Reply to Is anyone happy with MCPS?

Forum Index » Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)

Reply to "Is anyone happy with MCPS?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]As a teacher and a parent of two in MCPS, I am generally happy with MCPS. I do think we provided a better product 20 years ago, but I'd say that's a national trend rather than a local. I do believe there is some correction going on that's going to take time to shake out. Someone mentioned how many parents are happy with their teachers, but would like to see more educational rigor and accountability for their children. I'd say that's accurate for the teachers too. But there are a lot of policies put in place over the last decade that have to be undone. Still, my experience is that there are good teachers teaching good students.
Of course, the biggest factor to your child's education success is you. Keeping them exposed to reading, music, physical activity, and limiting their use of screens (especially at an early age) is going to do so much more for their educational outcomes than any policy from central office. [/quote]

This. [b]The academic rigor just isn’t there compared with my rigorous private school education 30 years ago. They barely teach writing. My 6th grader has never been asked to write even a book report let alone a real essay or paper.[/b] But I’m not sure any other local public is better. We don’t have the money for private. As far as school experience goes it’s been fine. Just I wonder about the curriculum. My 3rd grader is doing a bit more writing so maybe it is improving. [/quote]
Reading books is overrated and doesn't necessarily make a school rigorous. 
Welcome to the 21st century. [/quote]

Teaching writing well is hard with such big class sizes that MCPS has, but my MCPS 4th grader does weekly reading reports that are similar to the book reports I did as a kid (although they're shorter). My 6th grader did essays (and they definitely increase in frequency in 7th and 8th grade).  [/quote]

That's fantastic, but that wasn't our experience at all in ES or MS.  We didn't have weekly book reports in 4th.  We had a chart where kids had to pick one activity (i.e. read for 15 minutes, or anwser one question in 2-3 sentences).  MCPS really varies by school and teachers.[/quote]

Yes, of course that's the case, and most people recognize that their experiences aren't universal in a large public school system, which is why I take statements like "my AP English kid read only 1 book" with a grain of salt.  My kid struggled in 7th grade English with a teacher who assigned a lot of writing and some texts that I honestly thought were more suitable to high school.  I was told he was the toughest English teacher in the school.  My kid's 8th grade teacher assigns a lot more multiple choice assignments and a lot less writing.  [/quote]

You were really lucky then.  We have had one book in AP English this year.  We have never had more than 2 books a year, maybe one year we had three but that wasn't the norm.  Never had lots of multiple choice.  Most writing assignments are a paragraph or two.[/quote]

I wouldn’t judge the rigor of an AP English class on the number of books they’ve read. Are they reading historic texts? Classic short stories that are considered exemplary literary works? Sometimes the teacher is showing a specific literary device or teaching a specific theme that is featured for the AP exam and can do that with a shorter piece of literature.  And you can do that whether or not something is a “book.”[/quote]

[b]+1 I would judge the rigor/quality of an AP English class by how many kids are earning 4s/5s. [/b] How has the  school that the PP won’t name but allegedly only assigns one book on critical race theory (the name of which book PP won’t name) performing? [/quote]

Well that's stupid.[/quote]
What would be your metric oh brilliant one? AP test scores are national independently assessed exams.

MCPS publishes AP scores by subject and school if you were interested looking at outcome data rather than posting whiny messages about MCPS teaching your kid only one book about “critical race theory” at a school you won’t name.  [/quote]

How dare you bring data on educational outcomes into a discussion about the PP’s opinions into what makes a good education.  /s[/quote]

It’s surprising how little MCPS performance  metrics have come into the discussion here. Half of all MCPS students can’t do math or read at grade level. That is bad. Most of the discussion on this forum is about the changes to the gifted programs, school boundary changes and the teaching of LGBT topics…and snow days.

There’s very little discussion here about class sizes (huge) and quality of ES curricula to teach basic English and math (leaving aside the niche topic of complaints about an AP English teacher’s book choices.) [/quote]

It's been somewhat but I think there's a portion on DCUM (or at least one poster) who either doesn't understand or are okay with it because people say it's the general trend.

So if people say like 60 percent of students in MCPS don't meet the benchmarks or targets, then some people claim it's okay that their kids don't meet it either because that's just the trend.  Then the argument in the earlier discussions of removing the countywide programs for the six regional model is that MCPS needs to focus on the general population as a whole that is underperforming instead of the select few small portion that are advanced.

What people don't realize is that if you dig into the data more, certain schools have high rates of meeting the benchmarks while others have really low which causes the county average to be as low as it is.

So the experience will really vary based on the specific schools and also on the family's specific situation.[/quote]

Even at Whitman, one out of five White kids graduate not proficient in math.[/quote]

We've been down this rabbithole in other threads.

For high school math, you have to see what test is administered and looking at mdreportcard for Whitman, it says only 18.5 percent White students are proficient in Math.  But when you look at the list of tests, Algebra 1 is the only test listed.  So it's unlikely they tested in Algebra 2.

And it was already mentioned in other threads, students who are taking/retaking Algebra 1 in high school, likely aren't the higher performing students and more likely to not do well in the state assessment for it.

So Algebra 1 is not really a good indicator for math proficiency for high schools.

It's a bit more relevant for middle schools.  So if you look at the population for Pyle, the proficiency level for Whites in Algebra 1 is 80.3 percent and should be a more accurate representation of students on a more on level track.  Where this group can be a mix of 6 to 8th graders.

So again, this takes digging.  It's not just "oh only 18.5 percent of Whites at Whitman tested proficient in the Algebra 1 test, so it's okayif my kid didn't do well too"  You have to understand what groups take the classes and assessments when and what are their likely/expected outcomes.[/quote]

Isn't the point that they are passing the classes despite not being proficient salient.  How many of those kids were flunked?  [/quote]

Yeah that's one of the big issues that I have with MCPS and why in one of my earlier posts I said it's important to not let your kids just coast by according to MCPS's standards.

But again, the point of this thread is if MCPS is really that bad where OP should just go to private instead.  Where their neighborhood is a mix of happy families at both private and public.

My main issue with the previous poster is that they need to choose the their battles and know when to fight them.  I don't think complaining about the performance at Whitman is necessarily the right avenue.  Again looking at Pyle because it's the main school that feeds into Whitman the Algebra 1 test taker proficiency rates for Whites are:
2019 92% (like pp said above 90 percent is possible)
2022 54.7% (likely affected by the pandemic)
2023 67.3%
2024 72.1% 
2025 80.3%

That is an excellent trend that you would hope to see.

OP already sees all the negative (and possibly valid) points people post about and was asking if they should consider private schools because of it.

So previous poster wasn't really helping with the thread in pointing out things already discussed in many other threads.  And they send their kids to public schools.  So their experience can't be so bad that they decided to send their kids to private and is a little bit hypocritical if they advise others to do so if they didn't themselves.  As often pointed out, some privates aren't exactly perfect either.

Yeah we all know that MCPS has issues.  But is pointing out that Whitman/Pyle isn't perfect with a 100 percent proficiency rate really the standard that we should expect from MCPS?[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics