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][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][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]

+1  This.  I grew up in New York State and they had gifted pull out 3x a week for 2 hours where we did more advanced work.  There were designated teachers for this who taught cohorts grouped together by grade levels.  I would imagine this would be easier/cheaper to execute than the current CES system and you could assign material similar to that of CES but without the hassle of busing kids around.[/quote]

You still don’t understand the problem. Your childhood positive experience came from a cohort of classmates of similar aptitude and level of comprehension. MCPS explicitly eliminates cohort model for ES and MS on EVERY course (except compact math). In a highly inhomogeneous class, the only thing teacher can do is to throw a bunch of worksheet to above-level student and call it “enrichment”.[/quote]

Yes I understand the problem.  I just fail to see why having CES for a very few kids in MoCo is deemed superior to using the resources spent on CES/transport to CES to have an accelerated cohort with a home elementary school. [/quote]

The thing is, the reason they don't support and enrich/accelerate gifted kids in their home schools isn't because of the CES and other magnets.  It's because they just don't want to. They literally went backwards on this from last year to this year, not because of money but because they claim that a homogeneous class using the grade-level CKLA curriculum with a bit of enrichment layered on is good enough.  (This is what you get when there's no one in MCPS leadership who really understands gifted education and the importance of cohorting and above-level challenge for kids who need it.)

So getting rid of CES and magnets, or weakening them, wouldn't make things any better for kids in local schools.  It would just mean that zero kids have a chance for something better, instead of too few kids having a chance for something better.[/quote]

I’d be happy if they provide my DC a homogenous class. No they don’t. My DC is stuck in boredom, endless worksheet during WIN time, and teacher ignores them all the time as they are busy help other kids. [/quote]

Yeah that was a typo, sorry.  They argue that heterogenous (mixed-level) classes with "enrichment" are good enough.  Eliminating magnets won't make that better.  What we need is a real office of AEI with real knowledgeable leadership that understands gifted education and cares about serving them well (or at least in compliance with the freaking law, which they don't even do.)[/quote]

That makes no sense.  There are magnets starting at the age of 9 for kids, so clearly MCPS is fine with enrichment for a chosen few (never mind that the chosen few are based on a single data point for MAP-R), and that MAP is neither age-normed (way to give redshirted kids an advantage) nor a test of giftedness the way COGAT is.[/quote]

I don't get your logic or what exactly you are asking for.

Changing from criteria to lottery is introduced because parents crying out loud that differentiating 99% and 98% kids using CoGAT and MAP-R are splitting-hair. AEI should evaluate the student performance metrics before and after lottery to evaluate whether lottery leads to watering-down of the magnet programs.

If they find the magnet programs have been watered down (which apparently is the case), they should evaluate whether to reinstall the criteria-based selection, or adding other metrics (e.g., CoGAT) for pool selection.

If they find the current magnet programs are prohibiting equitable access (e.g., what they claimed as the reason to push the regional model for HSs), they should develop ways and exchange communication with community how to spread the magnet curriculum to local school.

Instead, they did none of the above rationale procedures, but claim that magnet curriculum is bad and should be gutted out. Where does this logic come from? [/quote]

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