Reply to MCPS gutting humanities MS magnets and replacing with CKLA? (Are CESes next?)

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Reply to "MCPS gutting humanities MS magnets and replacing with CKLA? (Are CESes next?)"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Why can’t they just offer enriched classes at all elementary and middle schools instead? They are already doing that, they just have an unfair and unwieldy regional program on top of it, where they’ve locked away a different curriculum behind a lottery. Why can’t they just pick what they want their enriched curriculum to be (the CES curriculum or ckla/ whatever they use at MS magnet vs whatever they use for enriched social studies) and then offer that at each elementary school and each middle school? This two tiered system is unfair and a mess. [/quote]

Enrichment curriculum means totally different thing for CES/MS humanity magnet vs. CKLA enrichment. My kids had experienced the former, I've been attending and listening every BOE sessions since this year so am following the CKLA curriculum, and I've read posts here about first-hand user experience, so I think I have enough background knowledge to make a comparison.

CKLA enrichment is about answering a few more open-ended questions (e.g., do you like the title? If not, what title will you give? Do you agree with the author on their conclusions?). That's about it. For MS, it's certainly better than the current MS ELA curriculum in that at least CKLA requires students to read a full book every quarter, and write essays in its entirety. That sounds like bare minimum requirement to a middle schooler, right? But it was only reading chapters and writing paragraphs before. So it should technically be better in local MSs. For ESs, not the case. ELC collected a much better feedback so far.

For CES and MS humanity magnet, they use completely different curriculum, which is project-oriented, and is hence cross-pollinated to several classes. The requirements for writing are much higher standards. At 4th grade, kids are asked to write their own story about a hero they made up, from which they learn to construct personality, environment, and even changing their hero's characters along the story development. In 5th grade, they read Shakespeares (yes the original version with old English). In MS magnet, they will make documentaries which often win state or national recognitions.

For MCPS, CKLA enrichment is what they can easily implement to every ES and MS. Yet, I believe nearly every ES and MS adopt it without differentiation. The CES and MS humanity magnet curriculum requires much more effort in implementation, so they gut it out completely. That's MCPS' way to do enrichment: all stay at a lower level and no differentiation. And that's what they believe the ultimate solution for equity.  [/quote]

That’s a very long way of saying that your kid gets access to a superior curriculum than mine does because yours won a lottery. I’m sure there’s a way to provide advanced/enriched instruction to all the elementary and middle students who qualify in a way that can reasonably be implemented at all schools. These classes are not taught by wizards. [/quote]

You’re fighting the wrong foe. Don’t get mad at the magnets or the lottery winners. Get upset that mcps has a flawed process. First of all, there IS a way to do what you propose. It was called ELC and everyone was happy with it. MCPS inexplicably yanked it. Second of all, there was a time before the lottery when all kids took the cogat in addition to MAP and grades. The kids with the strongest records were offered magnet spots. It wasn’t random and was obviously more fair than a lottery with wacky norming and whatnot. [/quote]

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