Hypocrisy about diverse schools

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:MCPS makes the hypocrisy worse by actively trying to entice wealthier white people into schools through magnet and other programs AND not providing appropriate special education for kids with learning disabilities.

The magnet, honors and AP courses are all filled with UMC kids and a small handful of lower income kids. The UMC parents in these schools push hard to make sure that their kids get into these classes. Many are far from geniuses or even smart. They have the advantage of parents with resources and the ability to push.

Many UMC and URM kids have learning disabilities but UMC parents will force MCPS to do something. If you have insurance to pay for outside testing, enough education to understand your child's rights, and the inclination to fight you can make sure that your ADHD, dyslexic, language or math challenged child gets the intervention he or she needs in the early years. The low income kids don't have anyone fighting for them and MCPS ignores them.

I'm sure that there are many more low income kids who COULD have been qualified for those classes if their parents had advocated and pushed for them to be in the classes and had the resources to push MCPS to accommodate learning disabilities.

This is so not true. First you mix up programs for advanced kids and programs for kids with learning disabilities. These are completely different issues. Second you imply that higher income parents push MCPS to get their kids in the good programs? This is just your imagination. They may push their kids more, but I don't see how they push MCPS to achieve that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MCPS makes the hypocrisy worse by actively trying to entice wealthier white people into schools through magnet and other programs AND not providing appropriate special education for kids with learning disabilities.

The magnet, honors and AP courses are all filled with UMC kids and a small handful of lower income kids. The UMC parents in these schools push hard to make sure that their kids get into these classes. Many are far from geniuses or even smart. They have the advantage of parents with resources and the ability to push.

Many UMC and URM kids have learning disabilities but UMC parents will force MCPS to do something. If you have insurance to pay for outside testing, enough education to understand your child's rights, and the inclination to fight you can make sure that your ADHD, dyslexic, language or math challenged child gets the intervention he or she needs in the early years. The low income kids don't have anyone fighting for them and MCPS ignores them.

I'm sure that there are many more low income kids who COULD have been qualified for those classes if their parents had advocated and pushed for them to be in the classes and had the resources to push MCPS to accommodate learning disabilities.

Uh.. no.. MCPS just changed admittance to CES and MS mangets to look at "peer cohort" such that many high achievers from the wealthier schools didn't get in.

How should MCPS determine if a low income child has a LD? How can MCPS force the parents of low income kids to get their kids tested even if the testing is free?

But wait, I thought people sent their kids to wealthier schools so that they would have a peer cohort of high achieving students. I thought the problem with diverse schools was that there won't be the high achieving cohort that exists at wealthy schools. So if there are all these superstar achievers at wealthy schools, and people are paying a fortune to live near them and not the poors, what does it matter whether their kids get into magnets?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

It's not "SES peer cohort".. it's "academic peer cohort" which doesn't mean that they are all not low income. Calm down. You're making a big stink out of nothing.

Yeah no, it has zero to do with academic cohort. Its about SES, making sure that their kids are around kids with educated parents, not food insecure, no drop out siblings, parents are employed/not in jail etc There was a thread a while back with someone asking about New Hampshire Estates and all the posters nearby made a huge deal that the school is too poor so the OP's kids would have a hard time finding friends.

I don't know about that thread, or what a New Hampshire Estate is. But, there is a tipping point in schools wrt low income kids, and there are empirical studies that show that if the low SES percentage stays below it, the high SES kids will generally perform well, no matter what. But if a school gets past that tipping point, the performance of *all* students seems to suffer. For most people, it's about outcomes, not finding rich friends.

And no, I don't have a link to the studies. Sorry.

Up to 20% doesn't matter 20-40% starts taking a hit over 40% the school has to focus on dealing with kids who need help so much the rest of the school population takes a dramatic hit and it actaully does harm to the kids who don't need extra support due to the lack of attention and focus by the school

WHy can't the county give school vouchers to poor families and let them choose a school to attend as long as the school isn't overcrowded or that it hasn't reached the max limit (whatever that % is, let's say 20%) for FARMS?

Think about other parts of our country where the schools are not managed by counties, but as individual school districts. Should a school district just send kids to other districts just because the FARM rate is too high?

