Reply to Ideas for a viable accelerated math approach to advocate for?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It sounds like MCCPTA is pushing for bussing to nearby schools as the solution for this.  I'm skeptical that's going to fly, given the budget constraints.

I'm concerned because it feels like parents are not reading between the lines here.  No one has been able to come up with a good low-cost solution for this besides "put full-sized classrooms of kids into accelerated math in ES, whether they need it/are able to handle it or not," which MCPS is clearly not going to do anymore.  Budgets are too tight to expect any more-expensive solutions to be implemented.  Unless there is a creative affordable strategy we can come up with, I think accelerated math in ES is dead.[/quote]

What I don't understand is why keeping the compacted math track would introduce any additional budget burden over the current budget request? Just let the rising 4th grader who should be accelerated to take 4/5, and rising 5/6 grader to take the new 5/6 (there are a couple unit overlapping or skipping, where the new curriculum vendor promised to help bridging), and let the rising 6th grader graduating from the compacted math to take 7th grader course or pre-algebra so to seamlessly merge with the new math pathway.[/quote]

The issue is that many schools right now are including way too many kids who shouldn't be in compacted math into compacted math right now, in order to make their 4/5 and 5/6 classes roughly the size of their other math classes.  If they do it that way, there's no budget impact, but you have a lot of kids going at a fast pace and not really fully understanding the concepts they're speeding through, which comes back to bite them.  If MCPS left things as-is there wouldn't be a cost impact, but they clearly don't want to and I don't blame them.  It's hard enough to get below-level kids to score proficient in math; it's not good for anyone to push above-average kids through math too fast to the extent that they're now scoring below-level by the time they get to algebra (when they would likely have been on or above level if they just went at a normal pace.)

But if you cut the number of kids in compacted math significantly, to the kids who really need and thrive in compacted math-- which is maybe half of them or so-- no one has been able to come up with an affordable way to do that (unless you keep the staffing the same and make the on-level math classes much larger, which doesn't cost money but is also obviously not something MCPS is going to support.)  Which is presumably why MCPS has come up with this doomed cluster-grouping plan.  [/quote]

What if they had a model that combined both the above-average kids who need enrichment but may or may not need and benefit from acceleration, with the kids who definitely need and thrive with acceleration, in the same classroom?  That would fill a full classroom, and also seems much more feasible for teachers than providing acceleration in a class that also requires them to spend time helping below-level kids catch up to grade-level (even in this scenario, it would be somewhat tricky to teach grade-level-with-enrichment content to some kids and accelerated content to others, but at least the teachers wouldn't also have to deal with the wildly different needs of kids who are struggling with grade-level content.)

It also better solves the on-ramp/off-ramp issue than cluster grouping.  Cluster grouping actually makes on ramps and off ramps to acceleration harder, because the second-most-advanced group of kids is never in the same classrooms as the most advanced kids.  So under cluster grouping, the second group is never in a classroom/with a teacher where acceleration is available so cannot move up to acceleration-- and if someone in the top group ought to drop out of their cluster because the acceleration is too much for them, there's no above-average cluster in their classroom to join, they'd have to go all the way down to the grade-level group.

I'm sure MCPS would call this tracking and say that's why it shouldn't be done, but there's absolutely no reason why it would have to be rigid (which is what makes something tracking; grouping based on ability level is not tracking, it's the lack of flexibility and on/off-ramps)-- kids could join or leave this level of class at the start of each year, or even in-between if needed.
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