What makes MoCO so great?

[Anonymous]

I have a friend with a child in k in nw dc. By far a much superior school to my highly regarded MOCO school. Better facility, great garden, everything is better. I do not know about all of dc, but nw dc appears superior to lots of close in MOCO even bcc.

20/20 hindsight being everything, I wish I had bought where she lives.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a friend with a child in k in nw dc. By far a much superior school to my highly regarded MOCO school. Better facility, great garden, everything is better. I do not know about all of dc, but nw dc appears superior to lots of close in MOCO even bcc.

20/20 hindsight being everything, I wish I had bought where she lives.

Dumb shit. Your kid doesn't stay in k forever.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a friend with a child in k in nw dc. By far a much superior school to my highly regarded MOCO school. Better facility, great garden, everything is better. I do not know about all of dc, but nw dc appears superior to lots of close in MOCO even bcc.

20/20 hindsight being everything, I wish I had bought where she lives.

Dumb shit. Your kid doesn't stay in k forever.

And you guys speak of bullying in schools. Hmm..Wonder where they get it from?

[Anonymous]

We live in DC and were planning to stay in one of the better DCPS schools. I understand there is a huge stigma about DCPS schools, but I am in education and have been to them, seen the hard working highly effective teachers, the involved parents, etc. I love the idea of raising kids in a city.

What I want to know is: what would we be missing out on if we didn't do MoCo?

Things that make me not want to move: I heard there is a huge culture of bullying in many schools... Teacher friends have told me they get so much homework from parents posing as their child and the parents often try to negotiate grades. I know this can happen in any affluent area, but you don't hear about that much in NW DC.

Still, people tout MoCO as the best. What makes it so great?

Its hard to be a teacher in MCPS right now. The new grade report is a disaster. Forget about having to deal with 5 calls from parents trying to negotiate a grade, you are now getting 28 calls from parents asking what metacognition means. You have to justify why everyone is a P. You have a new curriculum that makes no sense. You must follow it even if sections are missing, this is fun. You have to ALWAYS promote it and tell parents how great it is. When parents complain about the curriculum, the principal blames the teachers.

[Anonymous]

PP at 9:34: you speak from your experience as a current MCPS teacher doing 2.0, yes?

[Anonymous]

PP at 9:34.

If you are a current MCPS,
SHOULDN'T YOU BE TEACHING CHILDREN RIGHT NOW instead of browsing DCUM?

[Anonymous]

This article about Common Core was in the Post today -

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/turm...6f9e9d79e19_story.html?hpid=z3

It seems like there are quite a few teachers that don't like the new curriculum. The teacher's union went after MCPS for problems with 2.0 too.

[Anonymous]

Why IS 80% of a class receiving a P for proficient?
What should I be telling my child to strive for? Proficiency??

How about Full Potential. Can great MoCo MCPS provide that to my kids? Or not so much?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why IS 80% of a class receiving a P for proficient?
What should I be telling my child to strive for? Proficiency??

How about Full Potential. Can great MoCo MCPS provide that to my kids? Or not so much?

Maybe 80% of a class is receiving a P for proficiency because 80% of the children in the class are proficient.

And why not tell your child to strive for proficiency?

[Anonymous]

Why IS 80% of a class receiving a P for proficient?
What should I be telling my child to strive for? Proficiency??

How about Full Potential. Can great MoCo MCPS provide that to my kids? Or not so much?

This is the problem with MCPS. It doesn't give a crap about any child working at their academic potential let alone striving for anything. It doesn't matter whether your child is doing his best or worst. This isn't their purpose. Their purpose is to collect data that a high enough percentage of students meet proficiency.

Any resources spent anywhere not on bringing students up to proficiency is wasted. They will not create and collect data that differentiates student's level beyond P because this creates problems for them by showing an achievement gap. They certainly will not teach beyond proficiency.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Any resources spent anywhere not on bringing students up to proficiency is wasted. They will not create and collect data that differentiates student's level beyond P because this creates problems for them by showing an achievement gap. They certainly will not teach beyond proficiency.

Conspiracy theories about MCPS purposely holding back high achievers aside, this could only be true if MCPS used to use letter grades for elementary school students as a measure of the achievement gap. Which, as far as I know, MCPS has never done.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why IS 80% of a class receiving a P for proficient?
What should I be telling my child to strive for? Proficiency??

How about Full Potential. Can great MoCo MCPS provide that to my kids? Or not so much?

Maybe 80% of a class is receiving a P for proficiency because 80% of the children in the class are proficient.

And why not tell your child to strive for proficiency?

Proficiency equals mediocrity.

Non-existent feedback (e.g everyone gets a P!) equals unhelpful and unconstructive.

BTW, go try proficiency on the sports field, or on your SATs, or when interviewing for Google. All places where drive, ambition, and challenging yourself to be your best actual matter (I.e. the real world).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Proficiency equals mediocrity.

You must have a different dictionary. That's not what it says in mine.

[Anonymous]

A voice from the middle here..my child is not a high achiever. She's very smart and interested in some subjects. She had a learning disability in other areas. She's smart enough to compensate and tries to overcome it but the new grading system has really negatively impacted her performance.

Last year, she received Os in the subjects that she is interested in and does fine. She received several S and an N in areas where her learning disability affects her more. We adjusted her medication, her teacher came up with some new approaches, and she (DD) worked really hard in those areas. She received several Os in areas that had been previously S grades and even an O in the N area by the end of the year. She was REALLY proud of this. The quarterly grade report validated her efforts, showed her that she was making great progress and more importantly we SAW the improvement in her writing.

This year, she received all Ps and one or two ES grades. In one quarter, she was all Ps. Its very clear from her work that she is just barely getting by in the subjects where her learning disability affects her. She does the minimum required on her homework and its very hard to get her to do any more at home because her teacher just focuses on what is required for the P. She isn't improving at all and this affects how fast she can do things in class. She is noticing that she is falling behind the other kids and she's anxious about this but according to her teacher she's still proficient.

Its sad because last year the most important thing that she learned was not everything is easy but if you work hard at something then you will succeed, and that homework can really help you learn things that you couldn't do before. This year basically negated that experience. This summer we'll need to put her into tutoring or a more academic focused camp for her reading and writing because she hasn't learned much this year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This year, she received all Ps and one or two ES grades. In one quarter, she was all Ps. Its very clear from her work that she is just barely getting by in the subjects where her learning disability affects her. She does the minimum required on her homework and its very hard to get her to do any more at home because her teacher just focuses on what is required for the P. She isn't improving at all and this affects how fast she can do things in class. She is noticing that she is falling behind the other kids and she's anxious about this but according to her teacher she's still proficient.

This is sad, PP, but in my opinion, it's not a problem with the report card. It's a problem with the teacher.