The only way to have equity is to drag down the top performers

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The new AP Seminar offered in English departments for 10th graders is bringing back tracking, by the way. The high achieving 10th graders now take that for English and “Honors” English 10 is by default actually on level. So- all the kids with IEPs and behavioral issues.

MCPS is so messed up. Honors for all! Then… well, except for this.

That's the way it has been in 11th and 12th grade English, so why not the same for 10th?

I think it’s kind of silly to pretend there’s a large cohort of sophomores ready for college-level English. So it’d make more sense to just have an advanced HS class.

Any advanced class will always end up becoming an honors for all class, unless some criteria are strictly enforced, or there’s an across-board consistent test attached to the course. AP belongs to the latter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Truly AI learning will take over. Every child will be taught according to their pace, style and ability. There's no other way to handle it

There’s a social need for every student, including high performers. But I do agree for the future generation, education is likely going to take a new format.

Socially it wouldn't look different. Im not talking about home school. There will still be proctor. Their role will look very different than the teachers of.today

[Anonymous]

Boo freaking who…you’re losing your specialness so that kids who wouldn’t apply because of the distance will now have a better chance at access.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are you all saying gifted kids will figure it out for themselves and don’t need help/resources/harder classes? Gifted doesn’t necessarily mean hard working. A lot of these kids burn out and also need direction.

I personally would like harder classes for all. One of my kids is not gifted and she’s definitely been left behind. Her classes are insanely easy, there’s no good classroom debate on any subjects, and the teachers spends all of her time focuses on kids who can still barely read. My daughter is so curious about everything and loves math but there’s nothing for her.

I’m not saying harder classes shouldn’t be available, but they are available. Maybe that collection of classes doesn’t meet your child’s needs because they are so uniquely gifted, but it still doesn’t make sense for the school to develop a whole new curriculum pathways for a single child when other options are available. Particularly if that comes at the expense of larger swaths of kids that are struggling academically.

but they aren't. those classes are too easy.

I truly don’t understand the logic here. The schools offer many options for kids of all intelligence and motivation levels. Our school offers MVC, Linear Algebra, AP calc, and AP Stats, in person at our HS. In addition they offer many math classes for kids that are less advanced. Those classes meet the needs of the vast majority of students.

For the let’s say top 3%, they will now offer cluster based accelerated programs. For the kids who are beyond that, let’s say the top .3%, there are other options available like DE and the like. My kid digs physics but there is only one AP physics class at the HS. So she took four semester of Physics classes and labs at the college.

If your kid is a truly unique, one of a kind genius that is curing cancer at 14, then I agree MCPS isn’t going to give them the best diversity of options for academic challenge. I also think it isn’t MCPS’s responsibility to meet every possible desire for a very single outlier kid. For virtually every other high stats/gifted kid it seems to me that there are a wide diversity of options that MCPS offers that can reasonable meet their needs.

The problem isn’t what MCPS currently offers. In fact MCPS has historically been a great district for gifted kids. It’s what they’re taking away. No more ELC. No more magnets. It’s dumbing everything down

I did describe what they are going to offer, now what they offer right now. Notice I didn’t mention magnets but instead referred to cluster based accelerated programs.

How do you know what they are going to offer in the regional STEM program? It’s not shown anywhere on the slides. Link plz? If you are from the study team, how do MCPS make these course offerings equitable across different regions? If not enough students register, are some of the classes going to vanish over years? This has happened in the regional IB model. What metrics are MCPS going to evaluate the success and access across 6 regions? How often to evaluate and what’s the mitigation strategy if significant discrepancies are identified?

I’m not asking particularly hard questions. These are routine questions asked in any academia or industry proposals.

+1

And where will MCPS find teachers, especially STEM teachers, to staff these six centers?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are you all saying gifted kids will figure it out for themselves and don’t need help/resources/harder classes? Gifted doesn’t necessarily mean hard working. A lot of these kids burn out and also need direction.

I personally would like harder classes for all. One of my kids is not gifted and she’s definitely been left behind. Her classes are insanely easy, there’s no good classroom debate on any subjects, and the teachers spends all of her time focuses on kids who can still barely read. My daughter is so curious about everything and loves math but there’s nothing for her.

I’m not saying harder classes shouldn’t be available, but they are available. Maybe that collection of classes doesn’t meet your child’s needs because they are so uniquely gifted, but it still doesn’t make sense for the school to develop a whole new curriculum pathways for a single child when other options are available. Particularly if that comes at the expense of larger swaths of kids that are struggling academically.

but they aren't. those classes are too easy.

I truly don’t understand the logic here. The schools offer many options for kids of all intelligence and motivation levels. Our school offers MVC, Linear Algebra, AP calc, and AP Stats, in person at our HS. In addition they offer many math classes for kids that are less advanced. Those classes meet the needs of the vast majority of students.

