Reply to MS/HS in Takoma Park, SS MD

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][b]MCPS still allows $ to buy preferential opportunity.[/b]

PBES (and other local-only-serving CES programs -- essentially what they have preserved of cohorted elementary GT from the anti-GT trend of the past 25+ years) have a higher seat-to-population ratio than those with multi-school catchments (e.g., nearby Oak View and Pinecrest).  Non-CES local-school enrichment is not properly comparable (or, at least, not equivalnet) and of dubious implementation consistency across schools.

The same can be said for local enrichment in comparison to the MS criteria-based magnets.  TPMS's 25-seat local set-aside affords something like 3 times the per-capita seating for those whose home school is TPMS.  Non-magnet TPMS students may also be able to access some of the magnet classes, though the paradigm, there, is not as well understood.  TPMS also has more robust extracurriculars and PTA involvement than nearby middle schools.  I'm not sure if the local set-aside for nearby Eastern Middle School's Humanities magnet has survived, but I believe it was half that of TPMS.

Though there isn't a local set-aside for Blair SMCS, which serves the lower portion of the county (Poolesville in the upper), there's a high correlation between TPMS magnet attendance and SMCS admittance, when considering the overall applicant pool.  Numbers showing relative likelihood of SMCS admittance for lottery-pool-identified students who lotteried in to the MS magnet vs. those who did not (where they may only have taken the advanced, but not magnet, math and standard science locally) would be interesting to see, but MCPS keeps numbers like that, likely to raise the ire of the parent/guardian population, internal, sometimes not even allowing for the analysis that would bring self-critique.

Blair CAP tends to draw disproportionately from the Eastern MS Humanities magnet, but I believe that HS program is limited to the five DCC HS catchments, rather than the entirety of the lower county, as is the case with the MS criteria-based magnets and SMCS, making it a bit more likely to get in overall.  (The TP and DCC parts of Silver Spring also have access to several other DCC-specific HS application programs and a couple of countywide ones -- Ecology at Poolesville, Social Justice at Whitman and the flagship IB program at RM come to mind.)  As a large school, Blair tends to have the most elective options in the first place, even for those not admitted to one of the special programs.

It's not only Takoma Park that gets special treatment.  The Stonegate community also has their own CES, as do a few (2?) others.  Potomac ES has a large local set-aside for it's Mandarin (Chinese) Immersion program where other schools hosting immersion programs do not.  There may be other, similar situations of which I'm not aware, but certainly not enough to make it "everybody gets something special" (certainly not special with equivalence).

There's been an amount of "some are more equal than others" in the system, and they don't seem to mind (enough, anyway) that that runs counter to stated equity aims.  It is unclear whether that is because certain communities have MCPS leadership/the BOE in their pockets, the MCPS powers-that-be wanting the inequity to fester so that they might more easily do away with special programming, just the happenstance of ad hoc decision-making or a combination of these and other factors.

In this case (TP/SS focus), it's no surprise that in-bounds PBES/TPMS/Blair tends to sell for more when comparing reasonably like properties.  MCPS isn't differentially beholden to these communities by statute or immutable agreement, so things always might change from a school perspective (e.g., policy/program change that evens out of opportunity, change to catchment borders, etc.; also, the DCC HS choice and application-based program admittance paradigms shift every now and then, so one can't rely completely on those staying the same).

There are other things that affect housing price, though, and OP may find that that which is supported by the additional local TP tax is worth it, regardless of any schooling benefit.[/quote]

Um, ok but Takoma Park also has some of the highest density of low income housing in Montgomery County.[/quote]

Those in low-income housing would have the FARMS-rate and EML magnet pool identification adjustments to account for that, just like anywhere else in the county.  No need to give one community a greater chance at something that, between Clemente and TPMS, is supposed to be a county-wide program (ditto among all the CES programs).

And guess who ends up in those local set-aside magnet spots?  Proportionally greater from those living in the much more expensive TP SFHs, to the extent we are allowed to observe -- MCPS won't share such data and discourages the analysis that would bring that up, internally.[/quote]

If you hop in the way-back machine, you'll note that the addition of the PBES Local CES was meant to be the first stage in a larger expansion of CES seats. It was a good idea while it lasted, but MCPS Central Office veered off course within a couple of years.

Rather than complaining about the local magnets, why not advocate for an expansion of the pilot? I am not a PBES parent, but I can attest that moving the PBES kids out of the pool for Pine Crest and Oak View expanded the number of seats available for other kids, including kids coming from some of the highest needs schools in MCPS. [/quote]

Sure, as long as the opportunity equals out.  Right now, and for a long time, it hasn't.  I mean, getting it exactly equal is not a realistic aim, but there's no reason an local-in-bounds TPMS student should have three times the likelihood of receiving a magnet education as someone from any other part of the county.  PBES also doesn't have to have a significantly different magnet-seats-to-population-served ratio from the other CES's (same with Stonegate, etc.).  It's just opportunity hoarding.

[b]Let's advocate for more, overall, whether additional CES seats or truly comparably local school enrichment.  There clearly is the need -- far, far more students identified for the pools than are selected in the lotteries.  While we wait for that, let's make sure we aren't creating a relative disservice based on zip code.[/b][/quote]

Absolutely this.  I still find it boggling that the only 2 consortiums that we have are in Silver Spring/TP. There seems to be less appetite from decision makers to create one in the western midcountry/upcounty area. That to me is opportunity hoarding.  [/quote]

Remember that "Silver Spring," in the sense that it is covered by the 2 consortia, is a very large area.  Most folks not in that area think of SS as downtown SS and the immediately surrounding area, not including Wheaton/north or any of the NE Consortium (White Oak/Hillandale/a bit near TP along NH Ave & everything to the north).  The original idea for a DCC was more focused inside the beltway, but was rejected by the schools to the west in that area, barring much of the envisioned socio-economic mixing and cohorting opportunity (larger peer cohort that might then have been available to outliers in the southeast).

An Upper-County Consortium might also work to give smaller schools more punching power in terms of elective classes/programs and some degree of self-selected cohorting.  [b]It isn't all roses in the consortia, though, and the distances upcounty may present an even greater logistical burden than the DCC/NEC have.[/b]  It would be good to consider this, at least, within the context of the upcoming boundary discussions associated with the two new high schools.

Really, they should be doing the decades-overdue county-wide boundary study/redistricting across all levels.[/quote]

This. The number of additional bus routes needed for the consortia is huge, and many of the routes are quite long, even among the DCC schools which are located relatively near to each other.[/quote]

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