Is IM only for CES student at elementary school level?

[Anonymous]

How about kids who is advanced in math but in regular class?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How about kids who is advanced in math but in regular class?

Kids who are in compacted math 5/6 in 5th grade would typically take IM in 6th. CES has no bearing on that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How about kids who is advanced in math but in regular class?

In our regional CES, I heard that lower grade kids who show math talent may be considered skipping, and I assume that would lead to possibility of taking IM when he/she reaches 5th grade no matter he/she will enter the program or not.

[Anonymous]

by doing IM at 5th, the student need to do 5/6 at 4th grade...that's why I am confused: once the students missed the chance at 4th learning 5/6, how can they catch up the future bus

[Anonymous]

Is there an elementary school that offers IM? I thought Math 5/6 was the most advanced class offered in elementary?

[Anonymous]

I have not heard of any elementary school that offers IM.

[Anonymous]

I have also not heard of any elementary school offering IM.

/CES parent

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:by doing IM at 5th, the student need to do 5/6 at 4th grade...that's why I am confused: once the students missed the chance at 4th learning 5/6, how can they catch up the future bus

Other kids that are not in compacted math are added to that path in 6th grade.

[Anonymous]

I think OP might actually just be one year off.

On the compacted track, 4th graders do Math 4/5

those same kids (plus a handful moving onto the track) do Math 5/6 in 5th grade

THEN, those kids (and still more that are added) do IM in 6th.

In all of MCPS there probably are a handful of kids doing IM in 5th but they are the exceptional outliers who also have parents who fought for that class to be offered basically one-on-one or for their child to be transported to the middle school.

But the path you are talking about? Compacted Math? It is Math 4/5 in 4th grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think OP might actually just be one year off.

On the compacted track, 4th graders do Math 4/5

those same kids (plus a handful moving onto the track) do Math 5/6 in 5th grade

THEN, those kids (and still more that are added) do IM in 6th.

In all of MCPS there probably are a handful of kids doing IM in 5th but they are the exceptional outliers who also have parents who fought for that class to be offered basically one-on-one or for their child to be transported to the middle school.

But the path you are talking about? Compacted Math? It is Math 4/5 in 4th grade.

+1.
OP doesn't know what she is talking about. Fresh from the boat.

[Anonymous]

There are students who are grade advanced at some point in math in ES and end up in IM by 5th grade. Usually they take IM at the MS during first period and then come back to their ES. This is not a track for a large group of students at one school, but for those outliers who can go a year ahead at some point and still have a strong foundation without any missing skills/concepts. Parents really have to fight for this path or have a school who is willing to consider the strengths of their student.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are students who are grade advanced at some point in math in ES and end up in IM by 5th grade. Usually they take IM at the MS during first period and then come back to their ES. This is not a track for a large group of students at one school, but for those outliers who can go a year ahead at some point and still have a strong foundation without any missing skills/concepts. Parents really have to fight for this path or have a school who is willing to consider the strengths of their student.

I think this primarily happens upon entry into school in 1st-3rd grades. If the student is really advanced in math, they might get floated up to the next grade level for math. It's not ideal - they end up needing to take a class at MS while in 5th grade, and at HS while in 8th grade, unless they have enough kids (15ish) to offer the course at the school. I have mathy kids and they did their K year at Montessori before entering public in 1st grade. I didn't push for a different placement, the principal brought the "problem" to me. The solution for DC1 was to float up a grade level for math. The solution for DC2 was skipping 1st and starting in 2nd grade to avoid the split grade level math. If you start in MCPS with K, I think you are very unlikely to ever "skip" a grade level of math. You stay with your cohort and get advanced programming with compacted 4/5 in 4th grade.

[Anonymous]

My kids came out of an ES w/ a LOT of super high fliers (at both home school & HGC), & none took IM in 5th. When they got to magnet in middle, a few kids had. I suspect that if the kids were outliers, & the home school wasn't prepared to do the compacted curriculum, they just bused them to a middle school and bumped them up a year. I know kids at an ES that had to go to a middle school to do compacted, so who knows. I guess the county and principal weigh in? Whatever the case, it's more about admin than individual talent. Several kids in my DC's peer group were high fliers, but school did not let anyone do anything other than compacted. My dc is currently at Blair magnet on hardest math track. Occasionally they have had a kid a year younger in a class. The kid isn't necessarily a math genius, but just has had the previous class earlier. I don't know how this has played out, but I suspect it as an admin thing.

[Anonymous]

Very few 5th grade kids takt IM. Most of the kids are either transferred from other school districts or previously home schooled. When new students starts at MCPS, they are assessed on their math, English, or other subjects. The students will be put in high level math class according to previous class taken. MCPS stopped promoting any student beyond their grade when it stated using CC2.0 under Dr. Starr. Compact 4/5 and 5/6 math classes only appearred a few years later after parents protested. MCPS doesn’t value individual student’s acadamic achievement. To them superfacial diversity is more important than educates every student.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kids came out of an ES w/ a LOT of super high fliers (at both home school & HGC), & none took IM in 5th. When they got to magnet in middle, a few kids had. I suspect that if the kids were outliers, & the home school wasn't prepared to do the compacted curriculum, they just bused them to a middle school and bumped them up a year. I know kids at an ES that had to go to a middle school to do compacted, so who knows. I guess the county and principal weigh in? Whatever the case, it's more about admin than individual talent. Several kids in my DC's peer group were high fliers, but school did not let anyone do anything other than compacted. My dc is currently at Blair magnet on hardest math track. Occasionally they have had a kid a year younger in a class. The kid isn't necessarily a math genius, but just has had the previous class earlier. I don't know how this has played out, but I suspect it as an admin thing.

Pretty sure all ES now have the compacted track (even if that wasn't the case until a few years ago), since most of the complaints on DCUM are about the schools trying to steer too many kids into it. IM is the continuation of that compacted track in middle school, but once they get into middle and high school they call it the "accelerated" or "advanced" track. It's just "compacted" in ES because they're cramming three years of the standard curriculum (4-6) into two.

Our DD's IM teacher told us that the "Investigations into Mathematics" class used to be the advanced, enriched course in middle school. Even though what they're teaching now is technically pre-algebra and is essentially the same course as before, when they changed the curriculum tracks with 2.0, they kept the IM name so parents wouldn't freak out about their kid "only" taking pre-algebra.

But any 5th grader who is taking IM at this point would be a true outlier, and likely either has parents who are willing and able to push to have them go to a middle school to take it, or a teacher who was willing to advocate for them. For 99.99% of kids, MCPS will try to keep them in the standard compacted track for elementary school, and wait until the middle and high school magnets to really start accelerating and/or enriching.

They definitely want to keeps kids in standard tracks, rather than having to deal with assessing and accommodating individual needs. Honestly I can see why, and for my gifted-but-not-stellar-at-math kid it works fine, but I know there are some kids and families who will be frustrated and exhausted long before they get to the middle school magnets. I just don't know of a better alternative that wouldn't involve throwing money and resources they don't have at the problem.