For the let’s say top 3%, they will now offer cluster based accelerated programs. For the kids who are beyond that, let’s say the top .3%, there are other options available like DE and the like. My kid digs physics but there is only one AP physics class at the HS. So she took four semester of Physics classes and labs at the college.

If your kid is a truly unique, one of a kind genius that is curing cancer at 14, then I agree MCPS isn’t going to give them the best diversity of options for academic challenge. I also think it isn’t MCPS’s responsibility to meet every possible desire for a very single outlier kid. For virtually every other high stats/gifted kid it seems to me that there are a wide diversity of options that MCPS offers that can reasonable meet their needs.

The problem isn’t what MCPS currently offers. In fact MCPS has historically been a great district for gifted kids. It’s what they’re taking away. No more ELC. No more magnets. It’s dumbing everything down

I did describe what they are going to offer, now what they offer right now. Notice I didn’t mention magnets but instead referred to cluster based accelerated programs.

How do you know what they are going to offer in the regional STEM program? It’s not shown anywhere on the slides. Link plz? If you are from the study team, how do MCPS make these course offerings equitable across different regions? If not enough students register, are some of the classes going to vanish over years? This has happened in the regional IB model. What metrics are MCPS going to evaluate the success and access across 6 regions? How often to evaluate and what’s the mitigation strategy if significant discrepancies are identified?

I’m not asking particularly hard questions. These are routine questions asked in any academia or industry proposals.

+1

And where will MCPS find teachers, especially STEM teachers, to staff these six centers?

They will rearrange things. They can pull them from the w schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Throwing resources at low performers absolutely will lift them up. And if your kid is really a high performers, they will be a high performer with or without resources.

What about the kids in the middle, in a class of 30?!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are you all saying gifted kids will figure it out for themselves and don’t need help/resources/harder classes? Gifted doesn’t necessarily mean hard working. A lot of these kids burn out and also need direction.

I personally would like harder classes for all. One of my kids is not gifted and she’s definitely been left behind. Her classes are insanely easy, there’s no good classroom debate on any subjects, and the teachers spends all of her time focuses on kids who can still barely read. My daughter is so curious about everything and loves math but there’s nothing for her.

I’m not saying harder classes shouldn’t be available, but they are available. Maybe that collection of classes doesn’t meet your child’s needs because they are so uniquely gifted, but it still doesn’t make sense for the school to develop a whole new curriculum pathways for a single child when other options are available. Particularly if that comes at the expense of larger swaths of kids that are struggling academically.

but they aren't. those classes are too easy.

I truly don’t understand the logic here. The schools offer many options for kids of all intelligence and motivation levels. Our school offers MVC, Linear Algebra, AP calc, and AP Stats, in person at our HS. In addition they offer many math classes for kids that are less advanced. Those classes meet the needs of the vast majority of students.

For the let’s say top 3%, they will now offer cluster based accelerated programs. For the kids who are beyond that, let’s say the top .3%, there are other options available like DE and the like. My kid digs physics but there is only one AP physics class at the HS. So she took four semester of Physics classes and labs at the college.

If your kid is a truly unique, one of a kind genius that is curing cancer at 14, then I agree MCPS isn’t going to give them the best diversity of options for academic challenge. I also think it isn’t MCPS’s responsibility to meet every possible desire for a very single outlier kid. For virtually every other high stats/gifted kid it seems to me that there are a wide diversity of options that MCPS offers that can reasonable meet their needs.

The problem isn’t what MCPS currently offers. In fact MCPS has historically been a great district for gifted kids. It’s what they’re taking away. No more ELC. No more magnets. It’s dumbing everything down

I did describe what they are going to offer, now what they offer right now. Notice I didn’t mention magnets but instead referred to cluster based accelerated programs.

How do you know what they are going to offer in the regional STEM program? It’s not shown anywhere on the slides. Link plz? If you are from the study team, how do MCPS make these course offerings equitable across different regions? If not enough students register, are some of the classes going to vanish over years? This has happened in the regional IB model. What metrics are MCPS going to evaluate the success and access across 6 regions? How often to evaluate and what’s the mitigation strategy if significant discrepancies are identified?

I’m not asking particularly hard questions. These are routine questions asked in any academia or industry proposals.

+1

And where will MCPS find teachers, especially STEM teachers, to staff these six centers?

They will rearrange things. They can pull them from the w schools.

It’s hilarious that you think that. I teach in a magnet that has had two hires from W schools who didn’t last more than a year. A third has done well, but has a master’s degree in the subject area as well as real world experience in the field.

