Reply to Article in Bethesda magazine about magnet programs

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think what they are proposing is to make more magnets, but also restrict access to those zones.

So, if you look at what they started to do with IB, [b]they created regional IB programs but kept RMIB as the flagship[/b].

This has been unevenly successful, because the "best" kids still went to RMIB and there were not enough kids at the regional programs to create a strong cohort.

So it will be interesting to see if they learn from that, or double down. [/quote]

And keeping RMIB as County wide instead of regional is part of the problem and makes little sense.  The idea of regional IB programs makes sense because the goal is to serve all students regardless of area of the county.  I like the idea of regions with a standard offering of programs. Nod a program is going to be county wide it needs to be because the facilities have been built to sustain such a program that might be cost prohibitive to build out in 6 or more regions. [/quote]
If you had a lot of high performing kids equally spread out across the district, I might agree with you, but that's not how it really is.  Certain regional programs will be weaker than others, and they won't be able to offer the same IB courses across all the different regional programs simply because of demand.  [/quote]

The idea that we don’t have lots of high performing kids across the district is a myth.  We do.  There are kids in every school taking honors/AP/IB(if offered) who are not in magnet or specialized programs.  What is missing is the rigor and support from ES all the way through.  Which is why an ES analysis is planned following the Secondary.  Further, there is always going to be 2nd or later place.  That doesn’t mean that a program isn’t quality. [/quote]

If you look at both the numbers of students in AP classes and the resulting scores at some of these schools, it is apparent that some clusters will not have sufficient numbers of students to offer a wide range of advanced classes.  It is just the truth.[/quote]

What is apparent is that these clusters have not setup kids to succeed in these courses from start to finish nor provided the necessary rigor to ensure high scores.  And while some am clusters may need three sections of an advance vs another only needing one, all should have the ability to take.  As it stands now there are some courses not even offered and students often don’t even know a particular class is an option.  These is true with AP courses as well as electives, and an issue that parents have discussed and even the ex-BOE member Lynne Harris spoke about.[/quote]

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