Reply to Getting into Takoma Park Middle School's magnet as a boy

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Students from the entire county compete for the first 100 slots.

Students from the TPMS district only compete for the other 25 slots.

Moreover, if only e.g. 17 of those 25 kids selected meet the same criteria as the first 100, the admission committee still has to take 8 more to fill the 25 in-district slots.

By definition, it is less competitive to get into the latter group than the former.  [/quote]

I don't think anybody is denying that it's (somewhat) easier for kids who live inbounds to get into TPMS magnet, or into the HGCs in some other areas that reserve spots.

What we're arguing with is that there's a significant difference in ability between the out-of-boundary kids and the in-boundary kids.  Case in point - your example assuming that 8 in-boundary kids (1/3 of in-boundary kids) at the TPMS magnet are somehow subpar seems exaggerated.  Plus, what does subpar mean in this case?  The school wouldn't do anybody any favors if it accepted kids who couldn't do the program and flunked out, so I truly doubt it is accepting kids who are significantly below the accepted average test scores, or below the lower bound of scores for out-of-boundary kids.

And, as I said, the kids themselves don't notice the difference in performance.  According to my magnet kid.

But probably the most important thing is that the TPMS magnet itself appears to have done a cost-benefit.  They think the benefits to the community outweigh the costs of any (theorized) lower performance.  Specifically, in a lot of these immersion and other programs, there is a lot of hostility gbetween magnet/program and local kids, and TPMS has avoided this by including in-boundary.[/quote]

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