"Is MCPS losing its edge?"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can you all stop accusing people of being private school parents and actually engage with the issues at hand?

Here’s just one example:

During the 2023-2024 school year, Rebekah Jacobs’ son was required to read only 2 books for English class at Wootton High School and none of his writing assignments were more than 4 pages long. He, like all freshmen at the school, was in honors English.

During the 2022-2023 school year, Paul Jaskunas’ son was supposed to be studying Homer’s The Odyssey for his sophomore year honors English class at B-CC, but the students were only assigned a short excerpt from the book. To round out the unit, the class watched a 12-minute YouTube video summarizing the plot, performed a skit of the scene, and read a novella about Penelope, Odysseus’ wife.

Jacobs and Jaskunas are both members of the curriculum committee of the Montgomery County Council of Parent-Teacher Associations, At a recent workshop with MCPS administrators in attendance, the committee reported that in classrooms at every socioeconomic level, “students are not reading a lot of texts within the grade level band.” Even at high schools with 90% pass rates on the MCAP, where even the feeder schools had 70+ percent MCAP pass rates, “teachers are not assigning grade-level work,” the organization reported.

The bolded is the source of the problem. If everyone is in Honors English, but they've reduced or changed the readings to account for a wider range of abilities in the class, then no one is in Honors English.

The Honors/Advanced English thing is stupid. My middle school kid is in "Advanced English." So are all the rest of his classmates--they don't need to inflate the titles of the coursework if there's no actual differentiation.

Middle School Advanced English is SO SO SO bad. They often just read excerpts of books instead of reading the entire book.

The teachers are supposed to make the class ‘equitable’ and ‘accessible’ so instead of having the kids actually read the book, they show YouTube videos of someone else reading it.

There is zero differentiation.

My middle schoolers read a book each quarter, including writing a (very short) note about every page of the book

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can you all stop accusing people of being private school parents and actually engage with the issues at hand?

Here’s just one example:

During the 2023-2024 school year, Rebekah Jacobs’ son was required to read only 2 books for English class at Wootton High School and none of his writing assignments were more than 4 pages long. He, like all freshmen at the school, was in honors English.

During the 2022-2023 school year, Paul Jaskunas’ son was supposed to be studying Homer’s The Odyssey for his sophomore year honors English class at B-CC, but the students were only assigned a short excerpt from the book. To round out the unit, the class watched a 12-minute YouTube video summarizing the plot, performed a skit of the scene, and read a novella about Penelope, Odysseus’ wife.

Jacobs and Jaskunas are both members of the curriculum committee of the Montgomery County Council of Parent-Teacher Associations, At a recent workshop with MCPS administrators in attendance, the committee reported that in classrooms at every socioeconomic level, “students are not reading a lot of texts within the grade level band.” Even at high schools with 90% pass rates on the MCAP, where even the feeder schools had 70+ percent MCAP pass rates, “teachers are not assigning grade-level work,” the organization reported.

The bolded is the source of the problem. If everyone is in Honors English, but they've reduced or changed the readings to account for a wider range of abilities in the class, then no one is in Honors English.

The Honors/Advanced English thing is stupid. My middle school kid is in "Advanced English." So are all the rest of his classmates--they don't need to inflate the titles of the coursework if there's no actual differentiation.

Middle School Advanced English is SO SO SO bad. They often just read excerpts of books instead of reading the entire book.

The teachers are supposed to make the class ‘equitable’ and ‘accessible’ so instead of having the kids actually read the book, they show YouTube videos of someone else reading it.

There is zero differentiation.

My middle schoolers read a book each quarter, including writing a (very short) note about every page of the book

That’s great. The article is primarily about high school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can you all stop accusing people of being private school parents and actually engage with the issues at hand?

Here’s just one example:

During the 2023-2024 school year, Rebekah Jacobs’ son was required to read only 2 books for English class at Wootton High School and none of his writing assignments were more than 4 pages long. He, like all freshmen at the school, was in honors English.

During the 2022-2023 school year, Paul Jaskunas’ son was supposed to be studying Homer’s The Odyssey for his sophomore year honors English class at B-CC, but the students were only assigned a short excerpt from the book. To round out the unit, the class watched a 12-minute YouTube video summarizing the plot, performed a skit of the scene, and read a novella about Penelope, Odysseus’ wife.

Jacobs and Jaskunas are both members of the curriculum committee of the Montgomery County Council of Parent-Teacher Associations, At a recent workshop with MCPS administrators in attendance, the committee reported that in classrooms at every socioeconomic level, “students are not reading a lot of texts within the grade level band.” Even at high schools with 90% pass rates on the MCAP, where even the feeder schools had 70+ percent MCAP pass rates, “teachers are not assigning grade-level work,” the organization reported.

The bolded is the source of the problem. If everyone is in Honors English, but they've reduced or changed the readings to account for a wider range of abilities in the class, then no one is in Honors English.

The Honors/Advanced English thing is stupid. My middle school kid is in "Advanced English." So are all the rest of his classmates--they don't need to inflate the titles of the coursework if there's no actual differentiation.

Middle School Advanced English is SO SO SO bad. They often just read excerpts of books instead of reading the entire book.

The teachers are supposed to make the class ‘equitable’ and ‘accessible’ so instead of having the kids actually read the book, they show YouTube videos of someone else reading it.

There is zero differentiation.

My middle schoolers read a book each quarter, including writing a (very short) note about every page of the book

That’s great. The article is primarily about high school.

Except the sorry state of Middle School is very relevant to success in high school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can you all stop accusing people of being private school parents and actually engage with the issues at hand?

Here’s just one example:

During the 2023-2024 school year, Rebekah Jacobs’ son was required to read only 2 books for English class at Wootton High School and none of his writing assignments were more than 4 pages long. He, like all freshmen at the school, was in honors English.

During the 2022-2023 school year, Paul Jaskunas’ son was supposed to be studying Homer’s The Odyssey for his sophomore year honors English class at B-CC, but the students were only assigned a short excerpt from the book. To round out the unit, the class watched a 12-minute YouTube video summarizing the plot, performed a skit of the scene, and read a novella about Penelope, Odysseus’ wife.

Jacobs and Jaskunas are both members of the curriculum committee of the Montgomery County Council of Parent-Teacher Associations, At a recent workshop with MCPS administrators in attendance, the committee reported that in classrooms at every socioeconomic level, “students are not reading a lot of texts within the grade level band.” Even at high schools with 90% pass rates on the MCAP, where even the feeder schools had 70+ percent MCAP pass rates, “teachers are not assigning grade-level work,” the organization reported.

The bolded is the source of the problem. If everyone is in Honors English, but they've reduced or changed the readings to account for a wider range of abilities in the class, then no one is in Honors English.

The Honors/Advanced English thing is stupid. My middle school kid is in "Advanced English." So are all the rest of his classmates--they don't need to inflate the titles of the coursework if there's no actual differentiation.

Middle School Advanced English is SO SO SO bad. They often just read excerpts of books instead of reading the entire book.

The teachers are supposed to make the class ‘equitable’ and ‘accessible’ so instead of having the kids actually read the book, they show YouTube videos of someone else reading it.

There is zero differentiation.

My middle schoolers read a book each quarter, including writing a (very short) note about every page of the book

Which MCPS middle school do your kids attend?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can you all stop accusing people of being private school parents and actually engage with the issues at hand?

Here’s just one example:

During the 2023-2024 school year, Rebekah Jacobs’ son was required to read only 2 books for English class at Wootton High School and none of his writing assignments were more than 4 pages long. He, like all freshmen at the school, was in honors English.

During the 2022-2023 school year, Paul Jaskunas’ son was supposed to be studying Homer’s The Odyssey for his sophomore year honors English class at B-CC, but the students were only assigned a short excerpt from the book. To round out the unit, the class watched a 12-minute YouTube video summarizing the plot, performed a skit of the scene, and read a novella about Penelope, Odysseus’ wife.

Jacobs and Jaskunas are both members of the curriculum committee of the Montgomery County Council of Parent-Teacher Associations, At a recent workshop with MCPS administrators in attendance, the committee reported that in classrooms at every socioeconomic level, “students are not reading a lot of texts within the grade level band.” Even at high schools with 90% pass rates on the MCAP, where even the feeder schools had 70+ percent MCAP pass rates, “teachers are not assigning grade-level work,” the organization reported.

The bolded is the source of the problem. If everyone is in Honors English, but they've reduced or changed the readings to account for a wider range of abilities in the class, then no one is in Honors English.

The Honors/Advanced English thing is stupid. My middle school kid is in "Advanced English." So are all the rest of his classmates--they don't need to inflate the titles of the coursework if there's no actual differentiation.

Middle School Advanced English is SO SO SO bad. They often just read excerpts of books instead of reading the entire book.

The teachers are supposed to make the class ‘equitable’ and ‘accessible’ so instead of having the kids actually read the book, they show YouTube videos of someone else reading it.

There is zero differentiation.

My middle schoolers read a book each quarter, including writing a (very short) note about every page of the book

My HS kid has never read more than two books a school year, often one. Last year they watched a video of the book instead of reading it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It never had an edge. They need to get back to basics.

It did in the 60s and 70s.

Homogeneous population.

Yes. The article could have had more discussion of this context. The FARMS rates have risen dramatically over the years.

