Reply to Takoma, Easter Magnets. MCPS Pilots Universal Evaluation Process.

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The idea that the tests are sufficient to identify "truly gifted" students is ridiculous. The addition of the "peer cohort" criterion shows this for what it really was -- a social engineering effort. Which is not wrong in and of itself but dressing it up as a more objective process is not accurate.

And I agree with the overall point that MCPS is failing the smart kids, whether or not you want to call them gifted or whether that term really fits. The advanced courses and tracking so that kids are grouped and not lumped into classes needs to be offered at all home schools. I've had kids go through both a well-regarded W feeder middle school and a magnet middle school, and the W feeder middle school was a waste of three years.[/quote]

Just the opposite! The new and improved process does a superior job identifying truly gifted students by opening up the selection process to a much larger group than in previous years.

Sure, a bunch of affluent parents are angry because they can't buy their kids way into the magnets any longer, but this is a step in the right direction.[/quote]

Again, you don't know that the new and improved process does a superior job of identifying truly gifted students. You are correct that it opened up the selection process to a much larger group. However, you're assuming that the tests given are precise and accurate in measuring giftedness, and that truly gifted children will outperform not-gifted or not-as-gifted children on those tests. Neither assumption is demonstrably valid. Further, by excluding non-test factors such as teacher recommendations and essays, you're taking away other mechanisms by which truly gifted -- but not amazing standardized test-takers -- can differentiate themselves. Finally, MCPS took a process that, however weak, involved apples-to-apples objective comparisons only between test scores, and threw the subjective "peer cohort" factor in to remove children who otherwise qualified for the magnet from the pool of students eligible to attend the magnet.

And if you don't think there was an unspoken and unwritten goal of increasing at least certain types of diversity, then you didn't go to the open house where MCPS administrators tried to explain the process. One MCPS employee said with satisfaction how happy she was that the process resulted in greater diversity (although it reduced Asian American representation). They're doing the social engineering by the back door that they can't legally accomplish through the front door by using race/ethnicity as an explicit criterion.[/quote]

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