Reply to Top 10 Schools in MoCo

Forum Index » Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)

Reply to "Top 10 Schools in MoCo"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

All schools in MCPS are given the same curriculum and the teachers are not better in one school over other.  Maybe it makes sense to compare school systems to see what services are provided by different school systems ( and if they have textbooks or not...but I digress).

How do you assess the school? You assess the school by asking what are the highest level of Math do they allow kids to take at the school?  What foreign languages and electives are offered? How many AP courses are taught? Do they have IB or other signature programs?  Do they have sports, clubs, activities that your child can participate in? Do they allow your child to start a new club, activity etc if the school does not have that? That is what you need to do. However, if you will look closely, most schools offer similarly rigorous and comparable course offerings to their students.

In HS, good students take harder courses and weak students take easier courses. Unlike ES and MS, there is an automatic differentiation.  If school A does better overall than school B, then it is only because school A has more affluent students who are primarily White and Asian American.  If school B falls behind then it is mainly because it has less affluent and majority Blacks and Hispanic students.   Even though the performance falls among racial lines (Whites and Asians doing well, Blacks and Hispanics doing poorly), the reason is not race but SES.  The students who identify as Black or Hispanic and do well academically are usually also from higher SES.

If I am a higher SES student, I can do well in any MCPS HS. Why? Because higher SES students do not rely entirely on MCPS to do well academically. They supplement, they get tutors, they go to test prep centers for SAT prep.  As long as the schools are offering rigorous courses to the bright students, most high SES students will do well in any low performing MCPS HS.  In fact, some high SES parents prefer that their children go to a low performing HS, so that their children can shine and have a better chance (and story) to get admitted to more selective colleges.

In the end, my kid has to work hard and I have to make sure that they get the support that they need from me.  The best of MCPS teachers and magnet program will not be able to meet all the academic needs of my student.  A lot of work needs to be done at home by my student and by us - his parents.  That is the bottom line.

A large number of  students going to W schools supplement at home, they have tutors, they get SAT prep and quite a few will also hire private college counselors. None of them are just getting everything from the school and calling it a day.  Therefore, it is ridiculous to rank schools. If you want to have a pissing contest about real estate and home values, that is another story. Bethesda real estate is expensive.  Silver Spring and Gaithersburg are not that expensive.  But lets not pretend that the schools are better.  Schools are same, teachers are same, curriculum is same.  Students are different based on their SES and based on how much hard work they put in academically at school and at home.

The colleges are not looking at anything but GPA and SATs first and foremost.   I find it ridiculous to preen over the high rank of our HS, if my kid in that HS is not a high achiever and just getting by.   Frankly, why would I care if a schoolmate of my child is acing the SATs and the APs while my kid is barely passing?

People need to stop comparing schools.  Compare your child with others in MCPS  and see what they are doing. What is their GPA? How did they do in their SAT/ACT/SAT subject test/AP/IB?  Are they winning state, national and international accolades by winning scholastic and STEM awards  etc? No, it is usually someone else's kid who is winning these awards, and then DCUM posters start basking in their reflected glory. People - IT. IS. NOT. YOUR. KID. WHO. IS. WINNING. THESE. ACCOLADES!!!!

If your kid gets into Harvard, gets the National Merit Scholarship, wins the Intel Science competition, wins Teen Jeopardy...please come here and gloat. We will applaud you.  But if you want to say that your kid is getting a superior education at the HS, because some students from the same school have made a name for themselves, then you are extremely deluded.

What are you going to do with the high ranking of your HS if you do not plan to sell your home in near future?  How does the high rank of your HS benefit your student who is average or below average? It is not as if the colleges admit your student based on the ranking of their schools, right?  Colleges look at your student's performance as compared to the applicant pool. I am merely suggesting that DCUM parents take their cues from the admission officers of the top colleges in the country and compare your child with other students in the county, state, nation and don't compare the HS because that is a false comparison, and will lull you in a sense of superiority and entitlement, when in reality your child's academic record need not elicit such feelings. 
  [/quote]

OMG. Every single word of this except for hiring a SAT tutor (My kid is using the free Khan Academy tutoring.) and the claim that high performing URM are also high SES. Most (all?) high achieving URM I know are middle class or lower and struggle financially, especially when it comes to college costs. [/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