Reply to I don't get it- very few CES kids get into magnet school?

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Reply to "I don't get it- very few CES kids get into magnet school?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote]Anonymous wrote:
I think the universal testing has affected the process more than the peer cohorts.[/quote]

[quote]Except it didn't.

MCPS determined a % (95%) that it deemed highly capable and the universal testing revealed extremely large % of white students who met that criteria beyond the % that had applied in the past. If MCPS had selected from the larger group and offered seats to students who performed the highest out of the highly capable group they would have ended up with a magnet in a DCC school filled with white and asian kids primarily from the W schools.

The goal was to get the magnet demographic to more closely reflect the overall demographics of the student population. The problem is that there is a significant gap in academic performance between the demographics. Any attempt to make the magnets look like the overall population needs to stop looking at merit or lower the standard and make up other criteria which is what they did. This is an interesting problem. How do you increase participation in the magnets by URM students when you legally can't appear to be using racial assignments even though this your intent?

There were many better options that MCPS could have pursued:

1. Be honest about what you are doing. Implement universal testing and make the numbers public. Get rid of the special TP spots and increase overall # of spots to open up more seats. Provide extra points for students who are FARMS and minorities. This is legal and has been done in other school systems.

2. Expand the GT program to include the level 1 magnets for the very top performing students regardless of race or geographic location and position these in schools where high performing students are clustered. For all other schools provide a level 2 GT track that serves the 95%-97% students.

3. Create a URM GT track in ES that includes intensive summer and after school options to get more URM students up to the level of the white and asian kids in the west. [/quote]

[quote]+1 
Another option is that MCPS could have made students from the W schools (proxy for wealthy white/Asian schools) ineligible for the magnets since the peer group is presumably higher achieving.[/quote]

Well that's what they did and it was a bad move. [/quote]

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