Yes +1. I am a teacher and I also have had two kids graduate. Look, we have gone from a district where the majority of kids had college-educated, professional parents, to one that still has many of those parents but also many low-income, new immigrant parents. Some kids arrive in kindergarten reading chapter books because their parents have been teaching them since birth, and some kids arrive not even knowing their name because they’ve been taken care of by siblings and had no exposure to English. Of course these kids don’t “achieve” at the same rate.

Sure. But MCPS doesnt have to have grading policies that say that a 10th grader with a 99 and a 100 in the first and second semester and one with a 89.5 and 75 “achieved” the same A.

Someone with an 89.5 and a 75 would have a B for the semester.

No, it would be an A. Either way, it's crazy that someone who barely scrapes an A one semester and then gets a C the next will get the same grade as someone who gets 100 both semesters.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It never had an edge. They need to get back to basics.

It did in the 60s and 70s.

Homogeneous population.

Yes. The article could have had more discussion of this context. The FARMS rates have risen dramatically over the years.

Yes +1. I am a teacher and I also have had two kids graduate. Look, we have gone from a district where the majority of kids had college-educated, professional parents, to one that still has many of those parents but also many low-income, new immigrant parents. Some kids arrive in kindergarten reading chapter books because their parents have been teaching them since birth, and some kids arrive not even knowing their name because they’ve been taken care of by siblings and had no exposure to English. Of course these kids don’t “achieve” at the same rate.

Sure. But MCPS doesnt have to have grading policies that say that a 10th grader with a 99 and a 100 in the first and second semester and one with a 89.5 and 75 “achieved” the same A.

Someone with an 89.5 and a 75 would have a B for the semester.

No, it would be an A. Either way, it's crazy that someone who barely scrapes an A one semester and then gets a C the next will get the same grade as someone who gets 100 both semesters.

No, an 89.5 is rounded to a 90 which is an A, and a 75 is a C. The quarter grades A and C are averaged into the semester grade B.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can you all stop accusing people of being private school parents and actually engage with the issues at hand?

Here’s just one example:

During the 2023-2024 school year, Rebekah Jacobs’ son was required to read only 2 books for English class at Wootton High School and none of his writing assignments were more than 4 pages long. He, like all freshmen at the school, was in honors English.

During the 2022-2023 school year, Paul Jaskunas’ son was supposed to be studying Homer’s The Odyssey for his sophomore year honors English class at B-CC, but the students were only assigned a short excerpt from the book. To round out the unit, the class watched a 12-minute YouTube video summarizing the plot, performed a skit of the scene, and read a novella about Penelope, Odysseus’ wife.

Jacobs and Jaskunas are both members of the curriculum committee of the Montgomery County Council of Parent-Teacher Associations, At a recent workshop with MCPS administrators in attendance, the committee reported that in classrooms at every socioeconomic level, “students are not reading a lot of texts within the grade level band.” Even at high schools with 90% pass rates on the MCAP, where even the feeder schools had 70+ percent MCAP pass rates, “teachers are not assigning grade-level work,” the organization reported.

The bolded is the source of the problem. If everyone is in Honors English, but they've reduced or changed the readings to account for a wider range of abilities in the class, then no one is in Honors English.

The Honors/Advanced English thing is stupid. My middle school kid is in "Advanced English." So are all the rest of his classmates--they don't need to inflate the titles of the coursework if there's no actual differentiation.

Middle School Advanced English is SO SO SO bad. They often just read excerpts of books instead of reading the entire book.

The teachers are supposed to make the class ‘equitable’ and ‘accessible’ so instead of having the kids actually read the book, they show YouTube videos of someone else reading it.

There is zero differentiation.

My middle schoolers read a book each quarter, including writing a (very short) note about every page of the book

That’s great. The article is primarily about high school.

Except the sorry state of Middle School is very relevant to success in high school.

And did I miss the part where the subject of this thread was “are MCPS high schools losing their edge”? This thread is about all of McPS

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Publics everywhere are for impoverished, overwhelmed or confused families. Private or homeschool for families of means.

Spot on.

[Anonymous]

It was a nice run. Publics are done. They just can’t handle the disheveled country especially when they are the most disheveled. Too much laziness and less than zero production among everyone involved most importantly the slovenly sloppy mental midget faculty

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It never had an edge. They need to get back to basics.

It did in the 60s and 70s.

Homogeneous population.

Yes. The article could have had more discussion of this context. The FARMS rates have risen dramatically over the years.

Yes +1. I am a teacher and I also have had two kids graduate. Look, we have gone from a district where the majority of kids had college-educated, professional parents, to one that still has many of those parents but also many low-income, new immigrant parents. Some kids arrive in kindergarten reading chapter books because their parents have been teaching them since birth, and some kids arrive not even knowing their name because they’ve been taken care of by siblings and had no exposure to English. Of course these kids don’t “achieve” at the same rate.