If one thinks (or a study shows) high FARM rate for a school is a problem, that is a problem that needs to be dealt with by people managing that school and people living in that community. Shifting the burden to others is not the right way to do it.

But we're not like other parts of the country. We are one county and we have poor schools, rich schools, and those in between in this one county. We've already established that schools with a high number of poor kids are not good for all students at the school; regardless of what the school does or what programs are established at that school. WHy would school vouchers be a burden to other schools as long as they don't significantly drive up the FARM rates and cause overcrowding?

Put it this way: if you can just "voucher" students to other schools without burdening those schools taking these students, why not just re-zone the clusters to reflect that? Also does county funding go with these students to the schools accepting them? If not, that is unfair.

I would feel even giving more funding to high FARM rate schools (so that they can get more manpower etc.) would be better justified.

Title I schools already get additional funds.

I agree with redefining clusters so you get a better cross section of students at schools.

Well MCPS agrees with you on that one because there's a current study going on about a county-wide boundary reassignment. I would love to see this come to fruition but I don't see this happening for many many years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MCPS makes the hypocrisy worse by actively trying to entice wealthier white people into schools through magnet and other programs AND not providing appropriate special education for kids with learning disabilities.

The magnet, honors and AP courses are all filled with UMC kids and a small handful of lower income kids. The UMC parents in these schools push hard to make sure that their kids get into these classes. Many are far from geniuses or even smart. They have the advantage of parents with resources and the ability to push.

Many UMC and URM kids have learning disabilities but UMC parents will force MCPS to do something. If you have insurance to pay for outside testing, enough education to understand your child's rights, and the inclination to fight you can make sure that your ADHD, dyslexic, language or math challenged child gets the intervention he or she needs in the early years. The low income kids don't have anyone fighting for them and MCPS ignores them.

I'm sure that there are many more low income kids who COULD have been qualified for those classes if their parents had advocated and pushed for them to be in the classes and had the resources to push MCPS to accommodate learning disabilities.

Uh.. no.. MCPS just changed admittance to CES and MS mangets to look at "peer cohort" such that many high achievers from the wealthier schools didn't get in.

How should MCPS determine if a low income child has a LD? How can MCPS force the parents of low income kids to get their kids tested even if the testing is free?

But wait, I thought people sent their kids to wealthier schools so that they would have a peer cohort of high achieving students. I thought the problem with diverse schools was that there won't be the high achieving cohort that exists at wealthy schools. So if there are all these superstar achievers at wealthy schools, and people are paying a fortune to live near them and not the poors, what does it matter whether their kids get into magnets?

Because obviously not all the kids in those schools get into magnet since there are a very limited number of spots. They are hedging their bets. A magnet program is leagues above a regular curriculum, even an "enriched" one.

I don't live in a W cluster btw.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MCPS makes the hypocrisy worse by actively trying to entice wealthier white people into schools through magnet and other programs AND not providing appropriate special education for kids with learning disabilities.

The magnet, honors and AP courses are all filled with UMC kids and a small handful of lower income kids. The UMC parents in these schools push hard to make sure that their kids get into these classes. Many are far from geniuses or even smart. They have the advantage of parents with resources and the ability to push.

Many UMC and URM kids have learning disabilities but UMC parents will force MCPS to do something. If you have insurance to pay for outside testing, enough education to understand your child's rights, and the inclination to fight you can make sure that your ADHD, dyslexic, language or math challenged child gets the intervention he or she needs in the early years. The low income kids don't have anyone fighting for them and MCPS ignores them.

I'm sure that there are many more low income kids who COULD have been qualified for those classes if their parents had advocated and pushed for them to be in the classes and had the resources to push MCPS to accommodate learning disabilities.

Uh.. no.. MCPS just changed admittance to CES and MS mangets to look at "peer cohort" such that many high achievers from the wealthier schools didn't get in.

How should MCPS determine if a low income child has a LD? How can MCPS force the parents of low income kids to get their kids tested even if the testing is free?

But wait, I thought people sent their kids to wealthier schools so that they would have a peer cohort of high achieving students. I thought the problem with diverse schools was that there won't be the high achieving cohort that exists at wealthy schools. So if there are all these superstar achievers at wealthy schools, and people are paying a fortune to live near them and not the poors, what does it matter whether their kids get into magnets?

