Reply to Achievement gap continues to grow between high- and low-income schools

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The academic achievement gap between the different race groups, the gap between the red zone and green zone schools, and the gap between middle class kids ans FARM kids.  Which gap concerns you the most?  What if mcps starts a reverse magnet program?  Busing the poorest neighborhood kids, the low 20% kid from a heavily Farm/ESOL school to a school in the green zone for ES level.  The kids will have a choice of staying on for MS and HS.  
The gap between the schools will be reduced immediately, the red zone school will have more resource for middle class kids, and the green zone kids will see kids whose primary concerns are not the P or I on their report cards, the poor kids will feel the pressure to study hard.[/quote]

I wonder how the people in Bethesda/Potomac would react if MCPS proposed to do this.[/quote]

And here lies the problem - for some reason, the county is dead set on keeping western MC snowflake village. The high income families appear to have much more influence that the middle class. [/quote]

It's so strange to me that parents in high income schools would have a problem with a relatively small percentage of kids from a "poorer" area attending their school. No one is really going to flee Bethesda because a small percentage of the school population comes from outside Bethesda. Anyway, the reality at these poorer schools is that there is a decent amount of children from educated, upper middle class families who are zoned for those schools, but who attend private/parochial instead. So in a busing scenario based on school zones, I'm willing to bet there would be a fair amount of middle class kids included. Besides the fact that the perception that kids from low income families are somehow automatically trouble makers or a drain on resources is kind of bs. I think the problem is the critical mass of low income kids at some schools and high income kids at other schools. All to protect inflated property values? Everyone benefits from diversity. [/quote]

Have you ever taken a look at the "at a glance sheets" at schools.  The low test scores always come from hispanic and african americans.  It is not racist.  It is a fact.  Even at W schools, the lowest scores are always those 2 minorities.  It does not matter if you take half of them from one school and put them in a higher performing school and vice versa.  Those kids will still perform lower than Asians and Whites.  So you wanting to bus kids all over the over crowded MCPS to make a point actually makes no point.  The fact is, the more lower scoring minorities move into a school the more likely the high performing kids/families are going to either 1. Relocate  2. Go to private/parochial.     So trying to blend the schools perfectly to your liking will never work.  And really, those focus schools need that "focus" component and to be able to teach those kids on a different level.  There is already no tracking in school except for math.  The teachers can only do so much if they have 30 kids of 2-4 grade level variations compared to 18 kids with 1-2 grade level variations.  It isn't like MCPS is ignoring these low performing schools, they put a ton of money into them.  Money that does not go to the higher performing schools.  If families spent more time focusing on their child's education, values, community, school-involvement and less of pointing fingers and saying "not fair" then maybe those schools would be doing a lot better instead of failing.  The school can only do so much with their 6hr time.  What happens the other 18hrs is more important.  [/quote]

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