Reply to Magnet MS results - Takoma Park & Eastern

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Can someone who is not Math challenged like me explain the 99th percentile references.  
According to this WA state school website, the SAS scores for the 99th percentile range between 135 and 160.  That is a large range and if you are rejecting a kid from Cold Spring with a score of 150 to accept a kid from another ES with a score of 137, chances are these kids are an entire standard deviation from each other in terms of aptitude/ability (not sure what the correct word is).  On another website they said that for SAS scores the mean is 100 and the standard deviation is 16 points so in the example I just gave there would be a big difference between these two kids.  There is no doubt that both students need much more than an honors class in a typical MCPS MS would offer but the higher scorer would need the enrichment and acceleration more than the lower scorer surely.

https://www.nsd.org/Page/28102[/quote]

We know the median was 99th percentile, we don't know the raw score that corresponds to. We don't know if the median was 99.0 or 99.9.

Yes, there is a difference, [b]but kind of hard to argue that a 99th percentile student isn't capable of magnet work.  Maybe the selection committee wasn't given raw scores, either[/b].[/quote]

Exactly.  Close your computer and step away.  
This wasn't some prize for the 200 kids with the highest IQs in the land.  
Test results were ONE factor in selection. 
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Although you could argue that the kids with the higher scores might need the acceleration and enrichment more.
If the higher COGAT test scores are also echoed by higher MAP R and higher MAP M scores (which you can't prep for), it does indicate that MCPS is doing this group of kids a real disservice if they are assuming there is no difference between a 135 SAS score and a 147 SAS score and if they giving undue emphasis on geography.
fwiw I don't have a kid at Cold Spring but I have been around kids in other MCPS magnet programs (ES, MS and HS) and bright high achieving kids in a regular W school district.  There is some overlap but one big difference I have noticed is the thirst for knowledge you see amongst magnet kids.  Perhaps not all of them, but as a group these kids love to learn and seek out challenge and something special happens when you put a group of kids like this in one place together.  There are also far more genuine outliers in a magnet program than you would find in a regular school.  This is why it is sad to hear what happened to the Cold Spring kids.  An acceptance to a middle school magnet is not a "prize" for a kid whose parents force them to prep as some posters have implied, it is rather the only appropriate place for a large number of the kids currently in Cold Spring who received rejection letters.  
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