Reply to Initial boundary options for Crown/Damascus study

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We moved from a QO-zoned neighborhood to a Wootton one when our kids started school (which may get shifted now) so I completely get all the anxiety.

I’m also a school integration researcher and wanted to share a few considerations:

1) School integration is one of the most effective ways of improving school quality. There’s tons of research showing integrated schools significantly reduce achievement gaps - students from underresourced communities perform better and crucially students from resourced communities perform just as well as they always have - their test scores do not decline at all. 
2) Students from well resourced communities also see benefits - as adults they are more open to other people’s perspectives, better communicators, more tolerant of differences. 
3) For those of you concerned about your kids’ future earnings, high performing kids from schools with higher FARM rates actually have a significantly better chance of getting into elite colleges than kids from a W school - if you move a student who is applying to an Ivy from a W school into QO/Gaithersburg etc., their odds of getting admitted increase - and again, evidence suggests that their academic performance will not go down because of that move.

For this boundary study to work and to help create an MCPS that doesn’t have such a massive bifurcation between its high and low performing schools, the district needs to build an affirmative case for why these moves matter and a coalition of supporters - something they absolutely have not done. But there is a case to be made that these moves can be good for all kids, including those who parents don’t have the resources to effectively advocate for their desired outcome. [/quote]

Totally agree with you, PP. This is ultimately a PR problem, and then also somewhat of a logistics problem.

There are almost 3 years to prepare for this: the kids will be fine, and the kids who struggle with social anxiety or depend on deeply entrenched existing networks will have time to prepare (via waivers, or creating new supports, or seeing that over time many of their their friends will move with them and their communities will adapt). Will kids still struggle? Yes. And unfortunately there will always be kids who struggle and that's not really all on the boundaries.

There are YEARS here for the kids, parents, teachers, schools, and communities to work on creating new communities around split articulation. Split articularion is a regularly occurring thing and it can be contended with. Watch the kids themselves, who will know by Christmas where they are going to MS and HS; they are not going to be cry babies about it - they are going to start developing school pride and groups around this immediately. Will it mix some things up? Maybe But in the end, groups get mixed up at these ages. It's a normal, good thing.

The logistical piece is important: if a 13 year old with parents who work will be playing a sport at a school they can not walk to, the county needs to ensure buses are provided at appropriate times AND that programming exists around those times (looking at you, rabid high school coaches with weird practices). This can be contended with, and this needs to be focused on as a real solution as opposed to senseless whining.

I say this as someone who sent my kid to a school as "an other" and say my kid benefit from it. I also have a kid who switched schools in 9th and attended some magnets that saw mass-dispersion. These kids ARE resilient partly because they are, but these things kind of help to build resiliency in otherwise healthy kids.

Everybody relax and try to be productive rather than insufferable. And show your kids their schools are going to be great and they are going to do well and have a good experience and have friends. [/quote]

Some split may be ok but MCPS should try its best to avoid new split articulations unless absolutely necessary.   Stonebridge townhouses being split from Stonebridge single families are not acceptable. Same with Lakewood split with 5-10% kids split out which makes no sense. [/quote]

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