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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The lackluster U.S. News & World Report rankings of MD public high schools and the omission of any mention of its magnets, makes me question whether it is worth the trouble to put your kid through the wringer to get into these programs  I also wonder whether trying to position your child to compete for limited slots in a magnet program is a way of distracting parents from the broader problem, a lack of availability of advanced classes.  Rather than challenge the school's niggardly distribution of advanced courses, we instead spend all of our time and energy posturing our kids to be the ones who have access.  Whether Johnny has the right extra curricular or the right relationships with teachers has nothing to do with assessing his ability to excel in particular advanced courses offered through these programs.  If the kid can do the work he should have access to the course.  But instead of attacking the school's course offerings, we are mired in the process of making our children the most desirable candidate he can be; so that, its someone else's kid who gets left behind.  And at the end of the day do we even have a measure of whether this process helps our kids get into better colleges or to excel wherever they end up going.

I don't know if my perspective distorted or not.  So, I am interested in hearing your views.[/quote]

All MCPS HS affords your kid the opportunity to take the AP course in subjects that interest them. By the time a kid is in the magnet program, they should be interested in the courses offered in the program track.   The best part of doing magnet or AP courses is that it is filled with students who have self-selected to be there, so the cohort is always as homogeneous in abilities as it can be.   My kid came to the HS magnet program (Poolesville HS) from MS magnet program, and the joy of being in a HS school day with other students who wanted to excel in every single period  was the most satisfying experience for him.

US news and world report ranking was flawed because they were looking for very basic level of achievement and almost none of the kids were doing basic Math and English  in PHS, except Special Ed kids. Most students were at very advanced level of Math and English. However,  US World News did not know that PHS was  a whole school magnet.  It was hilarious how many people reached out to convey their sympathy that the school has fallen down in rating. I will take US world news reporting with a pinch of salt because obviously they should have outsourced their reporting instead of depending on in-house reporting.[/quote]

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