Reply to How is the new pilot offering equivalent to TPMS/Eastern

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]open up two more magnet programs then. not in east county. [/quote]

Yes. Open as many magnets as it takes for my kid to get in one, and make sure that it's convenient to my home.[/quote]

^^^to clarify -- I am not being sincere.[/quote]

200+ schools 160,000+ students and what teeny weeny portion is actual magnet seats in MS and in HS?

run the numbers for the NYC schools, bet its 5x as many seats for outstanding students than MCPS. That's a real shame. Underserved. [/quote]

12,000 5th graders in 2016-17, 375 (125 + 100 + 75 + 75) MS application magnet seats per grade, so just over 3%. What do you consider to be the appropriate percentage?[/quote]

I am sure the test cost MCPS a lot of money.  If they want to select top 3%, why did they recommend 4000, or 50% students of the down county students, to take the test?  MCPS leadership seems incompetent to identify talent and wasted a lot of money in the process of selecting students for the magnets. [/quote]

Because this year the purpose of the test was not simply to find your kid and put them in a magnet, or just to find 200 kids for the magnets.  In fact, it was to assess the feasibility of the pilot program, and to identify students for that.  Between the pilot and the magnets they probably need 600 or more students.  It wouldn't do to just use the 600 who typically self-select to take the magnet test.  They needed a much larger pool.  Everyone was so focused on the changes to the magnet process, they didn't realize MCPS was working on this other rollout.[/quote]

+1 And this is how MCPS plans to address the diversity/achievement gap identified in the Metis report.  MCPS knew that it couldn't legally use race as a factor for Eastern/TPMS magnets.  I have three friends whose kids got into the magnets (BTW all white) and like others who reported on the board, based on the make-up of the room for accepted parents, all three independently reported that there were 10-15 identifiable URM kids in the room.  I believe that when the final enrollment numbers are released next year you will see that yes, the number of Asian students has decreased, but the number of white students will have increased and the number of URMs will have slightly (e.g., 8 to 12) increased. Because MCPS used peer group/geographic area as criteria in the selection process, most Asian students are at a disadvantage because they are highly clustered in a few high performing schools.

I think MCPS planned the rollout of the field test sites at 20 MS all along to accomplish three goals: 1) address pressure from parents with highly able students that are not served in their middle schools; 2) avoid opening new magnets, which would significantly increase costs (e.g., busing, staff, facilities, etc.); and 3) address the diversity issue discussed in the Metis report.  By piloting magnet-like courses in local middle schools they can increase the number of ESOL/URM/FARM students receiving enrichment.  MCPS doesn't have to worry about universal test score cutoffs because they have identified peer groups in each MS cluster with similar high scores and invited the outliers to the 2 magnet schools. In other words, Cold Spring kids that are invited to take the courses in their middle schools may all be 98%+, but kids at a lower performing MS may be 90%+ to fill a class with 25 kids. [/quote]

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