Reply to If your child took Algebra 1 in 6th grade..

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My child had a 5th grade spring map score of 253 (5th) and 6th fall of 245. At Frost the process (as explained to me at least) was that unless you had very special circumstances all 6th graders were placed in AIM. After a couple weeks teachers made recommendations as to which 6th graders would be good candidates to push to algebra and those students, with approval of parents, had their schedules adjusted. This was not communicated publicly at all but parents in know could put their finger on the scale a bit and AIM teacher if your child could be considered for acceleration. This wasn't a sure thing but at least made sure your child was on the radar. After the first couple weeks the math coordinator reached out and said that my child was on the bubble and they could go either way. They gave the usual warnings of "it could destroy their self esteem if they try and fail" but we decided to proceed anyway.

Its been a great confidence booster for them to be in this accelerated cohort even though there were some challenges as the gaps of skipped material emerged. The school did not make any accomodations or special effort to help head off these gaps and the burden was generally on the student to ask for help.

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Is this a troll? Like, you think it's totally OK that "parents in the know could put their finger on the scale?" So much for equity etc.[/quote]

Don't blame the parents. Blame MCPS, who doesn't want to advance students, NOT because the kids have difficulties later on (which they will claim, obviously), but because it's too much of an administrative hassle. MCPS also has budget concerns and keeps squeezing the special programs, for kids with special needs. They also refuse to expand the number of magnet middle school seats, of which there are very few, and then act all put out when the CES kids ask for Alg 1 in 6th at their home middle school.

MCPS is just an unwieldy system and some parents learn a few ways to go around the stated policies to better suit their kid.

I learned, for ex, that kids don't "need" to follow the Bio, then Chem, then Phys pathway laid out on the presentation slides for high school, with prerequisites to take AP versions. Parents take that as gospel because that's what MCPS wants them to think, to make it easier administratively. My kid started with Honors Chem, then will take AP Chem, then AP Phys C (which requires Calculus, so thank goodness she took Alg 1 in 6th), then take AP Bio. Her school waived the Bio pre req given that Bio will be her last STEM class after a rigorous pathway. 
Same for the history pathway that many kids take: AP Gov in 9th, AP US History in 10th, then AP World History in 11th. If you want to do it in a different order, you can.

I also learned that if kids take a foreign language (or possibly other topics) outside of MCPS, *IF* the organization is approved by MCPS, then those classes count as credits on the MCPS transcript. Only half-credits, though, so it might not matter to high achievers. But it could matter to someone who is struggling to graduate!

MCPS doesn't tell you all the things because it's so complex, the teacher or staff member doing the presentation at Back To School Night probably doesn't know all the things. Various people know different things, and it's hard to synthesize it for all parents.

My conclusion is that if you have any particular question about your child's path in MCPS, you have to keep asking different people (the teacher, the counselor, the Principal, DCUM, Central Office, the coordinator for that special subject, etc), because maybe you need to shake many trees before you get a full picture of what's possible and what's not possible. And don't let stupid DCUM trolls tell you that you're Tiger Parentish or overly obsessed or whatnot. Different kids need different things. If you don't ask around, or don't do your research, you won't know.

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Yes kids have different needs but that easy to say when you’re only responsible for your kids. You say it’s an unwieldy system but somehow expect they to make thousands of accommodations.  Below is what the math Ms/HS math pathways potentially look like.  Can you imagine all the questions teachers, counselors, central office get about this when you have some kids who are taking AOPs or Russian School of Math as outside activities and then some kids who aren’t but are still bright and want to be competitive and some kids who are on-level and some kids who are behind.  It’s public school with 160k students.  Some of it needs to be a standardized plan.  Particularly when they have to report data to state and federal levels. 
Like in your scenario, not they have to keep track of an array of students who didn’t take the Life Science exam because they chose not to take Bio 9th grade.  Administrative hassles are just that, a burden of time and money on the system.

[img]https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/siteassets/schools/high-schools/k-q/poolesvillehs/uploadedfiles/departments/math/mathpathways.pdf [/img]

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So? That's an MCPS problem. You're surely not saying they couldn't do better in the organization department, given the exorbitant sums they receive from the taxpayer? It's a parent's job to suss out all opportunities. It should be the school system's job to make all the pathways transparent to families. [/quote]

MCPS is solving the problem by limiting having a million different options.  You all don’t think that’s fair because you want acceleration and options.  Folks also want other things like lower taxes and less overhead.

See the conflicts.[/quote]

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