Is anyone happy with MCPS?

[Anonymous]

Generally happy. I feel both kids (one at a W school, one at a magnet) are receiving a better education than I did at their age. The college outcomes are impressive, too. In my view the only reason to go private is the smaller classes/teacher feedback, especially for kids who need more academic support. Or if you have a talented student at a weaker school with weaker outcomes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am an avid reader of this forum as I try to figure out where to send our kids to school for kindergarten.

But reading these threads are really starting to seriously worry me.

Our neighborhood is about 50/50 public private. Nearly all the public parents are happy with their kids’ ES and HS experiences (mixed on MS), and all the private parents are happy with their kids’ schools, too.

Are the public school parents in my neighborhood just settling, or is this forum wildly anti-public school and not reflective of how most people feel about MCPS?

While this forum can be extra, I actually disagree that it’s anti-public school. From my experience, there are a lot of legitimate complaints voiced here. However, if you’re in a neighborhood where half of families send their kids to private, you’ll probably be fine because your public school demographics will reflect the benefits of high household incomes.

My child is in upper elementary that is a step right below Title I (focus school, I think?). The teachers have been caring and the school administration seems responsive and organized, but it’s clear that more resources are needed to support all students and different needs. Many students are not on grade level. On the other end, my kid is regularly bored with reading in class, but I don’t think the school has the capacity to differentiate and has to stick to the provided curriculum.

Meanwhile the central administration has spent the whole academic year talking about this regional plan (which in my opinion, favors the already successful, resourced high schools) without a peep about how to address gaps and be more innovative in earlier grades, where an academic foundation is built.

I’m happy with my kid’s education 50-75% of the time but hoping to expand our options in the future.

It is definitely anti-MCPS

Being critical of MCPS does not mean you are "anti-MCPS." It means you expect better of the system and are willing to hold it accountable.

People who are TRULY anti-MCPS would be advocating for charters, homeschooling and private. There is a small contingent who do tout private over MCPS, but the overwhelming majority of posters in this forum are current or former MCPS parents and staff sharing their experiences with the system.

Isn't that what the vast majority of threads on here turned into?
The vast majority of people who post on the MCPS forum are not MCPS families.

No. That is not the case and I'm now assuming you are insane by claiming the "vast majority of people who post on the MCPS forum are not MCPS families."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am in a Bethesda cluster school. I am somewhat ok with elementary school. Middle school is just terrible. Classes with over 30 kids. Most of the homework is online. English class - so far for 8th grade they read 2 books. I can list many more issues but what is the point? I do not have the funds to go through private school so I am supplementing a lot. Math and English. After school activities. I am also a first generation immigrant coming from a less wealthy country so I cannot understand the problems with FARMS schools. In our culture parents push for better life meaning kids are expected to be excel at school. There are consequences if one misbehaves. Here we are raising snowflakes that will not be ready for any real life problems in adulthood. I am thinking of miving to VA. Will it be better across the river? Probably not..

In our ap English class, they’ve read one book this year. We’ve never had more than two books per year.

This. And that book was more likely than not to promote critical theory.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a teacher and a parent of two in MCPS, I am generally happy with MCPS. I do think we provided a better product 20 years ago, but I'd say that's a national trend rather than a local. I do believe there is some correction going on that's going to take time to shake out. Someone mentioned how many parents are happy with their teachers, but would like to see more educational rigor and accountability for their children. I'd say that's accurate for the teachers too. But there are a lot of policies put in place over the last decade that have to be undone. Still, my experience is that there are good teachers teaching good students.
Of course, the biggest factor to your child's education success is you. Keeping them exposed to reading, music, physical activity, and limiting their use of screens (especially at an early age) is going to do so much more for their educational outcomes than any policy from central office.

This. The academic rigor just isn’t there compared with my rigorous private school education 30 years ago. They barely teach writing. My 6th grader has never been asked to write even a book report let alone a real essay or paper. But I’m not sure any other local public is better. We don’t have the money for private. As far as school experience goes it’s been fine. Just I wonder about the curriculum. My 3rd grader is doing a bit more writing so maybe it is improving.

Reading books is overrated and doesn't necessarily make a school rigorous.
Welcome to the 21st century.

The fact that our education schools are infested with people who think like this is why there's no point in complaining about MCPS. There's no public school where you can escape these morons. You just have to roll up your sleeves and do the work the schools won't and hope people like PP are retired or dead before your grandkids go to school.

The fact that there are idiots like yourself who are still stuck in the dark ages, is why China and other Asian countries are leaving us in the dust.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a teacher and a parent of two in MCPS, I am generally happy with MCPS. I do think we provided a better product 20 years ago, but I'd say that's a national trend rather than a local. I do believe there is some correction going on that's going to take time to shake out. Someone mentioned how many parents are happy with their teachers, but would like to see more educational rigor and accountability for their children. I'd say that's accurate for the teachers too. But there are a lot of policies put in place over the last decade that have to be undone. Still, my experience is that there are good teachers teaching good students.
Of course, the biggest factor to your child's education success is you. Keeping them exposed to reading, music, physical activity, and limiting their use of screens (especially at an early age) is going to do so much more for their educational outcomes than any policy from central office.

This. The academic rigor just isn’t there compared with my rigorous private school education 30 years ago. They barely teach writing. My 6th grader has never been asked to write even a book report let alone a real essay or paper. But I’m not sure any other local public is better. We don’t have the money for private. As far as school experience goes it’s been fine. Just I wonder about the curriculum. My 3rd grader is doing a bit more writing so maybe it is improving.

Reading books is overrated and doesn't necessarily make a school rigorous.
Welcome to the 21st century.

Reading and analyzing a text is not overrated. At least not if you want to develop critical thinking skills. I am a lawyer and I assure you in my field, it is very necessary to be able to read a long text, extract the meaning accurately, and explain it. Something my 6th grader is not asked to do by the school. When I was in 6th grade we were analyzing novels, poems, historical texts. We were doing research projects and providing citations. All DS ever has to do is a PowerPoint project with one sentence per slide. He’s great at PowerPoint, better than I am, but they should be requiring more.

[Anonymous]

Not happy at all. Academic quality is tied to zip code not performance.

MCPS is a massive system they have like three top ranked schools; the rest are below average.

They have way too many large schools that tend to be highly ranked, but activities like sports suffer because there are a limited number of teams and gyms or fields relative to how many students are enrolled.

MCPS has some fabulous educational programs at their flagship schools, where families that aren't enrolled in the special programs enjoy the Halo effect, but they have rigid zip code attendance and lottery systems for everyone else who has relatively poor programs. "They don't even offer the AP classes there in many cases." However, the MCPS says for example Rockville is right next to Richard Montgomery who has a fabulous IB program, so they don't deserve an IB program. They say RHS has an IB program, but it doesn't start until 11th grade and doesn't have very many classes. Oh, but it's right next to Richard Montgomery, and it might as well be in Kansas, because they won't let you go there to take those classes, maybe if you win a lottery or something.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am in a Bethesda cluster school. I am somewhat ok with elementary school. Middle school is just terrible. Classes with over 30 kids. Most of the homework is online. English class - so far for 8th grade they read 2 books. I can list many more issues but what is the point? I do not have the funds to go through private school so I am supplementing a lot. Math and English. After school activities. I am also a first generation immigrant coming from a less wealthy country so I cannot understand the problems with FARMS schools. In our culture parents push for better life meaning kids are expected to be excel at school. There are consequences if one misbehaves. Here we are raising snowflakes that will not be ready for any real life problems in adulthood. I am thinking of miving to VA. Will it be better across the river? Probably not..

In our ap English class, they’ve read one book this year. We’ve never had more than two books per year.

This. And that book was more likely than not to promote critical theory.

Are you just one of the racists who likes to pontificate about how much they hate critical race theory? Or can you actual name a HS in MCPS that reads just 1 book in AP English class that is exclusively about critical race theory. We're waiting to hear the name (hint: it doesn't exist.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am an avid reader of this forum as I try to figure out where to send our kids to school for kindergarten.

But reading these threads are really starting to seriously worry me.

Our neighborhood is about 50/50 public private. Nearly all the public parents are happy with their kids’ ES and HS experiences (mixed on MS), and all the private parents are happy with their kids’ schools, too.

Are the public school parents in my neighborhood just settling, or is this forum wildly anti-public school and not reflective of how most people feel about MCPS?

While this forum can be extra, I actually disagree that it’s anti-public school. From my experience, there are a lot of legitimate complaints voiced here. However, if you’re in a neighborhood where half of families send their kids to private, you’ll probably be fine because your public school demographics will reflect the benefits of high household incomes.

My child is in upper elementary that is a step right below Title I (focus school, I think?). The teachers have been caring and the school administration seems responsive and organized, but it’s clear that more resources are needed to support all students and different needs. Many students are not on grade level. On the other end, my kid is regularly bored with reading in class, but I don’t think the school has the capacity to differentiate and has to stick to the provided curriculum.

Meanwhile the central administration has spent the whole academic year talking about this regional plan (which in my opinion, favors the already successful, resourced high schools) without a peep about how to address gaps and be more innovative in earlier grades, where an academic foundation is built.