Teaching affluent kids with involved parents =/= teaching highly gifted students. The two who left learned that the hard way, but they terribly impacted our students while they gradually came to that understanding.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Throwing resources at low performers absolutely will lift them up. And if your kid is really a high performers, they will be a high performer with or without resources.

What about the kids in the middle, in a class of 30?!

Another reason why we need to reduce class sizes. A heterogeneous 20 is very manageable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Throwing resources at low performers absolutely will lift them up. And if your kid is really a high performers, they will be a high performer with or without resources.

Yep. Most high performing kids do well at any school. Their test scores say high wherever they go.

Why spend more money catering to kids who will be fine either way instead of focusing on kids who need the extra help?

Tell me you don't have a top performer without telling me... It's not about "doing fine". The kids are wasting their time, going excruciatingly slowly over stuff they already know. This happens even at the magnets.

And there are low performers who are wasting their time in classes where they are behind and need more attention to catch up. Without the extra attention, they are too far behind to learn anything.

There aren't enough resources to go around. I'd rather have my tax dollars help the low performers because the high performers will be just fine. Boredom does not cause illness in an otherwise healthy child. Now is a good time to figure out if your child might have some underlying issues.

You can pick up a second job to afford paying private school for your high performer instead of being so entitled that you have to make stupid assumptions concerning people who disagree with you. Spend your energy wisely.

I was a high performer who went to community college, still scored in the 99 percentile on the LSAT and ended up in an Ivy league law school. I have a friend from a similar background who is a cardiologist. We might have been bored throughout school, but we are just fine.

They cannot catch up and will never catch up. They need to leave school as early as possible and go on with their lives. Both low and high performers are trapped at schools for too long. The schools could least in principle serve top performers because there is a lot of stuff they could learn.

Very low students might never catch up with top performers, but that means that they really do need all 13 years of public education so that they can develop their reading, writing, math, and critical thinking skills as much as possible before adulthood.

I’ve seen students make huge leaps even after age 15 when they had access to reading intervention on a daily basis. It’s expensive and time consuming, but it makes the difference between being functionally illiterate and being an average reader.

A functionally illiterate person is likely stuck in working minimum wage jobs doing physical labor. They will end up with late fees, penalties, and other financial issues because they cannot understand their lease, bills, and other important documents. They cannot help their children with homework. This can create the next generation of the functionally illiterate. I’m all for spending what we can to break the cycle.

This administration is pushing for teenage births so we get a lot of unskilled workers who lack the ability to advocate for themselves. Encourage dropouts is just one step on that path.

If people knew % of the overall educational resources in this country that are spent on the bottom 10% they would demand reform.

Funneling the majority of education funds to the bottom is extremely counterproductive because their ceiling is so low.

Spending “whatever we can” is foolish, irresponsible, reckless, and counterproductive. Although it sounds like this pays your salary so I can see why you support it.

I teach the opposite end (highly gifted students) so you are incorrect. However, I’ve volunteered with very low students and families for over twenty years so I know that intensive intervention is an investment that benefits all of society.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The new AP Seminar offered in English departments for 10th graders is bringing back tracking, by the way. The high achieving 10th graders now take that for English and “Honors” English 10 is by default actually on level. So- all the kids with IEPs and behavioral issues.

MCPS is so messed up. Honors for all! Then… well, except for this.

That's the way it has been in 11th and 12th grade English, so why not the same for 10th?

I think it’s kind of silly to pretend there’s a large cohort of sophomores ready for college-level English. So it’d make more sense to just have an advanced HS class.

Any advanced class will always end up becoming an honors for all class, unless some criteria are strictly enforced, or there’s an across-board consistent test attached to the course. AP belongs to the latter.

Is that true? We can’t have APs in middle school, or that would be absurd I think, but there should be an advanced English 6,7,8 option. I really think students can mostly self-select into the class that makes sense for them at that level, without the need for strict criteria or an expensive EOY standardized test.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are you all saying gifted kids will figure it out for themselves and don’t need help/resources/harder classes? Gifted doesn’t necessarily mean hard working. A lot of these kids burn out and also need direction.

I personally would like harder classes for all. One of my kids is not gifted and she’s definitely been left behind. Her classes are insanely easy, there’s no good classroom debate on any subjects, and the teachers spends all of her time focuses on kids who can still barely read. My daughter is so curious about everything and loves math but there’s nothing for her.

I’m not saying harder classes shouldn’t be available, but they are available. Maybe that collection of classes doesn’t meet your child’s needs because they are so uniquely gifted, but it still doesn’t make sense for the school to develop a whole new curriculum pathways for a single child when other options are available. Particularly if that comes at the expense of larger swaths of kids that are struggling academically.

but they aren't. those classes are too easy.

