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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]What the county is losing in this reorg are the critical mass clusters of 99th percentile kids, for lack of a better description, that enable their particular schools to fill classrooms for things like MVC, LA, etc. to prep for the most rigorous undergraduate schools.

Reality check - your 95th percentile kid isn’t losing out much in this reorg. They’ll be fine in the new system.

The kids that are getting screwed are the couple hundred kids each year in the county that can benefit from being around their exceptional academic peers. The only way to do that is to have bussed magnet programs like Blair/Poolesville/etc.

My kid was one of these kids (1600/4.9 WGPA/15 APs/senior magnet award winner) but she’s finished HS. This new reorg will NOT place kids like her in a classroom filled with academic peers. But academics isn’t everything you learn at school, and the impact is only on a couple hundred kids countywide. MCPS doesn’t care if the number of MoCo kids going to Ivy+ drops if median performance of everyone goes up somewhat. [/quote]

The magnets are staying and will be fine.  It’s the kids who don’t get in and don’t get rigor in hs which impacts college acceptances.  You are selfish if you don’t get there are many kids who are left behind not in w schools without options.  [/quote]

Take SMCS @ Blair.  Reduction in program size at the school means lack of that critical mass which enables the course variety currently available there but not available at the smaller, current Poolesville program.  Not only that, but the now-acknowledged-by-MCPS difficulty in standing up of the other four regional SMCS-type programs expected to be opened (due to their trying to do this on a shoestring, rather than robustly planning it out and ensuring necessary funding) means that there will be many years where the majority of those the expansion seeks to benefit see considerably less than would be expected.  Those who would have gone to Blair or Poolesville under the current paradigm but not in their region-to-be stand to lose the most, but even those programs will be knee-capped, likely to fade more as time passes and faculty disperses.

It's detail like this that matters.  The rhetoric about making more seats available, technically correct, withers in the light of such failures.

And it's not just SMCS or just the too-small magnet cohorts.  The choices for program placement that will see the more rigorous magnets at schools in wealthier areas (already replete with advanced course options), the greater likelihood of magnet-programming access for students from the local school boundary due to the disproportionately large set-asides, the non-magnet local access to other advanced courses made more likely available due to placement of those magnets of the more rigorous variety, the paucity and mundane nature of "advanced courses" envisioned to be ensured as available at each school -- these and more will see a persistence of deep, affluence-associated differences among the sets of academic opportunities made available across MCPS's school communities.  Equity with excellence, my foot!

The sad thing is that those at MCPS planning this out have known these issues from early on, if not from the very beginning, yet they appear not to be moved by them in the slightest.[/quote]

The magnet will be funded. Blair will not be as impacted as some of the other hs that don’t have advanced classes losing a lot of students.  The magnet impacts very few kids and should not be the focus. [/quote]

This presents non sequitur and platitude.

"The magnet will be funded" ≠ "each magnet will be funded well enough to ensure depth and breath both similar to (or better than) the current offering and, for same-subject magnets across regions, similar to each other."

Saying Blair will not be [i]as[/i] impacted presents neither excellence nor equity.  Blair was only an example, above, if a convenient one for illustration -- the post was not a cry to support that school/program [i]more[/i] than any other.

Noting that a school (e.g., Einstein) currently with a lower portfolio of advanced class offerings and losing students with the boundary shift fares [i]particularly[/i] poorly with the regions proposal lends no support, either to the proposal as a whole or to the note about Blair.

The needs of all kids should be well in focus.  [i]All kids[/i], not only a majority or larger groups, and certainly not only a majority or pluralities within each school.  The current proposal fails in this regard and perpetuates the current divide among MCPS high school catchments.  [/quote]

Schools have not the space or the resources to offer all classes at all schools. When is it the parents responsibility to provide for their kids? With those limitations it is equally misguided to expect schools like Einstein not to cater to its general population which isn’t clamoring for advanced math classes. Obviously so and going forward if you have a kid who needs that get it else where or find a place that offers it. You prioritizing a certain type of home over that and hoping the school fills in the gap is a deflection of responsibility. There are cheap apts in every cluster and if some parents aren’t willing to sacrifice for their kids then maybe the schools shouldn’t either. [/quote]

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