a lottery. I’m sure there’s a way to provide advanced/enriched instruction to all the elementary and middle students who qualify in a way that can reasonably be implemented at all schools. These classes are not taught by wizards.

+1 This. I grew up in New York State and they had gifted pull out 3x a week for 2 hours where we did more advanced work. There were designated teachers for this who taught cohorts grouped together by grade levels. I would imagine this would be easier/cheaper to execute than the current CES system and you could assign material similar to that of CES but without the hassle of busing kids around.

You still don’t understand the problem. Your childhood positive experience came from a cohort of classmates of similar aptitude and level of comprehension. MCPS explicitly eliminates cohort model for ES and MS on EVERY course (except compact math). In a highly inhomogeneous class, the only thing teacher can do is to throw a bunch of worksheet to above-level student and call it “enrichment”.

Yes I understand the problem. I just fail to see why having CES for a very few kids in MoCo is deemed superior to using the resources spent on CES/transport to CES to have an accelerated cohort with a home elementary school.

The thing is, the reason they don't support and enrich/accelerate gifted kids in their home schools isn't because of the CES and other magnets. It's because they just don't want to. They literally went backwards on this from last year to this year, not because of money but because they claim that a homogeneous class using the grade-level CKLA curriculum with a bit of enrichment layered on is good enough. (This is what you get when there's no one in MCPS leadership who really understands gifted education and the importance of cohorting and above-level challenge for kids who need it.)

So getting rid of CES and magnets, or weakening them, wouldn't make things any better for kids in local schools. It would just mean that zero kids have a chance for something better, instead of too few kids having a chance for something better.

I’d be happy if they provide my DC a homogenous class. No they don’t. My DC is stuck in boredom, endless worksheet during WIN time, and teacher ignores them all the time as they are busy help other kids.

Yeah that was a typo, sorry. They argue that heterogenous (mixed-level) classes with "enrichment" are good enough. Eliminating magnets won't make that better. What we need is a real office of AEI with real knowledgeable leadership that understands gifted education and cares about serving them well (or at least in compliance with the freaking law, which they don't even do.)

That makes no sense. There are magnets starting at the age of 9 for kids, so clearly MCPS is fine with enrichment for a chosen few (never mind that the chosen few are based on a single data point for MAP-R), and that MAP is neither age-normed (way to give redshirted kids an advantage) nor a test of giftedness the way COGAT is.

I don't get your logic or what exactly you are asking for.

Changing from criteria to lottery is introduced because parents crying out loud that differentiating 99% and 98% kids using CoGAT and MAP-R are splitting-hair. AEI should evaluate the student performance metrics before and after lottery to evaluate whether lottery leads to watering-down of the magnet programs.

If they find the magnet programs have been watered down (which apparently is the case), they should evaluate whether to reinstall the criteria-based selection, or adding other metrics (e.g., CoGAT) for pool selection.

If they find the current magnet programs are prohibiting equitable access (e.g., what they claimed as the reason to push the regional model for HSs), they should develop ways and exchange communication with community how to spread the magnet curriculum to local school.

Instead, they did none of the above rationale procedures, but claim that magnet curriculum is bad and should be gutted out. Where does this logic come from?

But they're not claiming the magnet curriculum is bad and should be gutted out. They're claiming that they want to give more kids an opportunity, and in regional programs closer to home, which is more efficient and keeps kids from riding buses for 70 minutes each way to get to/from school. Cue the angry parents screaming "don't believe anything they say."

You are very confused and seem to be talking about the high school plan? Did you even read the first post of this thread or the action alert? https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vAnyPLxfh0vR9JMncj3SlqpM6R3N6JDYVx_-Y9Z2qtk/edit?tab=t.0 We are talking about middle school magnets, and gutting the curriculum is exactly what they are planning to do, and no expansion is planned for middle school magnets (I suspect they will eventually remove them.)

Did you read any slide presented by the BOR? Slide 48 from the last presentation in the program analysis said they would present MS proposals to the BOE in October.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why can’t they just offer enriched classes at all elementary and middle schools instead? They are already doing that, they just have an unfair and unwieldy regional program on top of it, where they’ve locked away a different curriculum behind a lottery. Why can’t they just pick what they want their enriched curriculum to be (the CES curriculum or ckla/ whatever they use at MS magnet vs whatever they use for enriched social studies) and then offer that at each elementary school and each middle school? This two tiered system is unfair and a mess.

