Brookings Institution article about the new MCPS middle school magnet selection process

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not the PP but I would be fine giving a bump to truly low SES kids. A poor kid scoring 92% that is willing to do the work and ride the bus for 2-3 hours can get in. However a kid who is MC and white who gets a 95% should not be bumping out a kid who is asian and gets a 99%.

The way you would do it would be to give extra % points for being poor and then choose the top students.

maybe.. but is that what happened? Do they know which child is on FARMs? Hard to tell without seeing the numbers. What we do know is that they used "peer cohort". So say that a low income student from a W cluster (yes, they do have a few) got a 93% but had a peer group at the W school. Based on MCPS admission criteria, that low income child would've been denied.

Well....no, because peer cohort was not the only factor. Other factors, including FARMS status, MAP scores, etc. went into the mix per the guidance at the time.

Per MCPS, if there was a peer cohort, they were denied, irrespective of test scores.

We know that's not true because there are kids from schools WITH cohorts at TPMS and Eastern. The bar may have been higher, but it isn't as if there are zero kids at Eastern who would otherwise be at Pyle or Westland.

+1 also not true at TPMS. There are kids from Pyle, Cabin John and Hoover in the 6th grade cohort.

Yes, this narrative that some parents are pushing is anything but factual. Admissions just got a lot more competitive this past year. A parent simply nominating their budding genius wasn't sufficient for admission any longer. The program itself is more competitive than ever while far more children throughout the county benefit because of the cohort changes.

[Anonymous]

The article makes a good point that the process wasn't transparent so we don't have any data to know what really happened.

I suspect that many kids scored in the 99% on the CogAt test and had A's on their report cards and 5's on the PARCC exams. This describes my child who didn't get into the MS magnets. Also scored 99% on MAP tests. However, the two kids that got in from our school scored much higher on the MAP tests. Also 99% but scored on average 10-20 pts higher than my son since 4th grade. I know this because the kids would discuss their scores.

I think they were the true outliers and deserved to get in.

[Anonymous]

I think most people on dcum have heartily endorsed universal screening as a way to identify children who might have been missed in previous years and to generally expand the applicant pool. It was therefore only to be expected that there would be some drop off in the numbers of students coming from ESs that typically send a lot of students.
What makes me and other parents suspicious is that the number of students coming from high performing ES dropped so precipitously. It seems especially strange that only a couple of children from Cold Spring CES would gain admission to the middle school magnets this year as Cold Spring always reported the highest median magnet middle school test results in the past.
If you look at MCPS's own data (https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/uploadedFiles/schools/msmagnet/about/MS%20Magnet%20Field%20Test%20Data%20by%20Sending%20MS.pdf)
the sending middle school clusters that had the most students who did well on the COGAT test were: Hoover, Frost, Pyle, SSIMs, Sligo, Cabin John. These were the same schools that saw ridiculously low number of students accepted into the middle school magnets presumably on the basis of the peer cohort criteria. What is more telling is that only 25 students were accepted to Takoma from all the CES schools and only 28 were accepted to Eastern from all the CES schools.

I will also note that if MCPS was concerned that high performing students in low performing schools might not have a peer group, that may not be the case as nearly every middle school appears to have at a minimum 20 students who are "qualified" wrt their COGAT scores and so there are enough qualified students in every middle school to run an enriched math and enriched humanities class.

MCPS needs to release the median scores of accepted students for every sending middle school so we can see whether they did indeed find dozens more kids they missed in years past (in which case I will be the first to congratulate them) or whether they tried to socially engineer the program with a clumsy peer cohort device.

[Anonymous]

MCPS shouldn't release median scores because they'd tell us absolutely nothing other than what we already know.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:MCPS shouldn't release median scores because they'd tell us absolutely nothing other than what we already know.

Yes.. That students with much higher test scores weren't admitted because of peer cohort; that the threshold was indeed lowered.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

MCPS needs to release the median scores of accepted students for every sending middle school so we can see whether they did indeed find dozens more kids they missed in years past (in which case I will be the first to congratulate them) or whether they tried to socially engineer the program with a clumsy peer cohort device.

The median score is the score where half got higher and half got lower. If MCPS told you the median scores, what would that tell you about the accepted students that you didn't already know?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MCPS shouldn't release median scores because they'd tell us absolutely nothing other than what we already know.

Yes.. That students with much higher test scores weren't admitted because of peer cohort; that the threshold was indeed lowered.

Median scores wouldn't show that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MCPS shouldn't release median scores because they'd tell us absolutely nothing other than what we already know.

