Takoma, Easter Magnets. MCPS Pilots Universal Evaluation Process.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The new selection criteria has resulted in a higher caliber student at the magnets than was previously possible since the system was exclusive and easily gamed..

Oh, did they finally release the GPAs, grades, standardized test scores of the Fall 2018 admits? Pls post.

We can only find the ones 2017 and earlier, and can't decide if it's worth applying or not or focusing on Fall private school apps.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

MCPS refused to release the MS magnet test data on the admirred and rejected students after multiple requests. Everyone is speculating but they they got no data to support their claim. MCPS owns the data and has total control over your child’s school life; it can be cc2.0 or magnet admission.
Unless MCPS touches the UMC and MC white students’ benefit, they will not face real resistance. UMC familes can affort private schools and can bring a lawsuit.
However, Asian families, most of them are first generation of immigrants, cannot afford private schools in this area and 100% depend on public school. It is daunting task to navigate the school system which is totally different from their own school experience. When they saw their child’s education opportunity is robbed by MCPS under the name of diversity, an angry reaction is the least you can expect. Fortunately, for MCPS, the angry voice from Asian parents may be the only reaction from Asian parents. The affected Asian parents will not bring a lawsuit to MCPS, because they cannot afford, cannot find a lawyer to take their case, or decided to let it go because their own child already missed the chance and need to move on.

Dear PP, you are right, there will be no lawsuit from Asian parents!

Asian-heritage families who live in Potomac can't afford a lawyer?

Most of Asian immegtant families in Potomac or North Potomac are working families with two professional jobs. After paying for the $500-900K houses, mortgage, child care, Music/Sport/enrichment classes for kids cost them most of the income after tax and retiremen saving. $45,000 cash for a private school each year,? It is beyond most of the Asian families.

Consider then the low income AA, African, or Latinx family downcounty with a gifted child who is getting Magnet as their only opportunity.

The better approach would be to have more intervention and enrichment for K-2 in low performing schools to ensure that gifted children are challenged and nurtured so that they can easily qualify for the Magnet programs. If you just change the selection criteria using a bogus peer group rationale you could end up with what has happened this year : roughly the same number of AA and HI students and more white students from DCC schools. Meanwhile many Asian and white students in W schools with higher scores did not get in. Before you respond with the standard “but their scores are higher because they went to cram schools “ I just want to say that prepping is not as common as you might imagine and the results of prepping are not as positive as you might imagine. I know of kids who did prep who got in ( and it is not a high number) and I know of kids who prepped who did not. My child got into RMIB, Blair SMAC and CAP without any prepping and he was not alone

MCPS is failing its 1000s of gifted ES, MS and HS students of every income strata.
Until MCPS fixes its curriculum and cares about more than its bottom students, it will do nothing except continue to
(i) offer miniscule magnet programs that are subscale in size for this area's gifted population and
(ii) expect parents to pay for enrichment, challenges and extra classes for their smart and able kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Parents and students see the magnet programs as an educational opportunity for the highest performing students and merit base.

MCPS sees the program very differently. The magnet locations were chosen to attract families with higher performing students (which at the demographically meant higher SES and white) into poorer, failing schools. It was an attempt at desegregation at a time when bussing and school assignment based on race was ruled illegal. The r20-25 reserved seats that don't compete at the same level for admission for in-boundary TPMS students was/is another example of trying to attract/retain UMC whites to live in the area. While not every seat goes to a UMC white student who performed lower that other kids in the county, most do. The proliferation of programs throughout the DCC to attract better performing students from elsewhere in the county is designed to bump up the primary score performance that people moving into the area see when searching for new homes. In many ways, this worked until GS started doing equity ratings revealing that large portions of the schools were significantly below grade level.

About a year age MCPS did a study and found the data that they knew all along - minority children were significantly underrepresented and Asian children were significantly over represented. So MCPS adjusted their admissions process to not only do universal evaluation (which is a good thing) but to also restrict students that historically had been Asian residing in high performing school clusters (this is awful) and lower the admissions bar to the magnets to yield the racial profile the school system wanted to see. For parents, residents, lawyers and basically anyone not in MCPS this is terrible. From the MCPS perspective however where getting all schools performing in the middle to claim success and getting the demographic optics they want it made perfect sense.

If MCPS had simply put in place universal evaluation and then made a focused attempt at improving enrichment for ANY kid that identified as gifted but wasn't high enough to get in it would have been a move in the right direction.The "cohort" excuse is simply racial profiling no different than the "geographic" shenanigans that that the Rs play to suppress minority voters.

Very true. This was a Superintendent Starr initiative before he got fired. Central office kept pushing it onward before new replacement could do anything about it.

The saddest part of MCPS is how bad its K-8 curriculum is and how overcrowded its HS classes are. Materials is just skimmed over the the 'study to the test" mentality is too too prevalent in K-12, whereas the deeper learning, project-based homework, meaningful class discussions take place in the CES and magnet programs, which are somewhat comparable to DC area private school educations. Meanwhile, the mainstream publics, including W schools have shallow test-based learning, worksheet homework from a hodge podge C2.0 curriculum, and center-based learning or lectures to 30-35 students per class.

MCPS in 2018 is far from 1998 or even 2008 days; it has really gone downhill on every metric.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The new selection criteria has resulted in a higher caliber student at the magnets than was previously possible since the system was exclusive and easily gamed..

Oh, did they finally release the GPAs, grades, standardized test scores of the Fall 2018 admits? Pls post.

We can only find the ones 2017 and earlier, and can't decide if it's worth applying or not or focusing on Fall private school apps.

