Reply to Is CogAT gone forever?

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[quote=Anonymous]The thing is that MCPS very very briefly offered hope for an admissions scheme that had the potential to work, but then they reneged on their pledge to parents and built this inane lottery with a cut-off around the 50th percentile for some kids.

Back in 2018 (I think), MCPS moved to a more holistic approach to MS magnet admissions. They got rid of the-at home essay and teacher recommendations, both of which advantaged either kids who had parent assistance or kids who were compliant learners.

Then, they looked at which kids had a peer cohort at their home schools and which did not. Kids who would absolutely not have an educational peer group at their home schools were prioritized. De facto, this led to something like the UT Austin approach of taking the top X% from each sending school.

In order to meet the needs of learners who were gifted/highly able but not "outliers," MCPS promised to roll out AIM and HIGH in every MS and to cohort the kids who were above a certain threshold.

So, you had a system that pissed some people off but was absolutely better. Kids "let behind" at schools like Hoover were still going to get access to an equivalent peer group and curriculum, without the bus ride. Kids who would otherwise have been at a lower performing MS got a peer group for the first time.

But then a variety of factors derailed this (actually pretty good) plan.

First, parents freaked out and cried discrimination, filing the lawsuit that led MCPS to just throw up their hands and do a lottery.

Then, schools gave up on cohorting HIGH and AIM, while also giving up on Honors English.

So, parents who had been promised that their highly able kids would be cohorted and offered something akin to the magnet curriculum found their kids either without access those classes at all, or without cohorting.

That got us where we are now. No differentiated instruction for social studies or English, and AIM being dismantled across the county.

MCPS knows how to fix this, and parents need to pressure them to get at it. Even if they keep the lottery (but hopefully move the threshold up to 90%), they can still ameliorate the damage they've done if they just bring back cohorted differentiated instruction.

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