Enrichment curriculum means totally different thing for CES/MS humanity magnet vs. CKLA enrichment. My kids had experienced the former, I've been attending and listening every BOE sessions since this year so am following the CKLA curriculum, and I've read posts here about first-hand user experience, so I think I have enough background knowledge to make a comparison.

CKLA enrichment is about answering a few more open-ended questions (e.g., do you like the title? If not, what title will you give? Do you agree with the author on their conclusions?). That's about it. For MS, it's certainly better than the current MS ELA curriculum in that at least CKLA requires students to read a full book every quarter, and write essays in its entirety. That sounds like bare minimum requirement to a middle schooler, right? But it was only reading chapters and writing paragraphs before. So it should technically be better in local MSs. For ESs, not the case. ELC collected a much better feedback so far.

For CES and MS humanity magnet, they use completely different curriculum, which is project-oriented, and is hence cross-pollinated to several classes. The requirements for writing are much higher standards. At 4th grade, kids are asked to write their own story about a hero they made up, from which they learn to construct personality, environment, and even changing their hero's characters along the story development. In 5th grade, they read Shakespeares (yes the original version with old English). In MS magnet, they will make documentaries which often win state or national recognitions.

For MCPS, CKLA enrichment is what they can easily implement to every ES and MS. Yet, I believe nearly every ES and MS adopt it without differentiation. The CES and MS humanity magnet curriculum requires much more effort in implementation, so they gut it out completely. That's MCPS' way to do enrichment: all stay at a lower level and no differentiation. And that's what they believe the ultimate solution for equity.

That’s a very long way of saying that your kid gets access to a superior curriculum than mine does because yours won a lottery. I’m sure there’s a way to provide advanced/enriched instruction to all the elementary and middle students who qualify in a way that can reasonably be implemented at all schools. These classes are not taught by wizards.

+1 This. I grew up in New York State and they had gifted pull out 3x a week for 2 hours where we did more advanced work. There were designated teachers for this who taught cohorts grouped together by grade levels. I would imagine this would be easier/cheaper to execute than the current CES system and you could assign material similar to that of CES but without the hassle of busing kids around.

You still don’t understand the problem. Your childhood positive experience came from a cohort of classmates of similar aptitude and level of comprehension. MCPS explicitly eliminates cohort model for ES and MS on EVERY course (except compact math). In a highly inhomogeneous class, the only thing teacher can do is to throw a bunch of worksheet to above-level student and call it “enrichment”.

Yes I understand the problem. I just fail to see why having CES for a very few kids in MoCo is deemed superior to using the resources spent on CES/transport to CES to have an accelerated cohort with a home elementary school.

The thing is, the reason they don't support and enrich/accelerate gifted kids in their home schools isn't because of the CES and other magnets. It's because they just don't want to. They literally went backwards on this from last year to this year, not because of money but because they claim that a homogeneous class using the grade-level CKLA curriculum with a bit of enrichment layered on is good enough. (This is what you get when there's no one in MCPS leadership who really understands gifted education and the importance of cohorting and above-level challenge for kids who need it.)

So getting rid of CES and magnets, or weakening them, wouldn't make things any better for kids in local schools. It would just mean that zero kids have a chance for something better, instead of too few kids having a chance for something better.

I’d be happy if they provide my DC a homogenous class. No they don’t. My DC is stuck in boredom, endless worksheet during WIN time, and teacher ignores them all the time as they are busy help other kids.

Yeah that was a typo, sorry. They argue that heterogenous (mixed-level) classes with "enrichment" are good enough. Eliminating magnets won't make that better. What we need is a real office of AEI with real knowledgeable leadership that understands gifted education and cares about serving them well (or at least in compliance with the freaking law, which they don't even do.)

That makes no sense. There are magnets starting at the age of 9 for kids, so clearly MCPS is fine with enrichment for a chosen few (never mind that the chosen few are based on a single data point for MAP-R), and that MAP is neither age-normed (way to give redshirted kids an advantage) nor a test of giftedness the way COGAT is.

I don't get your logic or what exactly you are asking for.

Changing from criteria to lottery is introduced because parents crying out loud that differentiating 99% and 98% kids using CoGAT and MAP-R are splitting-hair. AEI should evaluate the student performance metrics before and after lottery to evaluate whether lottery leads to watering-down of the magnet programs.

If they find the magnet programs have been watered down (which apparently is the case), they should evaluate whether to reinstall the criteria-based selection, or adding other metrics (e.g., CoGAT) for pool selection.

