Reply to MS/HS in Takoma Park, SS MD

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]MCPS still allows $ to buy preferential opportunity.

PBES (and other local-only-serving CES programs -- essentially what they have preserved of cohorted elementary GT from the anti-GT trend of the past 25+ years) have a higher seat-to-population ratio than those with multi-school catchments (e.g., nearby Oak View and Pinecrest).  Non-CES local-school enrichment is not properly comparable (or, at least, not equivalnet) and of dubious implementation consistency across schools.

The same can be said for local enrichment in comparison to the MS criteria-based magnets.  TPMS's 25-seat local set-aside affords something like 3 times the per-capita seating for those whose home school is TPMS.  Non-magnet TPMS students may also be able to access some of the magnet classes, though the paradigm, there, is not as well understood.  TPMS also has more robust extracurriculars and PTA involvement than nearby middle schools.  I'm not sure if the local set-aside for nearby Eastern Middle School's Humanities magnet has survived, but I believe it was half that of TPMS.

Though there isn't a local set-aside for Blair SMCS, which serves the lower portion of the county (Poolesville in the upper), there's a high correlation between TPMS magnet attendance and SMCS admittance, when considering the overall applicant pool.  Numbers showing relative likelihood of SMCS admittance for lottery-pool-identified students who lotteried in to the MS magnet vs. those who did not (where they may only have taken the advanced, but not magnet, math and standard science locally) would be interesting to see, but MCPS keeps numbers like that, likely to raise the ire of the parent/guardian population, internal, sometimes not even allowing for the analysis that would bring self-critique.

Blair CAP tends to draw disproportionately from the Eastern MS Humanities magnet, but I believe that HS program is limited to the five DCC HS catchments, rather than the entirety of the lower county, as is the case with the MS criteria-based magnets and SMCS, making it a bit more likely to get in overall.  (The TP and DCC parts of Silver Spring also have access to several other DCC-specific HS application programs and a couple of countywide ones -- Ecology at Poolesville, Social Justice at Whitman and the flagship IB program at RM come to mind.)  As a large school, Blair tends to have the most elective options in the first place, even for those not admitted to one of the special programs.

It's not only Takoma Park that gets special treatment.  The Stonegate community also has their own CES, as do a few (2?) others.  Potomac ES has a large local set-aside for it's Mandarin (Chinese) Immersion program where other schools hosting immersion programs do not.  There may be other, similar situations of which I'm not aware, but certainly not enough to make it "everybody gets something special" (certainly not special with equivalence).

There's been an amount of "some are more equal than others" in the system, and they don't seem to mind (enough, anyway) that that runs counter to stated equity aims.  It is unclear whether that is because certain communities have MCPS leadership/the BOE in their pockets, the MCPS powers-that-be wanting the inequity to fester so that they might more easily do away with special programming, just the happenstance of ad hoc decision-making or a combination of these and other factors.

In this case (TP/SS focus), it's no surprise that in-bounds PBES/TPMS/Blair tends to sell for more when comparing reasonably like properties.  MCPS isn't differentially beholden to these communities by statute or immutable agreement, so things always might change from a school perspective (e.g., policy/program change that evens out of opportunity, change to catchment borders, etc.; also, the DCC HS choice and application-based program admittance paradigms shift every now and then, so one can't rely completely on those staying the same).

There are other things that affect housing price, though, and OP may find that that which is supported by the additional local TP tax is worth it, regardless of any schooling benefit.[/quote]

Wouldn't expect much change around those parts since there are so few schools in that part of the county. Even Blair was moved out DTSS and still has to provide for that entire area.  [b]The alternative is mass cross-county busing.[/b][/quote]

:roll: Northwood and Blair are 10 blocks apart on the same street.[/quote]

That's weird because Google Maps says Northwood is a 50% longer commute for us. In fact, BCC is much closer.  Anyway, Blair's new location isn't relevant. It was moved there from DTSS and still serves the same boundary.[/quote]

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