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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]No- when people talk about bussing they are talking about selecting kids based on their demographics and bussing them past a closer to school to a different one. This is bussing. Plain and simple, don't pretend it is anything different.

No one likes it. For lower income families -believe it or not- they may like their neighborhood and neighborhood school. Not everyone is thrilled at the idea of being blessed by being in the presence of more white kids as a reason to bus your kids away. For parents that do not have their own cars and rely on public transportation, having your kids bussed further away means those kids will miss more school because if they miss the bus there is no other way to get them there or home. These parents don't have carpools set up or money for Ubers. These kids can't go to after school or evening activities unless there is school bus service. Low income families also depend heavily on the wrap around services available at low income schools. Getting bussed to a school and losing access to their services can be a hard hit for many families. They don't have the money to move so they are stuck in a bad situation.

For higher income families. they will not sit happily by and watch their kids get bussed off to a lower performing school to make MCPS happy. They'll just move or go private. In the DMV there are plenty of other options that are now more appealing than MoCo. They have the money to move. You need to look into the history of bussing. It destroyed many public school systems. It has been universally viewed as one of the biggest failures in public education. It was also a contributor to more segregation and completely failed to ever achieve the goals that were intended.

Its a bad policy that will do more damage to the system than 2.0, not holding employees that prey upon kids accountable, bad capacity planning, getting rid of final exams, poor teacher morale or any of the other ill conceived fiascos that MCPS has done despite all warnings and data showing that they were in the wrong.[quote]

[/quote]I think this is a good point.[/quote]

+ 100[b] MCPS is only gung ho on this because they think its a way to avoid getting to the point of having lots of failing, 80% FARMS schools[/b]. For MCPS, its about being able to say look all of our schools are 6s.  Trust me, they know from their own data that reducing the FARMS number in schools does nothing to increase the performance of lower income kids. The studies that show any of those changes were across multiple schools systems with a correlating gap in resources not one system that is able to increased resources to schools with more FARMS kids. Even the changes across disparate school systems evaporate once you cross the 20% level. This isn't about lowering the achievement gap. It is about optics of overall school performance.

Its a shame because this will initiative will lower the services available for low income kids and drive higher income kids out of the system. MCPS will simply end up accelerating what they were hoping to avoid.

Don't forget that the purpose of 2.0 was to slow down the pace of the curriculum to reduce the achievement gap. Despite all the data and teacher input that the new curriculum was making the achievement gap worse not better, MCPS didn't listen. If there hadn't been the John Hopkins audit we would still have 2.0. [/quote]
There's research that indicates low income kids do better in schools with about 25% or less FARMs population.   For MCPS, it's about trying to close the achievement gap. Is that a bad thing?[/quote]

Well MoCo has more than 25% and there is also research that shows kids do much better when under 5%. The dwindling supply of white kids won’t save you from parenting [/quote]

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