Reply to MCPS ending Loiderman/Parkland/Argyle magnets?

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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][quote=Anonymous]I think they SHOULD end this program. Why would only a small area of the county have middle school choice? And why are we paying for bussing to multiple schools for one area.

I am an elementary school teacher at a school that feeds into this consortia. Many of the 5th graders do not like being forced to choose a program. They do not like leaving their friends.  And when I drive to school it is absolutely ridiculous that one intersection has 3 bus stops- one for each school. The kids are told to wait on opposite corners for their bus. What a waste of transportation money.[/quote]

Any child in the county can apply to the MSMC middle schools. Its a lottery.[/quote]

I’m so tired of all the lotteries. I think it’s a way for MCPS to give the appearance of having both quality programming and equality but it actually works against that. They ration opportunities. They split kids up, and yes, I can’t imagine what they must be spending on wasteful transportation costs. Why can’t they just provide the same programs at all schools? [/quote]

This exactly. They really need to focus on ensuring that home schools have good programming -- kids shouldn't have to lottery into another school to get a good basic education. But that is happening in way too much of the county.[/quote]

These schools have the same academic curriculum as every other middle school. [b]They add speciality focus classes[/b] to pull out of boundary students so the schools arent so poverty concentrated. If you did this in every school, it would not help balance FARMS rates because the rich kids would stay at their rich schools.[/quote]

Right, that isn’t equal to other schools. Also, they pull wealthier students out of less wealthy schools, so it works both ways. I’ve seen this with the criteria magnets as well. It’s a shell game. MCPS could provide an equal education at local schools but chooses not to for some reason. Maybe because the small number of people who benefit from these programs are louder, I don’t know. [/quote]

When you have populations with significantly higher needs but the same amount of funding at lower income schools, the education is not going to be "equal"[/quote]

I’m not sure what your point is. My point is that I object to the false sense that MCPS provides equal opportunity for programming (criteria or choice programs) via lotteries, instead of providing the same programs at all schools. It’s an out for them, and it results in unequal access for students. Why can’t each elementary school have the CES curriculum? Why can’t each middle school have a STEM class? And put on a school play? [/quote]

It sounds like you want every school to be the same even though the student populations they serve are vastly different. Why do you think this is going to work?[/quote]

I don’t know why it wouldn’t work. It would certainly be fair. There are smart and high performing students at all schools, or did you not know that? My kids attend a title I elementary school. The school sends roughly 10 kids to the CES housed at a higher income school, leaving behind kids who qualified but didn’t get a seat. Why should MCPS take away from the peer cohort at a lower income school to put these kids at a higher income school? And why should the kids who didn’t get a seat not have access to the same curriculum? If MCPS would just offer the curriculum at the local school, then everyone who qualified could have access to the program (fairness), which would also be good for the school community. Instead they take from one school and give to another. Similar machinations happen at the middle school level through the lottery programs.[/quote]

Starting at the elementary school level would be more beneficial than trying to bring different SES populations together at age 12. Growing up together in the same environment is important, but DCUM is against those type of boundary changes.  It's so much more difficult to do starting in 6th grade.[/quote]
MCPS does bring different SES populations together at ES through HS in some areas as much as they can. Some low SES areas are too isolated from areas where there are higher academically performing students and those are where there would need to be incentive to bring in these higher SES students. Hence the MSMC and other magnets.[/quote]

Locked behind lotteries! And two points. There are higher academically performing students at all schools. Even lower income schools have some higher income families (MC or UMC), so there is an SES mix already. In my experience, the magnets specifically take higher income families out of these schools when they would otherwise stay. [/quote]

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