Reply to Article in Bethesda magazine about magnet programs

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[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 regional IB program at Springbrook has strengthened the program there. The cohorts used to be 20 students, and every student pretty much took the same classes. Now the rising junior cohort is over 70 students and growing, and lots of options are available to the students that were not available before.

My family has put several students through their program and we are grateful to the current leadership of the IB and MYP Coordinators there.[/quote]
Look at the difference in course curriculum between the two.

RM has IB An/App Functions  and IB Precalculus, Springbook doesn't.
RM has IB physics, Springbrook doesn't.
RM also has IB psych, IB music and theater, IB philosophy.

I am not sure that Springbrook will have that many IB class selections in several years simply because there may not be the interest in them due to the caliber of students.  RMIB students are high performing, and they take a ton of IB/AP classes.  RM even has more AP course selections.

RM offers these courses because you have the top students from the district in the program. If you spread those top students out, there won't be the scale to offer the variety of classes in all of the regional IBs. It's just not possible. Like I said, RMIB students take the max number of IB/AP courses that they can.  Not all IB students would do that so you won't have enough interest to offer all these courses at all the regional IBs.

All you would succeed in doing is bringing down a high caliber program.  It's a shame that MCPS sees that as equity.

Springbrook course curriculum
https://coursebulletin.montgomearyschoolsmd.org/SchoolCourseCatalogs/School/04798/top

RM course curriculum
https://coursebulletin.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/SchoolCourseCatalogs/CountyWide/04201/05[/quote]

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