Just to answer your question: it still matters because magnets have even higher achievers if that is what they want. Of course, it matters less for students from better schools because even if they fail to get into the magnets, they can still be in a school with high (not as high as the magnets) achieving students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

It's not "SES peer cohort".. it's "academic peer cohort" which doesn't mean that they are all not low income. Calm down. You're making a big stink out of nothing.

Yeah no, it has zero to do with academic cohort. Its about SES, making sure that their kids are around kids with educated parents, not food insecure, no drop out siblings, parents are employed/not in jail etc There was a thread a while back with someone asking about New Hampshire Estates and all the posters nearby made a huge deal that the school is too poor so the OP's kids would have a hard time finding friends.

I don't know about that thread, or what a New Hampshire Estate is. But, there is a tipping point in schools wrt low income kids, and there are empirical studies that show that if the low SES percentage stays below it, the high SES kids will generally perform well, no matter what. But if a school gets past that tipping point, the performance of *all* students seems to suffer. For most people, it's about outcomes, not finding rich friends.

And no, I don't have a link to the studies. Sorry.

Up to 20% doesn't matter 20-40% starts taking a hit over 40% the school has to focus on dealing with kids who need help so much the rest of the school population takes a dramatic hit and it actaully does harm to the kids who don't need extra support due to the lack of attention and focus by the school

WHy can't the county give school vouchers to poor families and let them choose a school to attend as long as the school isn't overcrowded or that it hasn't reached the max limit (whatever that % is, let's say 20%) for FARMS?

Think about other parts of our country where the schools are not managed by counties, but as individual school districts. Should a school district just send kids to other districts just because the FARM rate is too high?

If one thinks (or a study shows) high FARM rate for a school is a problem, that is a problem that needs to be dealt with by people managing that school and people living in that community. Shifting the burden to others is not the right way to do it.

But we're not like other parts of the country. We are one county and we have poor schools, rich schools, and those in between in this one county. We've already established that schools with a high number of poor kids are not good for all students at the school; regardless of what the school does or what programs are established at that school. WHy would school vouchers be a burden to other schools as long as they don't significantly drive up the FARM rates and cause overcrowding?

Put it this way: if you can just "voucher" students to other schools without burdening those schools taking these students, why not just re-zone the clusters to reflect that? Also does county funding go with these students to the schools accepting them? If not, that is unfair.

I would feel even giving more funding to high FARM rate schools (so that they can get more manpower etc.) would be better justified.

Title I schools already get additional funds.

I agree with redefining clusters so you get a better cross section of students at schools.

Well MCPS agrees with you on that one because there's a current study going on about a county-wide boundary reassignment. I would love to see this come to fruition but I don't see this happening for many many years.

I don't see how we can come close to evenly distributing FARMS unless we change housing policy. Many of the wealthier schools don't serve areas that have lots of multi-family housing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MCPS makes the hypocrisy worse by actively trying to entice wealthier white people into schools through magnet and other programs AND not providing appropriate special education for kids with learning disabilities.

The magnet, honors and AP courses are all filled with UMC kids and a small handful of lower income kids. The UMC parents in these schools push hard to make sure that their kids get into these classes. Many are far from geniuses or even smart. They have the advantage of parents with resources and the ability to push.

Many UMC and URM kids have learning disabilities but UMC parents will force MCPS to do something. If you have insurance to pay for outside testing, enough education to understand your child's rights, and the inclination to fight you can make sure that your ADHD, dyslexic, language or math challenged child gets the intervention he or she needs in the early years. The low income kids don't have anyone fighting for them and MCPS ignores them.

I'm sure that there are many more low income kids who COULD have been qualified for those classes if their parents had advocated and pushed for them to be in the classes and had the resources to push MCPS to accommodate learning disabilities.

Uh.. no.. MCPS just changed admittance to CES and MS mangets to look at "peer cohort" such that many high achievers from the wealthier schools didn't get in.

How should MCPS determine if a low income child has a LD? How can MCPS force the parents of low income kids to get their kids tested even if the testing is free?

