Reply to Middle school magnets

Forum Index » Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)

Reply to "Middle school magnets - criteria-based"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]What I am curious about are three things. First, whether MCPS has any data on the educational impact of FARMS students moving from high FARMS to low FARMS schools? Second, I would like to understand how they consider this scenario: a non-FARMS student in a high FARMs school receiving advantage in selection than a FARMS student in a low FARMS school. Perhaps that is the goal? Third, what is the appropriate level of education to meet the needs of the high performing kids that are not selected?[/quote]

With the caveat that I'm not an MCPS employee, but am someone who pays significant attention to these issues for both personal and professional reasons:

1) There is substantial data at the national level for the educational impact of low-income kids moving from high-FARMS to low-FARMS schools. Short answer: they do better, without impacting the education of non-FARMS kids in their new schools. Basically, economically integrated education works for everyone, and the primary barrier to economically integrated schools isn't really school policy - it is housing policy.

2) In that scenario, a non-FARMS student in a high-FARMS school would get an advantage in terms of being admitted to the lottery pool, but they would not get any additional weighting once put into the lottery. While MCPS has been pretty obtuse about the process, it is widely believed that FARMS status does provide a weight above and beyond being put in-pool. This goes to the point about having a peer group, not just being high performing.

Also, if you look at the list from p.1 with a good awareness of the individual schools, you'll note that the eight schools in the highest FARMS category have extremely high FARMS rates, and very little middle class housing in-bounds. The schools in "moderate FARMS" are more mixed.

3) This is where MCPS has just utterly fallen down. Just catastrophically abdicated their responsibilities. They were supposed to roll out advanced classes (AIM for math and HIGH for social studies) at all middle schools AND cohort those classes. They did not. In some cases, they rolled out only one of the classes (either AIM or HIGH). In some cases, they rolled out both but didn't cohort them. Most recently, they've rolled out one (HIGH) but have not cohorted it, while removing AIM entirely.

I try to be pretty even-handed toward MCPS and acknowledge when they are constrained by difficult circumstances, but the way they have handled the MS accelerated classes is absolutely inexcusable. Heads should roll for the botched rollout, the lack of consistency across the district, and the shocking decision to just remove one of the advanced classes.

[/quote]

Our school offers both AIM and HIGH and both are wonderful. If they could do something to improve English, I'd have 0 complaints.[/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