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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Parents and students see the magnet programs as an educational opportunity for the highest performing students and merit base.

MCPS sees the program very differently. The magnet locations were chosen to attract families with higher performing students (which at the demographically meant higher SES and white) into poorer, failing schools. It was an attempt at desegregation at a time when bussing and school assignment based on race was ruled illegal. The r20-25 reserved seats that don't compete at the same level for admission for in-boundary TPMS students was/is another example of trying to attract/retain UMC whites to live in the area. While not every seat goes to a UMC white student who performed lower that other kids in the county, most do. The proliferation of programs throughout the DCC to attract better performing students from elsewhere in the county is designed to bump up the primary score performance that people moving into the area see when searching for new homes. In many ways, this worked until GS started doing equity ratings revealing that large portions of the schools were significantly below grade level.

About a year age MCPS did a study and found the data that they knew all along - minority children were significantly underrepresented and Asian children were significantly over represented. So MCPS adjusted their admissions process to not only do universal evaluation (which is a good thing) but to also restrict students that historically had been Asian residing in high performing school clusters (this is awful) and lower the admissions bar to the magnets to yield the racial profile the school system wanted to see. For parents, residents, lawyers and basically anyone not in MCPS this is terrible. From the MCPS perspective however where getting all schools performing in the middle to claim success and getting the demographic optics they want it made perfect sense.

If MCPS had simply put in place universal evaluation and then made a focused attempt at improving enrichment for ANY kid that identified as gifted but wasn't high enough to get in it would have been a move in the right direction.The "cohort" excuse is simply racial profiling no different than the "geographic" shenanigans that that the Rs play to suppress minority voters. [/quote]

The new TPMS class did not end up with significantly more URM students.  There are fewer Asian students, who are now held back with artificial restrictions based on their home school district.  Their spots are taken up by top students in the previously less represented school districts who have somewhat lower scores than rejected W-based Asian students.  The accepted students are overwhelmingly white.  So you have a less prepared class with fewer Asians and more whites, with a broader countywide geographic diversity.  How exactly this is better has not been explained.

Short of instituting direct racial quotas, MCPS will not be able to achieve their goal of making magnet education available to URM students.[/quote]

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