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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I hear what you are saying, but are you understanding the other side? The cold spring clusters are constantly told that the reason we have larger classes, no focus or title one teachers, etc is because we are one big county that shares all taxes in the way that benefits all.Now they have greatly increased the number of hgc seats in almost all areas except for ours and this has caused kids that are 15-20 points lower to be accepted and taught a different curriculum. The standards should be the same across the county. This is not the case right now. Some schools are getting full classes for advanced students- do they really have 30 highly gifted students or have the standards been lowered for them? [/quote]

Insomnia-induced post--It's not the same, because it's not like the home schools are the same or the median scores are the same. It sounds like what you want is for MCPS to make HGCs like Stuyvesant in NYC or Thomas Jefferson in Fairfax, where it's all about The Test.

Obviously the high-scoring cohort is so large in your cluster that the county feels the kids remaining at their home schools will still be taught in a relatively accelerated or appropriate manner that just isn't the case in a cluster where there are far fewer kids scoring above a 120. Maybe in your cluster the kids read The Giver or A Wrinkle in Time in 5th grade whereas in a lower-performing cluster they might not read comparable books until 7th or 8th grade. It's not like we are all sharing the curricular differences between our home schools for 4th and 5th grade.

Also, do you really think that the county would send a ridiculously high % of kids from your cluster and leave behind, what, the 25% (I'm making a wild guess) who opt not to test or don't score above a 135? That would leave your home school with basically no kids.

Your cluster doesn't get Title I funding or Focus designation because you don't have the FARMS rate to qualify. Should we compare PTA endowments? No, because you would rightfully say it's not Ashburton or Wayside parents' fault that they can give more money, right? They don't take your parent contributions to the PTA and give half to the kids at New Hampshire Estates, Highland, Arcola, etc. *That* would be unfair. Some of those schools don't have room parents or a majority of parents who speak English as a first language, much less PTAs with anything but bare-minimum operating budgets. They get smaller class sizes and health centers; they also get weekend snacks, but they probably don't have kids taking prep tests to get into a gifted center. And since anecdotally, it sounds like there is definitely a much larger % of kids prepping on the West side of the county, should there be an asterisk next to the Cold Spring cluster's median score?

Let's say there are two kids who got 140: Veronica and Betty. Veronica's score is 27 points above the median score and her teachers are absolutely convinced that she must go to the center, because she's basically one of only 2 or 3 gifted kids in her entire grade. Betty's score is 16 points above the median score, and her teachers love her but know she's one of many, many bright kids in her grade. IMO, yes that makes Veronica stand out more and need a center placement "more" IMO than Betty. Same score, different kids, different home school environment, different peer group, different needs. Doesn't mean Betty couldn't have also thrived at a center, just that at her particular school, she's less in need of it.
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