Reply to Blind item: Regional criteria "magnets" will be lottery

Forum Index » Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)

Reply to "Blind item: Regional criteria "magnets" will be lottery"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Taylor specifically said they would not turn away students and that they would not be operating with a scarcity model. Plus, he said there are no caps on seats.

So it sounded like admissions was pretty much going to be an open door and no one would be rejected.[/quote]

This is like when they say they are providing transportation. It isn’t actually the full true story. They can’t have unlimited seats for these programs.

The question is about criteria. I actually have no problem if they have as many seats as they need to accommodate all applicants who are as qualified and prepared as the current program students. The issue is when they have so much room or maybe not so much interest that they lower the criteria. Which is how you end up with underperforming programs, like some of the regional IB programs. [/quote]

Exactly. The question is about criteria. I asked Jennie Franklin last winter during one in-person info session: as you are assigning similar program size, how do you set up the qualification criteria? Student stats and [b]number of students who are interested in STEM[/b] will be significantly higher than another region (yes, I'm talking about scenarios like Region 4 vs. Region 5, but I don't want to offend anyone). So do you apply different criteria? Or do you use lottery for the former region? Jennie didn't give me an answer. She hasn't thought about this back then. Applying different criteria is what's CES and MS magnet is doing, and you'll end us with very different student body no matter you then run a lottery or not. This student body will be significantly stronger in academics and more suitable for adapting into the current SMCS curriculum where the future STEM program will most likely be successful. [/quote]

I agree that stats will be different, but interest? I think you'd be surprised. [/quote]

This is your guess based on your limited personal experience in your friendship circle. Central office did run a survey last spring to ask you select the top program themes that you'll be interested in. They did presented the ranking, but if I recall correctly, it's not breaking down into different regions nor parents/students/educators. The only purpose of the survey is to showcase that hey, people are interested. And then they run full-speed ahead with the agenda in their mind. [/quote]

But they didn’t say these programs would be the ONLY way for a child to access high level courses. Why can’t we have good quality regular high schools in every building?[/quote]

I agree with you totally! Why can't every HS provide high level courses? Why do you have to apply and get accepted into a STEM/humanity program in order to access high level courses? If you apply and you have strong stats and strong interests, and lottery kicks you out? [/quote]

If you are in a W school, Blair or Wheaton you get stem.  If you aren't, too bad.[/quote]

Somewhere there is a list of higher level courses that will be offered at all schools[/quote]

I remember seeing AP Calc and AP Stat were promised to be offered in every HS, but couldn't recall if they promise anything beyond that? What about AP Chem, AP Bio, AP Phys C? I would consider those as standard high-level STEM courses, and MCPS honor course is always a joke so please don't count those in. [/quote]

AP Research, the more rigorous flavors of the IB courses, etc., etc.

The idea should be similar access to equivalent rigor for any student, no matter where they end up going to school, with the magnet programs, while being the only true differentiator in offerings, also not being relied upon, broadly, to deliver those higher-level experiences.  Otherwise, either they leave populations with unaddressed needs or they have to make the available magnet seating so large as to completely imbalance facility utilization and vastly expand the transportation infrastructure.

Or they can just give up on equity.  [b]Oh, wait... :roll:[/b][/quote]

Haha, couldn't agree more.
And CO still has this deep bias that magnet course == high-level rigorous STEM course. None of the magnet course prepares student for AP testing. Some of them, if the student can complete with an A or B grade, mean that they should be able to secure a 5 or 4 on certain AP tests. Most of them doesn't cover even half of the AP test content. This is the biggest misunderstanding that non-SMCS parents and CO have had. If future STEM programs adopt the current SMCS courses to a large extent, students will find they couldn't score beyond 3 for AP-STEM tests unless they self-study significant amount of knowledge in afterschool and weekend hours. [/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