Yes.. That students with much higher test scores weren't admitted because of peer cohort; that the threshold was indeed lowered.

The median score of accepted students would not tell you that.

[Anonymous]

Weird - I heard the kids who ended up in the enriched classes were lucky since they would've simply not made the cut.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think most people on dcum have heartily endorsed universal screening as a way to identify children who might have been missed in previous years and to generally expand the applicant pool. It was therefore only to be expected that there would be some drop off in the numbers of students coming from ESs that typically send a lot of students.
What makes me and other parents suspicious is that the number of students coming from high performing ES dropped so precipitously. It seems especially strange that only a couple of children from Cold Spring CES would gain admission to the middle school magnets this year as Cold Spring always reported the highest median magnet middle school test results in the past.
If you look at MCPS's own data (https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/uploadedFiles/schools/msmagnet/about/MS%20Magnet%20Field%20Test%20Data%20by%20Sending%20MS.pdf)
the sending middle school clusters that had the most students who did well on the COGAT test were: Hoover, Frost, Pyle, SSIMs, Sligo, Cabin John. These were the same schools that saw ridiculously low number of students accepted into the middle school magnets presumably on the basis of the peer cohort criteria. What is more telling is that only 25 students were accepted to Takoma from all the CES schools and only 28 were accepted to Eastern from all the CES schools.

I will also note that if MCPS was concerned that high performing students in low performing schools might not have a peer group, that may not be the case as nearly every middle school appears to have at a minimum 20 students who are "qualified" wrt their COGAT scores and so there are enough qualified students in every middle school to run an enriched math and enriched humanities class.

MCPS needs to release the median scores of accepted students for every sending middle school so we can see whether they did indeed find dozens more kids they missed in years past (in which case I will be the first to congratulate them) or whether they tried to socially engineer the program with a clumsy peer cohort device.

Interesting. Is there a breakdown of how many students from those MS were accepted to the magnet for that year?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not the PP but I would be fine giving a bump to truly low SES kids. A poor kid scoring 92% that is willing to do the work and ride the bus for 2-3 hours can get in. However a kid who is MC and white who gets a 95% should not be bumping out a kid who is asian and gets a 99%.

The way you would do it would be to give extra % points for being poor and then choose the top students.

maybe.. but is that what happened? Do they know which child is on FARMs? Hard to tell without seeing the numbers. What we do know is that they used "peer cohort". So say that a low income student from a W cluster (yes, they do have a few) got a 93% but had a peer group at the W school. Based on MCPS admission criteria, that low income child would've been denied.

Well....no, because peer cohort was not the only factor. Other factors, including FARMS status, MAP scores, etc. went into the mix per the guidance at the time.

Per MCPS, if there was a peer cohort, they were denied, irrespective of test scores.

We know that's not true because there are kids from schools WITH cohorts at TPMS and Eastern. The bar may have been higher, but it isn't as if there are zero kids at Eastern who would otherwise be at Pyle or Westland.

+1 also not true at TPMS. There are kids from Pyle, Cabin John and Hoover in the 6th grade cohort.

Correct. I agree with another PP that those kids were likely outliers at their own schools. So, now the magnet program is for outliers. Which is GREAT. That's exactly what I would hope and want for a magnet program, to pull out the outliers from each of the schools and educate them together.

My kid is one of those kids at the magnet now from one of the schools with a large peer cohort. From what I can tell, it seems a bit random who made it into the magnet from those schools. I'm not saying the kids weren't high scoring, I'm just saying that they were not necessarily "extreme outliers," or at least the committee didn't have enough information in front of them to make that determination. Remember, the committee knew very little information that would have served to differentiate those kids, given that only percentile scores were reported for the COGAT. And the kids with the highest MAP scores (anecdotally, it is of course hard to know or verify what a kid's MAP score was, but kids do talk) were not necessarily the kids who got in. I think that a parent for the Cold Spring CES also reported that same information. The CES teachers also told me that they thought the selection seemed a bit random. I feel lucky that my kid got in; I wouldn't say that the process is designed to find "extreme outliers" among upper middle class kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think most people on dcum have heartily endorsed universal screening as a way to identify children who might have been missed in previous years and to generally expand the applicant pool. It was therefore only to be expected that there would be some drop off in the numbers of students coming from ESs that typically send a lot of students.
What makes me and other parents suspicious is that the number of students coming from high performing ES dropped so precipitously. It seems especially strange that only a couple of children from Cold Spring CES would gain admission to the middle school magnets this year as Cold Spring always reported the highest median magnet middle school test results in the past.
If you look at MCPS's own data (https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/uploadedFiles/schools/msmagnet/about/MS%20Magnet%20Field%20Test%20Data%20by%20Sending%20MS.pdf)
the sending middle school clusters that had the most students who did well on the COGAT test were: Hoover, Frost, Pyle, SSIMs, Sligo, Cabin John. These were the same schools that saw ridiculously low number of students accepted into the middle school magnets presumably on the basis of the peer cohort criteria. What is more telling is that only 25 students were accepted to Takoma from all the CES schools and only 28 were accepted to Eastern from all the CES schools.

I will also note that if MCPS was concerned that high performing students in low performing schools might not have a peer group, that may not be the case as nearly every middle school appears to have at a minimum 20 students who are "qualified" wrt their COGAT scores and so there are enough qualified students in every middle school to run an enriched math and enriched humanities class.

MCPS needs to release the median scores of accepted students for every sending middle school so we can see whether they did indeed find dozens more kids they missed in years past (in which case I will be the first to congratulate them) or whether they tried to socially engineer the program with a clumsy peer cohort device.

Sounds like there's already such a strong cohort at Cold Spring they don't need a magnet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MCPS shouldn't release median scores because they'd tell us absolutely nothing other than what we already know.

Yes.. That students with much higher test scores weren't admitted because of peer cohort; that the threshold was indeed lowered.

The median score of accepted students would not tell you that.

So what would then. If the scores of students accepted from some middle school clusters were lower than the scores of students rejected from more high performing clusters that would tell us that the peer cohort device had an undue influence on the selection process this year. How can we verify if this is what MCPS did?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MCPS shouldn't release median scores because they'd tell us absolutely nothing other than what we already know.

Yes.. That students with much higher test scores weren't admitted because of peer cohort; that the threshold was indeed lowered.

The median score of accepted students would not tell you that.

So what would then. If the scores of students accepted from some middle school clusters were lower than the scores of students rejected from more high performing clusters that would tell us that the peer cohort device had an undue influence on the selection process this year. How can we verify if this is what MCPS did?

No, it wouldn't tell you that. It would just tell you that test scores were not the only factor in admissions. Which we already know. What's more, they weren't the only factor in admissions in the previous process, either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think most people on dcum have heartily endorsed universal screening as a way to identify children who might have been missed in previous years and to generally expand the applicant pool. It was therefore only to be expected that there would be some drop off in the numbers of students coming from ESs that typically send a lot of students.
What makes me and other parents suspicious is that the number of students coming from high performing ES dropped so precipitously. It seems especially strange that only a couple of children from Cold Spring CES would gain admission to the middle school magnets this year as Cold Spring always reported the highest median magnet middle school test results in the past.
If you look at MCPS's own data (https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/uploadedFiles/schools/msmagnet/about/MS%20Magnet%20Field%20Test%20Data%20by%20Sending%20MS.pdf)
the sending middle school clusters that had the most students who did well on the COGAT test were: Hoover, Frost, Pyle, SSIMs, Sligo, Cabin John. These were the same schools that saw ridiculously low number of students accepted into the middle school magnets presumably on the basis of the peer cohort criteria. What is more telling is that only 25 students were accepted to Takoma from all the CES schools and only 28 were accepted to Eastern from all the CES schools.

I will also note that if MCPS was concerned that high performing students in low performing schools might not have a peer group, that may not be the case as nearly every middle school appears to have at a minimum 20 students who are "qualified" wrt their COGAT scores and so there are enough qualified students in every middle school to run an enriched math and enriched humanities class.

MCPS needs to release the median scores of accepted students for every sending middle school so we can see whether they did indeed find dozens more kids they missed in years past (in which case I will be the first to congratulate them) or whether they tried to socially engineer the program with a clumsy peer cohort device.

Sounds like there's already such a strong cohort at Cold Spring they don't need a magnet.

The magnet experience includes a strong peer group (ideally the very best students drawn from all over the school district), teachers who are trained and experienced in teaching this population, an enriched curriculum that integrates related disciplines. So at Eastern when 6th grade children are learning about the Russian revolution in their magnet World Studies class they would be reading Animal Farm in their magnet English class and they would be reading several books that deal with an Utopia theme in their Literature and the Humanities magnet class. They would then do projects in each of these classes that might be linked to each other. They would probably also do a thematically linked project in their magnet Media class.
The experience at a magnet middle school does not compare to the experience in an enriched class or two in a regular middle school even if you have a strong peer group.