Reply to Did MCPS do a sneaky thing for the magnet lotteries?

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Reply to "Did MCPS do a sneaky thing for the magnet lotteries?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The kids are back in school, what’s the reason they can’t administer CogAT now?[/quote]

I guess they finally realized it's easily gamed by those who prep so they decided it was doing more harm than good.[/quote]

I wish we could move beyond the same back-and-forth arguments here.

Yes, some kids "prep." Other kids do not. Some kids don't prep in the sense of memorizing test strategies (and questions!), but are in such highly enriched environments that there's not much school can offer them above what their parents are already paying for in the private sector.

Some kids are already attending schools with a robust high achieving cohort. Others are outliers within their entire schools.

These are real challenges, and a lottery is not really the way to deal with any of them. It won't differentiate the extremely gifted kids from the merely highly enriched, nor will it necessarily pick up the kid who is an outlier and would not otherwise have a peer group.

The real challenge that I see, though, is that MCPS seems committed to not providing real acceleration/enrichment in home schools. If they would just agree to offer enriched classes starting in middle school, and to cohorting the kids who would otherwise have been eligible to attend the MS magnets, so much of this furor would subside.

Maybe that's the upside of the lottery? It might actually increase parental pressure on MCPS to do what they said they would do and offer cohorted enriched and accelerated classes to "gifted/advanced" kids in their home schools. [/quote]

So you're advocating for tracking? Isn't that considered harmful?[/quote]

I think it is considered most harmful in elementary. By middle school, and when paired with real efforts to identify talented kids who might otherwise not be receiving acceleration, it makes more sense. MCPS actually does a pretty good job of pushing opportunities for talented kids in low-income schools, to be honest. Saturday School programs for "gifted" kids in Focus and Title I schools, ELO programs offer the summer, math and science camps only availalbe to FARMS-eligible kids. I agree with all of those, and think they are great, but the trade-off is that by 6th grade, MCPS needs to stop creating heterogenous classrooms that include both kids who can hardly read in English with kids capable of doing magnet-level work. [/quote]

I'm really bothered by the racist undertones in many of the posts.
Being an English language learner has no bearing on your intelligence. There are kids who have limited English skills who are perfectly capable of doing magnet level work. There are actually several at Takoma this year.[/quote]
DP. I don't think its racist. You are right that ESOL has no bearing on intelligence but it is difficult for an English learner to learn at the same rate in an immersion environment. It's just a matter of practicality. [/quote]

I know you mean well..But it is not true at all. English language learning has nothing to do with doing magnet work. They can work hard and be as good or better than kids who can only speak one language. Most of the parents of the magnet kids are immigrants whose native language isn't English. Stop with the patronizing lotteries please. [/quote]

What I also find patronizing is this stereotype that magnet kids are all children of immigrants, which is actually quite rare, most are the children of affluent families since these programs are effectively limited to only those who can afford expensive prep.[/quote]
I think your experience is clouded by living in Takoma Park where most of the magnet kids are US born white kids.  Over here in the W schools, most magnets are populated by poor(ish) Asian and Indian immigrants or 1st gen Asian and Indian kids.[/quote]

So what are the W magnets? I hadn't heard of them before. [/quote]

The poster is confused. There are none. Those kids basically fight tooth and nail to get into the ones in Takoma Park.[/quote]

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