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

Forum Index » Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)

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

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

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

I like your suggestions. My youngest is in 8th, so was in the old system. I think that given the sheer numbers of highly able students identified through the universal screening process, there is clearly a huge need for enrichment in the county. Get rid of the regional middle school magnets (TPMS, Eastern, Clemente). Focus all enrichment efforts at the home school level. All schools need to offer true honors and gifted classes. If a highly-able child does not have a large enough cohort at their MS, they get a COSA to any MS that does have a cohort (mcps provides transportation).

I think that the switch to universal screening demonstrates that the vast majority of parents in MCPS want their kids at local schools. People knew their kids were highly-able in the old selection system, but didn't apply because the magnets were too far, kids preferred to stay close to friends, kids/parents weren't interested in the curriculum-- a whole host of reasons.

It would have been interesting in the pilot year of universal screening to continue to use the same entrance tests, so they could compare scores between the self-nominated cohorts of previous years and the new universal cohort. Once they announced that they were going to switch to the Cogat to find "highly-able" students, I knew that the magnet program was shifting away from truly serving the top "high-able" cohort of students. Under the new testing system, white people seem to be benefiting the most. Interesting results.[/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