Reply to Blair as a whole school magnet?

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Reply to "Blair as a whole school magnet?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We don't need Blair magnet or any magnet program really. More effort should be put on those as risk students. It's ridiculous that MCPS has so many "special" programs for kids at advantage, while ignoring the needs of students who can barely make to grade-level.[/quote]
This is not true.  There are plenty of resources for kids who are struggling - they get pulled out to see reading specialists and they have ESOL classes and teachers in the schools.  There are tons of these kids and they are served within their home school.  The county does spend a lot of money on staffing.
The highly gifted are by definition a small minority of the school population (around 3%) which is why it is not possible to have programs in their home schools - they might have a couple of peers in each grade in their home elementary school for example.  This is why they are put into magnet programs- you need to pull the top 3-5 kids from each school into a central location so they can have a strong peer group/cohort.  These programs do not receive any additional funding or any additional resources from MCPS with two exceptions - they are provided transportation and MCPS does provide them staffing for a program coordinator (this seems reasonable when you think that there might be 100 kids in the school in a magnet program.  This person typically has other school-wide responsibilities too).  They do have a specialized curriculum but that is a one time expense that is quite modest.  It is not an ongoing expense.  They do not have special teachers really.  Their class sizes are the same.  They don't get additional materials.  What they are getting is an appropriate education with a group of peers.  They are not taking anything away from other children.[/quote]

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