I’m happy with my kid’s education 50-75% of the time but hoping to expand our options in the future.

It is definitely anti-MCPS

Being critical of MCPS does not mean you are "anti-MCPS." It means you expect better of the system and are willing to hold it accountable.

People who are TRULY anti-MCPS would be advocating for charters, homeschooling and private. There is a small contingent who do tout private over MCPS, but the overwhelming majority of posters in this forum are current or former MCPS parents and staff sharing their experiences with the system.

Isn't that what the vast majority of threads on here turned into?
The vast majority of people who post on the MCPS forum are not MCPS families.

Bold statement but how do you know that? I think you are wrong.

Ask Jeff. It has been documented that this forum is full with trolls.
It's easy to see, almost every thread is dominated by private schools parents and other trolls.

I'm sure there are trolls in every forum, but Jeff doesn't know the school enrollment of people posting. How would he? All he has is IP addresses. Do you think those are somehow magically linked to school registrations?

The only think he could do is to see if trolly person A is representing themselves as an MCPS parent on this site, and also as a private school parent on the private school forum if someone is complaing about particular posts, and I'm pretty sure that's not something he has lots of time to do.

+1 Those who think this forum is all non-MCPS connected trolls are welcome to report the posts or submit complaints about specific threads to the Website forum. But I am an MCPS parent, and post here regularly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not happy at all. Academic quality is tied to zip code not performance.

MCPS is a massive system they have like three top ranked schools; the rest are below average.

They have way too many large schools that tend to be highly ranked, but activities like sports suffer because there are a limited number of teams and gyms or fields relative to how many students are enrolled.

MCPS has some fabulous educational programs at their flagship schools, where families that aren't enrolled in the special programs enjoy the Halo effect, but they have rigid zip code attendance and lottery systems for everyone else who has relatively poor programs. "They don't even offer the AP classes there in many cases." However, the MCPS says for example Rockville is right next to Richard Montgomery who has a fabulous IB program, so they don't deserve an IB program. They say RHS has an IB program, but it doesn't start until 11th grade and doesn't have very many classes. Oh, but it's right next to Richard Montgomery, and it might as well be in Kansas, because they won't let you go there to take those classes, maybe if you win a lottery or something.

Sad, but good summary. And, many parents, like us didn't realize the disparities in high school till it was too late. We didn't understand the need for the special programs as our home school said it wasn't a problem to get advanced classes and it was.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am in a Bethesda cluster school. I am somewhat ok with elementary school. Middle school is just terrible. Classes with over 30 kids. Most of the homework is online. English class - so far for 8th grade they read 2 books. I can list many more issues but what is the point? I do not have the funds to go through private school so I am supplementing a lot. Math and English. After school activities. I am also a first generation immigrant coming from a less wealthy country so I cannot understand the problems with FARMS schools. In our culture parents push for better life meaning kids are expected to be excel at school. There are consequences if one misbehaves. Here we are raising snowflakes that will not be ready for any real life problems in adulthood. I am thinking of miving to VA. Will it be better across the river? Probably not..

In our ap English class, they’ve read one book this year. We’ve never had more than two books per year.

This. And that book was more likely than not to promote critical theory.

Are you just one of the racists who likes to pontificate about how much they hate critical race theory? Or can you actual name a HS in MCPS that reads just 1 book in AP English class that is exclusively about critical race theory. We're waiting to hear the name (hint: it doesn't exist.)

We have only had 1 book in AP English so far. The teacher promised a few but we've only had one. Teachers choose the book from a list so its on the teacher, department head and principal. So, yes, I believe this could have happened.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a teacher and a parent of two in MCPS, I am generally happy with MCPS. I do think we provided a better product 20 years ago, but I'd say that's a national trend rather than a local. I do believe there is some correction going on that's going to take time to shake out. Someone mentioned how many parents are happy with their teachers, but would like to see more educational rigor and accountability for their children. I'd say that's accurate for the teachers too. But there are a lot of policies put in place over the last decade that have to be undone. Still, my experience is that there are good teachers teaching good students.
Of course, the biggest factor to your child's education success is you. Keeping them exposed to reading, music, physical activity, and limiting their use of screens (especially at an early age) is going to do so much more for their educational outcomes than any policy from central office.

This. The academic rigor just isn’t there compared with my rigorous private school education 30 years ago. They barely teach writing. My 6th grader has never been asked to write even a book report let alone a real essay or paper. But I’m not sure any other local public is better. We don’t have the money for private. As far as school experience goes it’s been fine. Just I wonder about the curriculum. My 3rd grader is doing a bit more writing so maybe it is improving.

Reading books is overrated and doesn't necessarily make a school rigorous.
Welcome to the 21st century.

Teaching writing well is hard with such big class sizes that MCPS has, but my MCPS 4th grader does weekly reading reports that are similar to the book reports I did as a kid (although they're shorter). My 6th grader did essays (and they definitely increase in frequency in 7th and 8th grade).

That's fantastic, but that wasn't our experience at all in ES or MS. We didn't have weekly book reports in 4th. We had a chart where kids had to pick one activity (i.e. read for 15 minutes, or anwser one question in 2-3 sentences). MCPS really varies by school and teachers.

[Anonymous]

Regarding writing, since LLM is advancing at such a fast pace, my DS' AP Lang teacher started to require students to complete writing tasks in class to make sure they do not leverage any LLMs.

This is a generation growing together with AI. Most of them will be behind an average LLM in terms of ELA. Can they do better in critical thinking or creative thinking? I'm a bit pessimistic, and education is always behind in accommodating with the ever-changing world. That's not MCPS' fault.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am in a Bethesda cluster school. I am somewhat ok with elementary school. Middle school is just terrible. Classes with over 30 kids. Most of the homework is online. English class - so far for 8th grade they read 2 books. I can list many more issues but what is the point? I do not have the funds to go through private school so I am supplementing a lot. Math and English. After school activities. I am also a first generation immigrant coming from a less wealthy country so I cannot understand the problems with FARMS schools. In our culture parents push for better life meaning kids are expected to be excel at school. There are consequences if one misbehaves. Here we are raising snowflakes that will not be ready for any real life problems in adulthood. I am thinking of miving to VA. Will it be better across the river? Probably not..

In our ap English class, they’ve read one book this year. We’ve never had more than two books per year.

This. And that book was more likely than not to promote critical theory.

Are you just one of the racists who likes to pontificate about how much they hate critical race theory? Or can you actual name a HS in MCPS that reads just 1 book in AP English class that is exclusively about critical race theory. We're waiting to hear the name (hint: it doesn't exist.)

We have only had 1 book in AP English so far. The teacher promised a few but we've only had one. Teachers choose the book from a list so its on the teacher, department head and principal. So, yes, I believe this could have happened.

Feel free to name your school, and we can fact check. Because my kids have had several books in AP English already. Plus short stories and historic texts because a lot of AP English is the ability to analyze writing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a teacher and a parent of two in MCPS, I am generally happy with MCPS. I do think we provided a better product 20 years ago, but I'd say that's a national trend rather than a local. I do believe there is some correction going on that's going to take time to shake out. Someone mentioned how many parents are happy with their teachers, but would like to see more educational rigor and accountability for their children. I'd say that's accurate for the teachers too. But there are a lot of policies put in place over the last decade that have to be undone. Still, my experience is that there are good teachers teaching good students.
Of course, the biggest factor to your child's education success is you. Keeping them exposed to reading, music, physical activity, and limiting their use of screens (especially at an early age) is going to do so much more for their educational outcomes than any policy from central office.

This. The academic rigor just isn’t there compared with my rigorous private school education 30 years ago. They barely teach writing. My 6th grader has never been asked to write even a book report let alone a real essay or paper. But I’m not sure any other local public is better. We don’t have the money for private. As far as school experience goes it’s been fine. Just I wonder about the curriculum. My 3rd grader is doing a bit more writing so maybe it is improving.

Reading books is overrated and doesn't necessarily make a school rigorous.
Welcome to the 21st century.

Teaching writing well is hard with such big class sizes that MCPS has, but my MCPS 4th grader does weekly reading reports that are similar to the book reports I did as a kid (although they're shorter). My 6th grader did essays (and they definitely increase in frequency in 7th and 8th grade).

That's fantastic, but that wasn't our experience at all in ES or MS. We didn't have weekly book reports in 4th. We had a chart where kids had to pick one activity (i.e. read for 15 minutes, or anwser one question in 2-3 sentences). MCPS really varies by school and teachers.

Yes, of course that's the case, and most people recognize that their experiences aren't universal in a large public school system, which is why I take statements like "my AP English kid read only 1 book" with a grain of salt. My kid struggled in 7th grade English with a teacher who assigned a lot of writing and some texts that I honestly thought were more suitable to high school. I was told he was the toughest English teacher in the school. My kid's 8th grade teacher assigns a lot more multiple choice assignments and a lot less writing.

[Anonymous]

I would be interested in hearing from the large number of people that came from DC to MCPS. This is mostly because we have comparison points whereas others may not. I can say that even the best schools in DC (and many of them are charters) offer far less than MCPS.