Reply to What needs to change for MS for gifted/advanced students?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I have one kids who did a magnet MS and one who did not.  The humanities magnet program curriculum was very rigorous and I’m not sure there are enough students at local MS that are willing to make that kind of jump.  I remember the first quarter of sixth grade my kid wrote a 10+ page research paper using original sources from the 1800’s.  And the grading was difficult too.  It’s hard to imagine parents of kids that are smart but not gifted buying into that because there is no long term payoff (eg it doesn’t lead to advanced HS pathways) and it risks lowered grades for higher effort.  That is likely to limit the cohort.  HIGH is nice but in no way equivalent to the magnet.

I think MS magnets and acceleration only make sense if they lead to HS acceleration.  This feels like in some subjects it doesn’t exist until several years in (English/literature).  For other subjects advising and placement is inconsistent.  For example, any kid that gets straight As at the humanities magnet or in HIGH so be defaulted to the AP history/gov pathway in freshman year.  Instead this is unevenly applied at teacher discretion and only families who are in the know get their kids on the right pathway.  The progression from MS to HS, outside of math, is where I sense things really fall apart.[/quote]

I agree at my middle school there may not be a TON of kids capable of handling what you described is going on in a Magnet program but there are plenty of them that could handle a more rigorous workload than is currently being offered.  These kids at my school are never writing more than a paragraph at a time it seems and even then, it's usually scaffolded and guided through the use of organizers to basically craft the paragraph for them.  I realize this is anecdotal and may not be the case throughout the county but I tend to feel like it's the case more often than not.[/quote]

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