I truly don’t understand the logic here. The schools offer many options for kids of all intelligence and motivation levels. Our school offers MVC, Linear Algebra, AP calc, and AP Stats, in person at our HS. In addition they offer many math classes for kids that are less advanced. Those classes meet the needs of the vast majority of students.

For the let’s say top 3%, they will now offer cluster based accelerated programs. For the kids who are beyond that, let’s say the top .3%, there are other options available like DE and the like. My kid digs physics but there is only one AP physics class at the HS. So she took four semester of Physics classes and labs at the college.

If your kid is a truly unique, one of a kind genius that is curing cancer at 14, then I agree MCPS isn’t going to give them the best diversity of options for academic challenge. I also think it isn’t MCPS’s responsibility to meet every possible desire for a very single outlier kid. For virtually every other high stats/gifted kid it seems to me that there are a wide diversity of options that MCPS offers that can reasonable meet their needs.

You are talking high school, mostly upper grades in high school. And you are talking mostly math. For non-math subjects before about 10th grade, there is very little challenge available for even mildly gifted kids, or non-gifted but bright kids. They get thrown in grade-level or below-grade-level classes with kids of wildly varying skill levels and the teachers have to spend most of their time trying to catch up kids who are behind.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are you all saying gifted kids will figure it out for themselves and don’t need help/resources/harder classes? Gifted doesn’t necessarily mean hard working. A lot of these kids burn out and also need direction.

I personally would like harder classes for all. One of my kids is not gifted and she’s definitely been left behind. Her classes are insanely easy, there’s no good classroom debate on any subjects, and the teachers spends all of her time focuses on kids who can still barely read. My daughter is so curious about everything and loves math but there’s nothing for her.

I’m not saying harder classes shouldn’t be available, but they are available. Maybe that collection of classes doesn’t meet your child’s needs because they are so uniquely gifted, but it still doesn’t make sense for the school to develop a whole new curriculum pathways for a single child when other options are available. Particularly if that comes at the expense of larger swaths of kids that are struggling academically.

but they aren't. those classes are too easy.

I truly don’t understand the logic here. The schools offer many options for kids of all intelligence and motivation levels. Our school offers MVC, Linear Algebra, AP calc, and AP Stats, in person at our HS. In addition they offer many math classes for kids that are less advanced. Those classes meet the needs of the vast majority of students.

For the let’s say top 3%, they will now offer cluster based accelerated programs. For the kids who are beyond that, let’s say the top .3%, there are other options available like DE and the like. My kid digs physics but there is only one AP physics class at the HS. So she took four semester of Physics classes and labs at the college.

If your kid is a truly unique, one of a kind genius that is curing cancer at 14, then I agree MCPS isn’t going to give them the best diversity of options for academic challenge. I also think it isn’t MCPS’s responsibility to meet every possible desire for a very single outlier kid. For virtually every other high stats/gifted kid it seems to me that there are a wide diversity of options that MCPS offers that can reasonable meet their needs.

The problem isn’t what MCPS currently offers. In fact MCPS has historically been a great district for gifted kids. It’s what they’re taking away. No more ELC. No more magnets. It’s dumbing everything down

I did describe what they are going to offer, now what they offer right now. Notice I didn’t mention magnets but instead referred to cluster based accelerated programs.

How do you know what they are going to offer in the regional STEM program? It’s not shown anywhere on the slides. Link plz? If you are from the study team, how do MCPS make these course offerings equitable across different regions? If not enough students register, are some of the classes going to vanish over years? This has happened in the regional IB model. What metrics are MCPS going to evaluate the success and access across 6 regions? How often to evaluate and what’s the mitigation strategy if significant discrepancies are identified?

I’m not asking particularly hard questions. These are routine questions asked in any academia or industry proposals.

+1

And where will MCPS find teachers, especially STEM teachers, to staff these six centers?

They will rearrange things. They can pull them from the w schools.

Wut? The W teachers are generally no more qualified to teach MVC, Linear Algebra, Quantum Physics, Thermodynamics, or Discrete Mathematics than any other teacher in the county. Which is to say, not qualified.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Equal opportunity does not lead to equal outcomes. There is no vast amount of untapped talent. Throwing resources at low performers won't significantly lift them. If equity is the goal, the only way to get there is to handicap the very top performers. This is exactly what MCPS is doing.

Okay Harrison Bergeron.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think everyone already knew that. They give low performing students a leg up while also cutting high performers off at the knees.

This is why, if you can afford it, go private.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Equal opportunity does not lead to equal outcomes. There is no vast amount of untapped talent. Throwing resources at low performers won't significantly lift them. If equity is the goal, the only way to get there is to handicap the very top performers. This is exactly what MCPS is doing.

Okay Harrison Bergeron.

I often wonder if public education administrators have read this.