Reply to Another article about the magnet programs in Washington Post

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]How about - Year round school for poor URM students starting from pre-K?  These students must get into gifted programs to get into 10 month of regular school schedule.

This will bridge the achievement gap in my opinion.

[/quote]

You want to pass a law with different school attendance requirements depending on the student's race/ethnicity and the student's family's income? Really?

And would this requirement apply to the kids of my neighbors, who are African-Americans with a law degree and an MBA, respectively? Please explain.

[/quote]

Well, we are talking about changing the admissions criteria for magnets based on race/ethnicity and family income, are we not?  So, why not change the attendance requirement for schools as well?[/quote]

I don't think we ARE talking about changing the admissions criteria.  I think we're talking about ensuring that we're capturing all of the "highly gifted" kids irrespective of race/ethnicity or family income.  Right now the HGC and other magnets programs are wildly disproportionate to the population of the district.  If we assume true giftedness (rather than just good coaching) occurs at a similar rate in each group, then we clearly have a problem with identifying gifted kids from URM groups.  The idea isn't that MCPS would lower the bar.  The idea is that there are kids who would clear the bar but are not currently being identified.

The alternative is that we just accept that our "gifted" program is really a program for high achieving but not necessarily gifted kids.  [/quote]
At the middle school and high school level it is a program for gifted kids who are high achieving.  At Eastern for example, you have to be able to hit the ground running and be able to write long essays, do research, work collaboratively and so on.  This is also the case in a program like RMIB or Blair SMAC - you have to be gifted and have strong study skills in order to be able to for example complete the AP Physics curriculum in one semester in 9th grade.  The teachers are not able to work one on one with students with a class size of 25 or 26 kids and so the application process does consider writing samples, report cards, teacher recommendations and so on.  So, if you have two children who are equally "gifted" the child who has a record of academic achievement and has demonstrated good time management etc. will have an edge.  This does give an advantage to children who come from homes where education is valued and whose parents spend a lot of time working with them from a young age and who work collaboratively with their child's teachers.  So yes, children with these advantages are more likely to get into these programs.  I don't think there is a racial bias.  [/quote]

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