Reply to Anyone move their DC to algebra in 6th

Forum Index » Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)

Reply to "Anyone move their DC to algebra in 6th"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]What needs to be mentioned is the challenge for the school district.   I get it, we all want our child to be challenged at their highest level and supported.  However, a school district and one with 160K students, has to offer its programming and support at scale.  This is the exact problem with Special Education. People get IEP plans, which while valid and likely would help, have nothing to do with the personnel or operations to implement them.

What do I mean by this? Imagine your kid is math advanced and will take MV by junior year. You want them to keep moving forward and so do they.  Next stop Linear Algebra. But only a very small number of kids need to take this course. Meanwhile a much larger number of kids need to take Alg2. So a LA course with 12 people is offered meanwhile all the Alg2 classes have 30 kids. Next stop folks complaining about class sizes.  The district agrees that smaller class sizes would be helpful all around; for kids, teachers, for outcomes. But, the constraints are the constraints. There’s the real budget, there’s a set salary scale for all teachers, there’s a non ideal teaching situation limiting the hiring pool. And to top it off, parents can’t be reasoned with that LA doesn’t need to be a highschool course offering and students should take it at the university.

How do you solve that problem?  Either you just stop offering LA and/or you stop offering or severely limit Alg1 in 6th which stops the pipeline of students needing the course.  This is the reality. You all are arguing and fighting the wrong problem with the wrong people. Go talk to politicians to get them to support real true education and family life reform and innovation, both in concept and dollars.

[/quote]

We need to accept larger class sizes at the secondary level anyway, PP, it's just a reality of our capital budget and real estate constraints, which do not allow MCPS to build as many schools as we would like.

My son had 31 kids in his first grade class, and that was a disaster, but his high school classes at Walter Johnson regularly had 30 kids and that was perfectly fine. Kids can tolerate large classes as they grow older.

The number of advanced classes in high school is limited by the number of classrooms (very long term budget issue) and/or teachers (short term budget issue and difficulties finding employable people). My youngest kid attends BCC, and despite having available classrooms, they cannot seem to get their act together to meet demand for some advanced classes. Last year they indicated that they might not offer AP Chem every year, and there was a parent backlash. This year they offered just one AP Chem class for the whole school, reserved for 11th and 12th graders, which shut out some 9th and 10th graders who were interested and qualified. And even if a class is offered, sometimes the actual content doesn't match the official description: my kid is taking AP Physics C, which according to the transcript is composed of Mechanics and Electricity and Magnetism, but they were told that only Mechanics would be actually taught, with prep for the AP Mech exam. Which means kids are on their own to take the E&M AP exam, and how do they explain to colleges that their school just refuses to teach the second semester of that course???

What this means is that advanced kids need to be careful because what they're planning for their future might not actually be available once they get to those higher grades; and their trajectory for college admissions might get derailed because the school doesn't actually offer what the website says they offer. The admissions officers see all these APs and post-APs that are "officially" available, and thinks candidates didn't seize opportunities, but no, kids get shut out of classes all the time. This needs to be explained in college apps.

[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics