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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]There are more than 11,000 fourth graders enrolled in MCPS this year, across 137 elementary schools.

Each of the two upcounty magnet middle schools has 63 seats for students who aren’t already zoned for those schools. Each of the downcounty magnet middle schools has 125 seats for students who aren’t already zoned for those schools.

That averages out to 2-3 students from each elementary school getting admitted to the magnet middle school programs.[/quote]

[b]I believe the numbers are 50 for those not in-bounds locally for the upcounty magnets and 100 for those not in-bounds locally for the downcounty  downcounty magnets. [/b] My understanding is that there are 12-13 separate program seats for students locally-in-bounds to the school, except for TPMS, which has 25.  I could be wrong about that.

If not, 
With about 300 locally in-bounds TPMS students total, there's something like an 11% overall chance of being in the magnet if living in a home zoned to TPMS.  If only about 15% of students qualify for the lottery in the first place, there would be a greater than 70% chance of getting placed in the magnet if identified as eligible.  With 100 seats for the rest of the lower ~2/3 of the county and close to 8000 students per grade (2/3 of about 12,000), 7700 taking out the 300 local to TPMS, there's something like a 1.3% overall chance of being in the magnet and under a 9% chance of getting placed if among the about 15% identified.

Whatever the actual numbers are, your chances if local, to TPMS particularly, of being offered a program seat are multiples higher than your chances if living outside the magnet's local boundary.  Unless they drop the local set-aside or shift slots from local in-bounds reserve to those offered outside the local boundary so that the odds are close to the same for each.[/quote]
This is correct. [/quote]
MCPS’s own presentation on the middle school magnet program says there are 63 seats in each upcounty magnet for out of area students. [/quote]

Link or date of presentation to BOE so that we can see it?

They have danced around the issue of differential opportunity for local families for a very long time.  Any questioning at the BOE tends to get deftly misdirected, and, sadly, without BOE redirection to the point.  I wouldn't be surprised if this is an error in the presentation or that the 50/13 split isn't made clear from one slide to the next.  An alternate explanation might be that they eliminated the local set-aside for the upcounty programs, but kept it for TPMS.

TKPK isn't the only area getting special treatment. 
There are the local-school-only CES programs where, again, a student's chances of lottery selection are markedly higher than in for larger-catchment magnet CESs.  (Shockingly, Piney Branch ES, serving TKPK, is one of those local-only ones, and used to start in 3rd grade before conforming to 4th/5th a few years ago -- vestiges still persist.)  The Potomac ES Chinese immersion program is almost entirely drawn from the local school populatio.  There may be a few others.[/quote]
The link to their October 21 presentation is embedded here:

https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/curriculum/specialprograms/middle [/quote]
At 5:39 in the English version[/quote]

Interesting.  Downcounty version also says 125 out-of-bounds seats.  There is no mention of local seats at all.

Did MCPS mis-report this in the public overview?  It isn't a report to the BOE.

Did they increase the allotment from 100 to 125?

Or is there a new paradigm of no local reserve in play this year?  Again, they specifically call out out-of-bounds seats but make no mention of local-reserved seats.  If they had done away with the latter, you'd think that they wouldn't term the former "out-of-bounds" -- they'd just be seats.

Looking at one from 2 years earlier

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oz_WPSLH_J4

which is so similar that it is clear most of the video presentation is simply reused from year to year, the same slide for downcounty indicated 100 out of bounds seats.  If I had to guess, it would be that they expanded the total size of the program, and that instead of their being 50 (upcounty) or 100 (downcounty) out-of-bounds seats per program there are 63 and 125, respectively, but that they maintained the reserves for the local school population.

If that was the case, and assuming similar rates of identification, a TKMS-local student who was identified for the lottery would still have about 5 times the likelihood of being offered a seat as a similar out-of-bounds student.

Any link for the presentation to local/in-bounds families for this year (or a prior one) that might clear this up?  Or a report to the BOE?  Much harder to rely on the canned presentations, here, given their limitations and the "FAQ" that is curated to avoid the kind of nuance that would raise inconvenient truths.[/quote]

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