If they find the current magnet programs are prohibiting equitable access (e.g., what they claimed as the reason to push the regional model for HSs), they should develop ways and exchange communication with community how to spread the magnet curriculum to local school.

Instead, they did none of the above rationale procedures, but claim that magnet curriculum is bad and should be gutted out. Where does this logic come from?

But they're not claiming the magnet curriculum is bad and should be gutted out. They're claiming that they want to give more kids an opportunity, and in regional programs closer to home, which is more efficient and keeps kids from riding buses for 70 minutes each way to get to/from school. Cue the angry parents screaming "don't believe anything they say."

You are very confused and seem to be talking about the high school plan? Did you even read the first post of this thread or the action alert? https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vAnyPLxfh0vR9JMncj3SlqpM6R3N6JDYVx_-Y9Z2qtk/edit?tab=t.0 We are talking about middle school magnets, and gutting the curriculum is exactly what they are planning to do, and no expansion is planned for middle school magnets (I suspect they will eventually remove them.)

Did you read any slide presented by the BOR? Slide 48 from the last presentation in the program analysis said they would present MS proposals to the BOE in October.

So? Yes, they may or may not talk to the Board at the next meeting about whether/when they will start looking at middle school programs and considering possible changes (my guess is no, they are overwhelmed with the current HS work and will punt on MS for awhile, but I could be wrong.)

But that doesn't make the statement true that "But they're not claiming the magnet curriculum is bad and should be gutted out. They're claiming that they want to give more kids an opportunity, and in regional programs closer to home, which is more efficient and keeps kids from riding buses for 70 minutes each way to get to/from school.". The first sentence is definitely false (it is exactly what they are doing-- read the action alert.). And while I suppose it is possible that the second sentence will be true eventually, it is certainly false right now (they have never said anything like that about middle school so far.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Did CKLA publisher give the Sup or BOE a kickback?

They aren’t paying for CKLA in MS. It is a free curriculum.

And it is a good curriculum. Any teacher worth their salt could plan really cool enrichment for both the ELA and social studies Core Knowledge units IF they had a COHORT model. That’s what you need to fight for in every school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Did CKLA publisher give the Sup or BOE a kickback?

They aren’t paying for CKLA in MS. It is a free curriculum.

And it is a good curriculum. Any teacher worth their salt could plan really cool enrichment for both the ELA and social studies Core Knowledge units IF they had a COHORT model. That’s what you need to fight for in every school.

The enriched literacy teachers don't get to plan their own enrichment, it's designed for them by central office. And there's barely any time for it because they have to cram in so much CKLA-- the cohort moves faster but then has to fit a whole extra CKLA grade level unit in rather than being allowed to use the extra time to do above-grade-level work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Did CKLA publisher give the Sup or BOE a kickback?

They aren’t paying for CKLA in MS. It is a free curriculum.

And it is a good curriculum. Any teacher worth their salt could plan really cool enrichment for both the ELA and social studies Core Knowledge units IF they had a COHORT model. That’s what you need to fight for in every school.

Oh they will not have a truly advanced English class in MS. No way. At best they will create enrichment activities for all-levels classes that teachers will ignore becuase htey have to focus on gettin below-grade level kids up to grade level.

[Anonymous]

Apparently they are discussing this at the Board of Ed meeting on Thursday-- see slide 11: https://go.boarddocs.com/mabe/mcpsmd/Board.nsf/files/DMEQEB68EB75/$file/Curriculum%20Update%20251016%20PPT%20REV.pdf

Instead of having a truly advanced curriculum for the humanities magnets, they say they are going to do an RFP for an open-source grade-level MS English curriculum that "Includes extensions for highly-able learners.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Apparently they are discussing this at the Board of Ed meeting on Thursday-- see slide 11: https://go.boarddocs.com/mabe/mcpsmd/Board.nsf/files/DMEQEB68EB75/$file/Curriculum%20Update%20251016%20PPT%20REV.pdf

Instead of having a truly advanced curriculum for the humanities magnets, they say they are going to do an RFP for an open-source grade-level MS English curriculum that "Includes extensions for highly-able learners.

The truly advanced humanity magnet curriculum costs $0, and the RFP will spend money to purchase a curriculum. What's in their heads???
I hope I can see Eastern or RC parents in Thursday's BOE testimony session to point out this absolute nonsense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Apparently they are discussing this at the Board of Ed meeting on Thursday-- see slide 11: https://go.boarddocs.com/mabe/mcpsmd/Board.nsf/files/DMEQEB68EB75/$file/Curriculum%20Update%20251016%20PPT%20REV.pdf

Instead of having a truly advanced curriculum for the humanities magnets, they say they are going to do an RFP for an open-source grade-level MS English curriculum that "Includes extensions for highly-able learners.

They say they are doing this to comply with MD's requirement for high quality instructional materials-- as if the current magnet curriculum is not high quality but the awful English 9 curriculum is?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Apparently they are discussing this at the Board of Ed meeting on Thursday-- see slide 11: https://go.boarddocs.com/mabe/mcpsmd/Board.nsf/files/DMEQEB68EB75/$file/Curriculum%20Update%20251016%20PPT%20REV.pdf

Instead of having a truly advanced curriculum for the humanities magnets, they say they are going to do an RFP for an open-source grade-level MS English curriculum that "Includes extensions for highly-able learners.

As MCPS tries to claim that CKLA has robust embedded enrichment and thus is a totally fine replacement for the magnet humanities curriculum, folks should understand what that means. CKLA is all available online so you can see it for yourself. The way CKLA enrichment works is that for every unit, CKLA provides: 1) a handful of challenge questions to ask the class over the course of the 4-5 weeks of the unit, and 2) a list of fairly vague/general ideas for linked activities at the end. (Sometimes it also includes "have the kids read the entire book for enrichment because the main curriculum does not include the whole book.") If you go here and just select "Language Arts" and then the grade level, it'll pull up all the units and you can click through to see the teacher's guide and activity book for each unit.

For example, this is the teachers' guide for a 7th grade CKLA unit on Hello Universe (a book enriched literacy kids are reading during FIT time in 4th grade, by the way.) You can search for "challenge" throughout the text to get the challenge questions (like " Ask students to explain the symbolic meaning of the race Virgil describes on page 249" and "Ask students to find references to death on these pages")-- looks like there are 7 for this 25-day unit. And then page 188 has the list of ideas for enrichment activities, like "Ask students who enjoy Kaori’s character to research the history behind astrology and horoscopes. Where do zodiac signs come from? How long have people practiced astrology? Have students present their findings in a slideshow or multimedia presentation" and "Ask students to write an epilogue to Hello, Universe—three months, one year, or five years after the end of the story. Have students describe what the characters are doing now, what they have done since the end of the story, what they are like now, and what their relationships are." https://www.coreknowledge.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/CKLA_G7_U1_TG_Web.pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Apparently they are discussing this at the Board of Ed meeting on Thursday-- see slide 11: https://go.boarddocs.com/mabe/mcpsmd/Board.nsf/files/DMEQEB68EB75/$file/Curriculum%20Update%20251016%20PPT%20REV.pdf

Instead of having a truly advanced curriculum for the humanities magnets, they say they are going to do an RFP for an open-source grade-level MS English curriculum that "Includes extensions for highly-able learners.

As MCPS tries to claim that CKLA has robust embedded enrichment and thus is a totally fine replacement for the magnet humanities curriculum, folks should understand what that means. CKLA is all available online so you can see it for yourself. The way CKLA enrichment works is that for every unit, CKLA provides: 1) a handful of challenge questions to ask the class over the course of the 4-5 weeks of the unit, and 2) a list of fairly vague/general ideas for linked activities at the end. (Sometimes it also includes "have the kids read the entire book for enrichment because the main curriculum does not include the whole book.") If you go here and just select "Language Arts" and then the grade level, it'll pull up all the units and you can click through to see the teacher's guide and activity book for each unit.

For example, this is the teachers' guide for a 7th grade CKLA unit on Hello Universe (a book enriched literacy kids are reading during FIT time in 4th grade, by the way.) You can search for "challenge" throughout the text to get the challenge questions (like " Ask students to explain the symbolic meaning of the race Virgil describes on page 249" and "Ask students to find references to death on these pages")-- looks like there are 7 for this 25-day unit. And then page 188 has the list of ideas for enrichment activities, like "Ask students who enjoy Kaori’s character to research the history behind astrology and horoscopes. Where do zodiac signs come from? How long have people practiced astrology? Have students present their findings in a slideshow or multimedia presentation" and "Ask students to write an epilogue to Hello, Universe—three months, one year, or five years after the end of the story. Have students describe what the characters are doing now, what they have done since the end of the story, what they are like now, and what their relationships are." https://www.coreknowledge.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/CKLA_G7_U1_TG_Web.pdf

Link to search all units for all years here: https://www.coreknowledge.org/download-free-curriculum/