Reply to MCPS is cuttting compacted math and cohorted literacy enrichment

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The issue about taking AB or BC after pre-Calc isn't about what is right for some students, or even for the majority, it's about what is right for [i]each[/i] student.  For those for whom Calc BC is right, no MCPS school should be dissuading them from taking it or, if taken prior to Senior year, failing to provide reasonably equivalent access to logically following courses as is available at any other MCPS school (exclusive for that equivalence, perhaps, of STEM magnet programs, but then those should have ample seating).

The same goes for the early enrichment/acceleration that is the main subject of this thread, where MCPS's burden includes equitable identification (not well handled to date), practicable/effective differentiation, where the currently planned curricular approach clearly could use better public explication and, perhaps, considerably more thought, and flexible school/classroom resourcing models to help ensure these.

The process and standards for differential course recommendation should be clear, consistent across the county and, along with the options, themselves, communicated well enough in advance to allow students and caregivers agency with regard to prerequisite action.

In his first year, Superintendent Taylor espoused eschewing a model of scarcity for a climate of plenty.  Let's make sure he is making his subordinates follow through on that on the one hand as we ensure the resources to do so (looking at you, County Council) on the other.[/quote]

I look at the salaries of people in central office - [b]lot of people making over $200K per year[/b], and I think these people need to take pay cuts and we need layoffs from central office. The county council doesn't print money, as much as we wish it could.[/quote]

Such pay/position cuts, justified or not, would affect such a small percentage of the budget that it makes the issue a red herring with regard to the County Council's funding/tax decisions.  This is not to say that there aren't opportunitiesvl for better management, just that more money is going to be required to get to the education levels/results the county wants.

Families with school-aged children, and many others to a lesser extent, are going to be rather upset with the cuts that will be made with an under-funding Council decision.  Of course, they won't know about them until it hits later, while the budget/tax decision is happening now.[/quote]

MCPS isn't underfunded.  They need to manage the money they have better vs. demanding more.  Every year they get more, despite decining enrollment and poor test scores.  This isn't a money issue.  This is a management issue.  Anyone on the BOE and County Council who agrees to more money vs. transparency, accountability and fiscal responsibility should lose their seat.[/quote]

The mismanagement argument applies to most of government, from military and police to roads and schools, if not to just about any large enterprise.  Still, it doesn't help get the job done.  The rejoinders of past threads to observation of declining enrollment and test scores -- things such as the greater proportion of high-needs/high-cost students in that enrolled population, the higher proportion than might be widely known of relatively fixed costs (those that don't vary with year-to-year student population changes), general inflation, etc. -- largely get shrugged off as though they don't matter to those whose focus may be on taxes paid more than education delivery.

Talk to County Council (and Executive) candidates about their priorities.  Where do they place this amount of funding vs. other planned uses of tax revenue?  If education is a top priority, what would they be willing to give up, whether elements of another service area (e.g., parks, senior services, public transportation, etc.), some of the tax incentives (e.g., PILOTs) or the idea of keeping taxes at a lower rate than would be necessary to fund everything?  If they see particular areas of mismanagement reflected in the requested budget, what are they, specifically, what would be done alternatively, and exactly what cost & performance differentials are we likely to see?

I agree that transparency, accountability and fiscal responsibility should be pursued.  I'd say that it is clear (pun intended) that the first continues to be woeful, making the second difficult and assessment of the third much harder, and that, among the three, then, it is the first where Council and Board might find their efforts best spent at this time.[/quote]

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