Sure. But MCPS doesnt have to have grading policies that say that a 10th grader with a 99 and a 100 in the first and second semester and one with a 89.5 and 75 “achieved” the same A.

Someone with an 89.5 and a 75 would have a B for the semester.

No, it would be an A. Either way, it's crazy that someone who barely scrapes an A one semester and then gets a C the next will get the same grade as someone who gets 100 both semesters.

It would be an insane MCPS policy if you could take the higher of the two semesters as the full year grade. What would stop a kid from going very little in the second semester if they already had an A in the first semester?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It never had an edge. They need to get back to basics.

It did in the 60s and 70s.

Homogeneous population.

Yes. The article could have had more discussion of this context. The FARMS rates have risen dramatically over the years.

Yes +1. I am a teacher and I also have had two kids graduate. Look, we have gone from a district where the majority of kids had college-educated, professional parents, to one that still has many of those parents but also many low-income, new immigrant parents. Some kids arrive in kindergarten reading chapter books because their parents have been teaching them since birth, and some kids arrive not even knowing their name because they’ve been taken care of by siblings and had no exposure to English. Of course these kids don’t “achieve” at the same rate.

Sure. But MCPS doesnt have to have grading policies that say that a 10th grader with a 99 and a 100 in the first and second semester and one with a 89.5 and 75 “achieved” the same A.

Someone with an 89.5 and a 75 would have a B for the semester.

No, it would be an A. Either way, it's crazy that someone who barely scrapes an A one semester and then gets a C the next will get the same grade as someone who gets 100 both semesters.

It would be an insane MCPS policy if you could take the higher of the two semesters as the full year grade. What would stop a kid from going very little in the second semester if they already had an A in the first semester?

That’s exactly what the policy is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Publics everywhere are for impoverished, overwhelmed or confused families. Private or homeschool for families of means.

Spot on.

Snort. Mcps may be overcrowded and spending its budget more on its bloated central office than the schools themselves but the teachers are largely good and I would put my faith in a kid educated by McPS than some parent with delusional views that they could teach their kid every subject

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It never had an edge. They need to get back to basics.

It did in the 60s and 70s.

Homogeneous population.

Yes. The article could have had more discussion of this context. The FARMS rates have risen dramatically over the years.

Yes +1. I am a teacher and I also have had two kids graduate. Look, we have gone from a district where the majority of kids had college-educated, professional parents, to one that still has many of those parents but also many low-income, new immigrant parents. Some kids arrive in kindergarten reading chapter books because their parents have been teaching them since birth, and some kids arrive not even knowing their name because they’ve been taken care of by siblings and had no exposure to English. Of course these kids don’t “achieve” at the same rate.

Sure. But MCPS doesnt have to have grading policies that say that a 10th grader with a 99 and a 100 in the first and second semester and one with a 89.5 and 75 “achieved” the same A.

Someone with an 89.5 and a 75 would have a B for the semester.

No, it would be an A. Either way, it's crazy that someone who barely scrapes an A one semester and then gets a C the next will get the same grade as someone who gets 100 both semesters.

It would be an insane MCPS policy if you could take the higher of the two semesters as the full year grade. What would stop a kid from going very little in the second semester if they already had an A in the first semester?

That’s exactly what the policy is.

Can you point to where that is written?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It never had an edge. They need to get back to basics.

It did in the 60s and 70s.

Homogeneous population.

Yes. The article could have had more discussion of this context. The FARMS rates have risen dramatically over the years.

Yes +1. I am a teacher and I also have had two kids graduate. Look, we have gone from a district where the majority of kids had college-educated, professional parents, to one that still has many of those parents but also many low-income, new immigrant parents. Some kids arrive in kindergarten reading chapter books because their parents have been teaching them since birth, and some kids arrive not even knowing their name because they’ve been taken care of by siblings and had no exposure to English. Of course these kids don’t “achieve” at the same rate.

Sure. But MCPS doesnt have to have grading policies that say that a 10th grader with a 99 and a 100 in the first and second semester and one with a 89.5 and 75 “achieved” the same A.

Someone with an 89.5 and a 75 would have a B for the semester.

No, it would be an A. Either way, it's crazy that someone who barely scrapes an A one semester and then gets a C the next will get the same grade as someone who gets 100 both semesters.

It would be an insane MCPS policy if you could take the higher of the two semesters as the full year grade. What would stop a kid from going very little in the second semester if they already had an A in the first semester?

That’s exactly what the policy is.

Well, no, because there is no full year grade in high school.