But wait, I thought people sent their kids to wealthier schools so that they would have a peer cohort of high achieving students. I thought the problem with diverse schools was that there won't be the high achieving cohort that exists at wealthy schools. So if there are all these superstar achievers at wealthy schools, and people are paying a fortune to live near them and not the poors, what does it matter whether their kids get into magnets?

Exactly.

[Anonymous]

I'm going to try and summarize here. Posters ideas are well intentioned but they won't work practically

To simplify let's say that higher income schools are generally in the Western part of the county

Redrawing boundary lines won't work because the western part of the county is more well off than the eastern part. Schools in the eastern part of the county are always going to have higher FARMS rates

Ok so what if you bus kids from east of the county to west of the county.

Who do you select to bus? Is it some kind of test? ok, then sure high performing kids from east county probably get a better education but the remaining kids are in an even tougher environment stuck in their home base schools

The only real way to get out of this is zoning adding more dense and affordable housing to West county but politically that will never happen and even if it did happen if schools start to increase in FARMS rates guess what. The people currently living in Bethesda go private or move in search of a school with lower farms rates

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

It's not "SES peer cohort".. it's "academic peer cohort" which doesn't mean that they are all not low income. Calm down. You're making a big stink out of nothing.

Yeah no, it has zero to do with academic cohort. Its about SES, making sure that their kids are around kids with educated parents, not food insecure, no drop out siblings, parents are employed/not in jail etc There was a thread a while back with someone asking about New Hampshire Estates and all the posters nearby made a huge deal that the school is too poor so the OP's kids would have a hard time finding friends.

I don't know about that thread, or what a New Hampshire Estate is. But, there is a tipping point in schools wrt low income kids, and there are empirical studies that show that if the low SES percentage stays below it, the high SES kids will generally perform well, no matter what. But if a school gets past that tipping point, the performance of *all* students seems to suffer. For most people, it's about outcomes, not finding rich friends.

And no, I don't have a link to the studies. Sorry.

Up to 20% doesn't matter 20-40% starts taking a hit over 40% the school has to focus on dealing with kids who need help so much the rest of the school population takes a dramatic hit and it actaully does harm to the kids who don't need extra support due to the lack of attention and focus by the school

WHy can't the county give school vouchers to poor families and let them choose a school to attend as long as the school isn't overcrowded or that it hasn't reached the max limit (whatever that % is, let's say 20%) for FARMS?

Think about other parts of our country where the schools are not managed by counties, but as individual school districts. Should a school district just send kids to other districts just because the FARM rate is too high?

If one thinks (or a study shows) high FARM rate for a school is a problem, that is a problem that needs to be dealt with by people managing that school and people living in that community. Shifting the burden to others is not the right way to do it.

But we're not like other parts of the country. We are one county and we have poor schools, rich schools, and those in between in this one county. We've already established that schools with a high number of poor kids are not good for all students at the school; regardless of what the school does or what programs are established at that school. WHy would school vouchers be a burden to other schools as long as they don't significantly drive up the FARM rates and cause overcrowding?

Put it this way: if you can just "voucher" students to other schools without burdening those schools taking these students, why not just re-zone the clusters to reflect that? Also does county funding go with these students to the schools accepting them? If not, that is unfair.

I would feel even giving more funding to high FARM rate schools (so that they can get more manpower etc.) would be better justified.

Title I schools already get additional funds.

I agree with redefining clusters so you get a better cross section of students at schools.

Well MCPS agrees with you on that one because there's a current study going on about a county-wide boundary reassignment. I would love to see this come to fruition but I don't see this happening for many many years.

I don't see how we can come close to evenly distributing FARMS unless we change housing policy. Many of the wealthier schools don't serve areas that have lots of multi-family housing.

"Evenly distributing" is of course, not possible.

Change it somehow, is possible. For example, one can shift part of a high farm region of school cluster A into a neighboring school cluster B. And then shift some of the low FARM region of B into the next cluster C, and then on...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm going to try and summarize here. Posters ideas are well intentioned but they won't work practically

To simplify let's say that higher income schools are generally in the Western part of the county

Redrawing boundary lines won't work because the western part of the county is more well off than the eastern part. Schools in the eastern part of the county are always going to have higher FARMS rates

Ok so what if you bus kids from east of the county to west of the county.

