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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Most people are sympathetic to efforts to boost performance of struggling students, but the evidence shows that is not the actual effect of MCPS "equity" efforts. In fact, "equity" has hollowed out the education in MCPS and thus continues to hurt all the students. MCPS is a Potemkin village, and is in dire need of an audit to determine whether it is actually educating students as it says it is.

A few examples of how "equity" manifests in MCPS schools in practice:
  -Elimination of honors classes (or rebranding grade-level class as honors as in the case of middle school English).
   -Lowering the level of instruction to the lowest common denominator
  -50% rule for assignments
  -Exclusion of students from schools with large number of gifted students from admission to gifted magnet programs
  -Lowering academic standards (including but not limited to grade inflation).
  -Restorative Justice/lowering standards of discipline, removing consequences for offenders and placing the burden of offenses on victims (and students wanting to learn)
   -Closing of alternative schools and mainstreaming students with significant behavior problems in regular classes
  -Replacing challenging classic novels with contemporary "flavor of the month" books (or graphic novels) at markedly lower reading level
  -Novels featuring communists or socialists as protagonists used in the curriculum as early as grade school
  -Watching videos or listening to audiobooks instead of reading 
  -De-emphasizing effective writing in favor of other means of communication
  -Group work instead of individual work to conceal both the achievement of the high achievers and the deficiencies of the low achievers
  -Free feminine products in the girls/womens room
  -Free feminine products in the boys/mens room
  -More sexual content at a younger age in books and materials in school
  -More violent content at a younger age in books and material in school

[/quote]

Honors for English happens in high school too. It is not just middle school. It is a major problem. The English curriculum is extremely week with very little reading expected.

Making sure feminine hygiene products are in bathrooms though, what is the issue? Going to the nurse is for illness not normal bodily functions. Surely you don’t think people should just bleed through it their period starts unexpectedly?[/quote]

Agree that the English curriculum in MCPS is very weak---perhaps the weakest part of the overall MCPS curriculum. I expect this probably could be measured and that, for instance, recent MPCS grads would have vocabularies that are significantly smaller than graduates in previous decades or generations.

I included the period products as a tangible example of "equity" in MCPS, because offering free feminine products in public places (such as schools) (as well as eliminating taxes on period products) is part of an issue termed "menstrual equity" by the organizations and activists that promote this. In fact, MCPS began to provide these at the behest of a former SMOB (now at Harvard University) who was a member of the Youth Advisory Council of the nonprofit PERIOD. Peruse some of these links and you may notice common themes that seem to run through all "equity" activism. (One of them is that feminine products are declared as a "human right" and the United Nations is invoked).

https://www.boarddocs.com/mabe/mcpsmd/Board.nsf/files/BKUJJ64D5773/$file/Hana%20O’Looney.pdf

https://thermtide.com/15888/news/hana-olooney-wraps-up-the-semester-as-smob/

https://montgomerycountymd.gov/cfw/Resources/Files/WLB/speakers2022/emerging-leaders/Hana_OLooney.pdf

https://period.org/who-we-are#

https://www2.montgomerycountymd.gov/mcgportalapps/Press_Detail.aspx?Item_ID=44313&Dept=1

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/period-equity-what-is-it-why-does-it-matter-202106012473

https://www.aclu.org/publications/menstrual-equity

[/quote]

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