Reply to Takoma, Easter Magnets. MCPS Pilots Universal Evaluation Process.

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[quote=Anonymous]I love that MCPS expanded their pool of applicants this year.  Fantastic idea.  I love that they are offering enriched courses in select middle schools.  This was much needed after the middle school "reform" from several years ago did away with the gifted track and left schools with on level and above level classes.  In many schools the vast majority of students are in above level classes and there isn't much differentiation for the top 10%.  The enriched classes will offer these schools to offer such students a strong peer group and an enriched curriculum.  It is disingenuous however to suggest that the students who are offered an enriched Social studies classes will get an experience comparable to what they might have received at Eastern magnet where they would have three to four linked and synergistic classes with a peer group drawn from the entire county.  The same point can be made about the experience students in an enriched Math class would have compared to what they might experience at Takoma magnet.

I am not sure what the solution is if MCPS is trying to husband its resources but I do know that the current process seems to discriminate students who live in certain school clusters.  If you look just at the Cogat composite scores you can see that the schools with the most number of qualified students wrt Cogat C were Hoover (63), Frost (62), Pyle (62), Silver Spring International (57) and Sligo (53).    The average for the 16 schools reporting Cogat C scores was 40 students.  What we know anecdotally (including from reputable sources such as MCCPTA) is that the schools with the largest numbers of qualified applicants saw the biggest drop in acceptances.  If I remember correctly only a couple of Frost students were admitted compared to 25 in previous years.  Similar results were noted in CESs such as Oakview and Pinecrest which have students zoned for SSIMs and Sligo.   
https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/uploadedFiles/schools/msmagnet/about/MS%20Magnet%20Field%20Test%20Data%20by%20Sending%20MS.pdf

The argument MCPS is making is that the high performing clusters offer gifted children a large peer group.  True but they are not offering these students a magnet program they are offering them one stand alone enriched class in the humanities and one stand alone enriched class in math.

MCPS has released some data but they have not released the median test scores by middle school cluster.  Until they do, many parents will continue to suspect that the peer cohort consideration resulted in large numbers of highly qualified students getting the short end of the stick.

There are a lot of inequities in a large and diverse county like ours.  I hope MCPS will be more transparent about the test scores and I also hope they will give more thought to how they can help students who might not get enough support at home without penalizing other students.

I personally think that they should have expanded the CES at the elementary school level and not messed with the middle school magnet application process.    If more students from low performing elementary schools attend a CES, they will get an elementary school education that better prepares them for a highly rigorous middle school magnet program and it will help the county to identify more gifted AND qualified students.[/quote]

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