Reply to MCCPTA Gifted Education Committee's Complaint about Systemic Failures by MCPS

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Reply to "MCCPTA Gifted Education Committee's Complaint about Systemic Failures by MCPS"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm grateful to the MCCPTA for their advocacy here. While gifted kids with involved parents will likely be fine, MCPS isn't just failing those kids. It is also failing gifted kids without involved parents, gifted kids who are URMs, gifted kids who are poor/working class, and gifted kids who also have learning differences.

While the advocacy may be led by well-connected parents, it benefits everyone. [/quote]

I’ve been an educator for 27 years and have yet to see this trickle down in practice. Most school districts oil the squeak wheels and both parties move on while kids in the middle and at the bottom continue to be ignored.[/quote]

Kids at the bottom in MCPS being ignored? Not at all. In my experience they get 90% of the resoruces. [/quote]

Kids at the bottom who have family resources behind them (to get the necessary 504s/IEPs) get a lot of reaources.  Kids in low-SES areas get a few extra reaources, but not enough to get to parity in educational opportunity.  All kids are shorted by the combination of system inefficiency, whether from poor management, graft or politics, and decades-long County underfunding versus needs: population growth, aging infrastrucure/techinal debt, advancing standards/expectations, increased salary requirements to attract/retain qualified teachers (not to memtion really good ones), etc.

[b]The Council needs to stop undercutting (e.g., developer exemptions from impact taxes)[/b] and make school funding a higher priority than they have been allowing, notwithstanding the large amount spent -- that's a red herring serving only the well-to-do.  It's as if they have been progressive in name only all this time.  Nothing has as much potential to reduce societal disparities.  Harkening back a few decades in pop culture:

"...education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don't need little changes, we need gigantic, monumental changes. Schools should be palaces. The competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be making six-figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge to its citizens, just like national defense. That's my position. I just haven't figured out how to do it yet."[/quote]

Really a shame, though not surprising, that the County Council remains so very in the pockets of developer-related interests.[/quote]

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