Then don't apply. More opportunity for the kids who aren't your kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The new selection criteria has resulted in a higher caliber student at the magnets than was previously possible since the system was exclusive and easily gamed..

Oh, did they finally release the GPAs, grades, standardized test scores of the Fall 2018 admits? Pls post.

We can only find the ones 2017 and earlier, and can't decide if it's worth applying or not or focusing on Fall private school apps.

Then don't apply. More opportunity for the kids who aren't your kid.

Answer the question, don't deflect (makes you look guilty and immature): did MCPS finally release the GPAs, grades, standardized test scores of the Fall 2018 admits? Pls post

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The new selection criteria has resulted in a higher caliber student at the magnets than was previously possible since the system was exclusive and easily gamed..

Oh, did they finally release the GPAs, grades, standardized test scores of the Fall 2018 admits? Pls post.

We can only find the ones 2017 and earlier, and can't decide if it's worth applying or not or focusing on Fall private school apps.

It's perfectly clear the new system is superior because there is far greater competition now. Not sure why the county has to waste money on these fool errands to satisfy the paranoid ravings of some wacko tigermom.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The new selection criteria has resulted in a higher caliber student at the magnets than was previously possible since the system was exclusive and easily gamed..

Oh, did they finally release the GPAs, grades, standardized test scores of the Fall 2018 admits? Pls post.

We can only find the ones 2017 and earlier, and can't decide if it's worth applying or not or focusing on Fall private school apps.

It's perfectly clear the new system is superior because there is far greater competition now. Not sure why the county has to waste money on these fool errands to satisfy the paranoid ravings of some wacko tigermom.

Still trying to gas-light a basic question, huh? So your answer is "no, they are not releasing the data for the first time ever."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The new selection criteria has resulted in a higher caliber student at the magnets than was previously possible since the system was exclusive and easily gamed..

Oh, did they finally release the GPAs, grades, standardized test scores of the Fall 2018 admits? Pls post.

We can only find the ones 2017 and earlier, and can't decide if it's worth applying or not or focusing on Fall private school apps.

It's perfectly clear the new system is superior because there is far greater competition now. Not sure why the county has to waste money on these fool errands to satisfy the paranoid ravings of some wacko tigermom.

Love the scarcasm PP.

Sadly, the only way to see what the competition was from encompassing 4000 students is to release the data. And we know they didn't pick by academics score, since they heavily weighted where your parent or guardian's house was located and how your peers' tested!

[Anonymous]

If the URM students failed to accept the spots and the magnet is now really just filled with more DCC white kids instead of higher performing Asian kids from the west, its even more of a screw up.

UMC white families in the west don't bother with the magnets. They don't want to ship their kid off to a school in a sketchy area. The whole point of buying into a W cluster is to not have to deal with the commute and safety issues at the magnets. UMC white families in the west are pissed off about the sudden enrichment classes. It brings back to the forefront how there are so many gifted kids in the W schools yet they don't get a gifted curriculum. No believes that the enrichment classes that MCPS made up at the last minute will actually be accelerated.

[Anonymous]

The problem is parents who were able to game the system in the past are pretty angry now that the admission criteria is competitive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If the URM students failed to accept the spots and the magnet is now really just filled with more DCC white kids instead of higher performing Asian kids from the west, its even more of a screw up.

UMC white families in the west don't bother with the magnets. They don't want to ship their kid off to a school in a sketchy area. The whole point of buying into a W cluster is to not have to deal with the commute and safety issues at the magnets. UMC white families in the west are pissed off about the sudden enrichment classes. It brings back to the forefront how there are so many gifted kids in the W schools yet they don't get a gifted curriculum. No believes that the enrichment classes that MCPS made up at the last minute will actually be accelerated.

Most W parents wish their kids could get into the magnets. Anyone who follows this board knows better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The new selection criteria has resulted in a higher caliber student at the magnets than was previously possible since the system was exclusive and easily gamed..

Oh, did they finally release the GPAs, grades, standardized test scores of the Fall 2018 admits? Pls post.

We can only find the ones 2017 and earlier, and can't decide if it's worth applying or not or focusing on Fall private school apps.

Then don't apply. More opportunity for the kids who aren't your kid.

+1

Please go private and take 14:52 with you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If the URM students failed to accept the spots and the magnet is now really just filled with more DCC white kids instead of higher performing Asian kids from the west, its even more of a screw up.

UMC white families in the west don't bother with the magnets. They don't want to ship their kid off to a school in a sketchy area. The whole point of buying into a W cluster is to not have to deal with the commute and safety issues at the magnets. UMC white families in the west are pissed off about the sudden enrichment classes. It brings back to the forefront how there are so many gifted kids in the W schools yet they don't get a gifted curriculum. No believes that the enrichment classes that MCPS made up at the last minute will actually be accelerated.

I don't understand the tendency on this forum to turn "me, my friend, these other three people I know, some people I talked to at a party, and some other people they say they talked to" into "everyone" (or "no one", depending).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The new selection criteria has resulted in a higher caliber student at the magnets than was previously possible since the system was exclusive and easily gamed..

Oh, did they finally release the GPAs, grades, standardized test scores of the Fall 2018 admits? Pls post.

We can only find the ones 2017 and earlier, and can't decide if it's worth applying or not or focusing on Fall private school apps.

Then don't apply. More opportunity for the kids who aren't your kid.

+1

Please go private and take 14:52 with you.

yes!

[Anonymous]

most of the people going to magnets do so because they live near them and their kid got in.
who on earth would put their kid on a 60-90 minute bus ride twice a day? that must mean they don't do sports or travel teams or clubs outside of school. And how do they get home from their magnet school if they do? what a nightmare.