Reply to Gifted & talented programs and magnet school opportunities in the public schools?

Forum Index » Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)

Reply to "Gifted & talented programs and magnet school opportunities in the public schools?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]All this arguing for giving an ultra-tiny minority of students some costly classes at taxpayer expense. Those well-resourced families should go private or do dual enrollment.

Expand access to the six regions, or eliminate the programs and just offer AP/IB at each HS.[/quote]

The cost of bussing due water downed programs is not worth it.  End all the magnets.  Everyone goes to their assigned school.  I am sorry to see Blair end it's run but it does not align with the current county philosophy.  [/quote]

The problem that we found is our school offers very few Ap clases and for smart kids, we don't even have enough math classes to take for the graduaiton requierments.  Only the W schools, Blair and Wheaton have advanced classes so you'd need to fix that.[/quote]

This is an issue in multiple schools.  The problem is not kids who can take the classes, it’s school leadership not selecting to offer the classes and then not encouraging staff to want to teach these classes.  Or stating they have many more who don’t want need these classes so it’s easier to have a teacher teach another section of a different class.  Or that’s what DE is available to support.  This later would be viable if the DE campus was more easily accessible.[/quote]

I'm pretty sure PP is the Einstein parent who is on a tear about their school (an IBDP school) not offering sufficient AP classes. The new proposal isn't going to solve that problem, because IBDP schools will always have fewer AP courses since kids can take IB classes instead. [/quote]

DP.  [b]This is a problem across far more schools than just Einstein, and across many without IB[/b]. Even within IB-offering schools, the fact is that some don't offer the breadth of IB courses (and at HL) that might parallel APs, and don't necessarily offer APs where IB doesn't supply a parallel with the same breadth as are available at a few non-magnet high schools in the system.[/quote]
No, it's not.
20 out of 25 MCPS HS made the AP school Honor roll, which means they offer enough APs, students have access to rigorous course work, and deliver results. [/quote]

Yes, it is a problem, at multiple schools, with stark differences in offerings.

That AP School Honor Roll?  A third of eligible schools -- over 5000 of them -- across the US & Canada (and some foreign American schools) got that.  The denominator, there, includes a ton of schools in districts those in MoCo wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole.

What does it take?  There are 4 levels -- the distribution of levels awarded across MCPS schools follows pretty much as one might expect.  Bronze requires less than half (40%) of the graduating class to have taken a [i]single[/i] AP exam, only a [i]quarter[/i] hitting a [i]3![/i] or better, and only [i]2 percent![/i] taking 5 or more (1 in 9th or 10th grade).

If there's any thought that 5 is a lot to have available these days, think again.  Precalc, CS Principles, Physics 1, US Gov and a language do that.  Pretty minimal, considering the 20 or so, including those of significantly greater rigor & interest, that are available at some MCPS schools, not to mention post-AP courses like MVC.  Of course some of those "usual suspects" sport Platinum status (80%/50%/15%), but the percentages aren't nearly as important to the conversation as the [i]breadth/depth[/i] of advanced offerings.[/quote]

So if I understand you correctly, you are saying that some HSs in MCPS only offer a handful of AP classes? That sounds to be a really pressing equity issue that MCPS should focus on addressing. [/quote]

As part of the program analysis, they are also committing to have a set of I believe 20 AP classes at every school (or the IB equivalents-- despite what some people here claim, you can't expect IB schools to also offer the full suite of AP classes, sorry.)[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics