Reply to Parents of current 7th graders - what do you think about the 6 regional magnets

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We are in a strong cluster with no desire or need to look outside of it for additional opportunities, little worried about the quality of schools being clustered with us. It looks like they will use us to prop up weaker schools which can only impact local peer group.  [/quote]

It will have zero impact on your school.  [/quote]

thats funny I don't think they mentioned which school so how can you know about the impact. Your confidence / ignorance is telling. Fine if there 0 impacts to the schools why is everybody up in arms? Why is it a 0 impact to a stronger school if a bunch of weaker schools are clustered to it? If weaker kids are a 0 impact why are the weaker schools weaker?

Let me answer those for you, the uproar is all about the shuffling of the poor kids with the Rich schools afraid they will get more impacting what they have built and the poor schools convinced they will get even more and or hemorrhage the good kids to other schools. Both side talking out the sides of their mouths with pleas, flimsy facts and straw arguments to a basic fact every school thinks they have too many problem kids as it is and they are scared they will get more creating winners and losers in the shuffle.

the ugly Truth is even with compromise, the schools will never be equal and any measure with more choice will allow the good kids to flee to more desirable spots with few coming back in return. Schools like Blair that got their pick of the DCC kids (and even a few hundred W kids to elect in) will now be one of the worst if not worst options in their cluster after losing not only the premium students coming in but many of their limited local students who now will have assess to better perceived schools and peer groups.  The county thinks they are helping the weaker schools but what they are really doing is creating an escape hatch for a few and further cementing their redheaded step child status. They think they can control the flow by putting basket weaving at the strong schools to allow mid kids to go upstream and putting a few serious programs in meh places. But everyone knows if they water down the prestige of the programs it will default back to the prestige of the schools. Whitman kids don't go to Blair now for the all mighty magnet, they def wont for any watered down replacement. Hell Whitman's school wide SAT avg is comparable to the Magnet's as it is. The question is what that the long term impact to DTSS will be real estate wise and if what happened to the tiny silver that is zoned for BCC price wise. How long before a Takoma Park RE listing states that the property has access to Whitman and BCC? [/quote]

Your post is really confusing, but I think you're saying the worry is about the regional program leading to too many poor kids at various schools?  No, that's not it.  (Few poor kids are likely to travel for regional programs, and also those of us who are decent human beings wouldn't freak out about having a couple hundred more poor kids at our schools even if they did.).

The worry is about the academic high achievers and the demand and cohort for high level classes.  Richer schools have large numbers of these kids and so even if many of them leave for regional programs, there will  be minimal impact on what is available at the home school because there will still be many who stay.  But at medium and high-FARMS schools, the number of these kids is much lower and so there is a real concern that fewer high level courses will be available for students in the home school once the kids who want regional programs leave.  (And this can create a vicious cycle where once those kids leave and the offerings decrease, then even families/kids who otherwise would strongly prefer the home school feel like they basically have to leave to get the courses they want, and the offerings decrease even further, and this repeats until the school becomes known as a place where no advanced kids aiming for good colleges would ever want to go.)

Basically this change could have some pretty devastating impacts on schools that don't have large cohorts of students taking advanced classes, unless those schools all have their own attractive academic criteria-based magnets to bring in kids to balance out the ones they will lose to other schools (real magnets like SMCS or IB, not fake magnets like the agroecology thing at Northwood or whatever else they're proposing.)

The schools that have large cohorts of kids taking advanced classes (i.e. the richer ones) should be insulated from that and things should be just fine regardless of what magnets are or aren't placed at their school.  (That's why MCPS should be thinking about FARMS rates and cohorts in deciding which magnets go where.  But they have admitted that they totally ignored that and just went with putting magnets in places that are easiest to launch based on teachers and classes already existing.)[/quote]

1,000

They should be banned from using the word "equity" until they learn what it means[/quote]

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