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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]MCPS shouldn't release median scores because they'd tell us absolutely nothing other than what we already know.[/quote]
Yes.. That students with much higher test scores weren't admitted because of peer cohort; that the threshold was indeed lowered.[/quote]

The median score of accepted students would not tell you that.[/quote]
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?[/quote]

You need the average/mean score for each MS and/or the cutoff scores.  MCPS has never released that data and I doubt it will now.  Also, many people on this board put too much emphasis on the median scores.  All it told you in the past is what a PP stated, that half the students scored above or below that number.  Yes, HGCs like Cold Spring had a higher median by a few points historically, but that doesn't rule out that there were kids that got in with lower scores-- in fact, it confirms that some kids did, but we don't know how many and what was the lowest score.

[b]I think MCPS spread the seats amongst all of the MS schools. They accepted the top few students from each school.[/b]  Does that mean some kids scored lower than others in some of the criteria, I am sure that is true. But that is why MCPS won't release the data because confidentiality can't be maintained if only 2-4 students got in per ES or center program. [/quote]
This may well be what they did but that is grossly unfair to students from schools feeding into Hoover, Frost, Pyle, SSIM, Sligo and Cabin John.  There are tons of kids who were shut out.  I think the enriched courses are a fantastic idea for the top 20% of students in the county but the top 5% of students do need something different - they need a true magnet program.  I think MCPS should consider putting a new magnet middle school in the Western part of the county.  [/quote]

I agree that MCPS needs to add more magnet seats and/or open another magnet in the western part of the country. I believe that was the main point of the Brookings article.  MCPS doesn't want to financially invest in educating this population like the Florida example. I think fighting over who got 200 spaces and how MCPS did it is a waste of energy. The outrage on this and many other threads should be directed at opening new MS magnets and/or adding more than two magnet classes to MS schools with top 5% students.[/quote]

I completely agree. The one thing the universal screening showed us (and that MCPS has admitted), is that there are far more kids who need enriched classes than spots that are available. I would have kept the old test that actually showed differentiation at the top, rather than the cogat. But, I get it, make the pool larger with the cogat. Why not add a magnet school in the west county. It will free up spaces for more URM in east county magnets.[/quote]

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