Who do you select to bus? Is it some kind of test? ok, then sure high performing kids from east county probably get a better education but the remaining kids are in an even tougher environment stuck in their home base schools

The only real way to get out of this is zoning adding more dense and affordable housing to West county but politically that will never happen and even if it did happen if schools start to increase in FARMS rates guess what. The people currently living in Bethesda go private or move in search of a school with lower farms rates

It is not a problem that can and need to solved by the school system. MCPS can make policies that help ease the problem (e.g. funding), but it is not the responsibility of MCPS to solve this social issue.
Other parts of the government, and, the people themselves, need to work together.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm going to try and summarize here. Posters ideas are well intentioned but they won't work practically

To simplify let's say that higher income schools are generally in the Western part of the county

Redrawing boundary lines won't work because the western part of the county is more well off than the eastern part. Schools in the eastern part of the county are always going to have higher FARMS rates

Ok so what if you bus kids from east of the county to west of the county.

Who do you select to bus? Is it some kind of test? ok, then sure high performing kids from east county probably get a better education but the remaining kids are in an even tougher environment stuck in their home base schools

The only real way to get out of this is zoning adding more dense and affordable housing to West county but politically that will never happen and even if it did happen if schools start to increase in FARMS rates guess what. The people currently living in Bethesda go private or move in search of a school with lower farms rates

There are kids in Kensington who could easily got to Einstein, rather than WJ. The bus ride would be shorter. Heck, many of them could probably walk to Einstein. But the parents would start screaming and marching on Rockville with pitchforks.

[Anonymous]

Agree on re-evaluating the boundaries and making the necessary adjustments but I saw somewhere in California (I can't find the article anymore) where they shifted schools so that they have a theme-based curriculum (a lot like the down county consortium) - such as performing arts, tech, health, etc. Enrollment at these schools, primary and secondary, would be voluntary, with roughly equal numbers of low-income and middle-class students. It really improved outcomes. It's high time that we do this for the entire county.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm going to try and summarize here. Posters ideas are well intentioned but they won't work practically

To simplify let's say that higher income schools are generally in the Western part of the county

Redrawing boundary lines won't work because the western part of the county is more well off than the eastern part. Schools in the eastern part of the county are always going to have higher FARMS rates

Ok so what if you bus kids from east of the county to west of the county.

Who do you select to bus? Is it some kind of test? ok, then sure high performing kids from east county probably get a better education but the remaining kids are in an even tougher environment stuck in their home base schools

The only real way to get out of this is zoning adding more dense and affordable housing to West county but politically that will never happen and even if it did happen if schools start to increase in FARMS rates guess what. The people currently living in Bethesda go private or move in search of a school with lower farms rates

That's an oversimplification.

Also, housing policy is changing. Not only will it happen, it is currently happening.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm going to try and summarize here. Posters ideas are well intentioned but they won't work practically

To simplify let's say that higher income schools are generally in the Western part of the county

Redrawing boundary lines won't work because the western part of the county is more well off than the eastern part. Schools in the eastern part of the county are always going to have higher FARMS rates

Ok so what if you bus kids from east of the county to west of the county.

Who do you select to bus? Is it some kind of test? ok, then sure high performing kids from east county probably get a better education but the remaining kids are in an even tougher environment stuck in their home base schools

The only real way to get out of this is zoning adding more dense and affordable housing to West county but politically that will never happen and even if it did happen if schools start to increase in FARMS rates guess what. The people currently living in Bethesda go private or move in search of a school with lower farms rates

That's an oversimplification.

Also, housing policy is changing. Not only will it happen, it is currently happening.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Agree on re-evaluating the boundaries and making the necessary adjustments but I saw somewhere in California (I can't find the article anymore) where they shifted schools so that they have a theme-based curriculum (a lot like the down county consortium) - such as performing arts, tech, health, etc. Enrollment at these schools, primary and secondary, would be voluntary, with roughly equal numbers of low-income and middle-class students. It really improved outcomes. It's high time that we do this for the entire county.

this is hard too. if these schools do not perform, then it doesn't matter. If they do and people start to try hard to get in, how would the county select who gets in and who does not?