Reply to Is it good or bad that MCPS placed Magnet schools in the lowest performing schools?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm personally thrilled to see MCPS rethinking this process to find the best possible candidates for these programs.

[b]I'm also not surprised that the people who have been able to game the system for so long are upset that it's harder to do so with these changes. 
[/b]
The whines by the Dr. Li alumni simply show the improvements to the selection criteria are working.[/quote]

How exactly did they game the system? By being born to parents who care about education? Lucky, maybe. But how did they exactly game the system? Don't say prep classes. I already told you the prep classes don't have the tests and they cannot cheat the exam just because they went to Dr. Li. [/quote]

I've sent a kid to Dr. Li, so I know about his program.  He does not prep kids by getting the admissions tests.  He preps kids by convincing their parents to send him their every summer for many summers in a row.  While there, he provides them instruction that they are not getting in public school.  These kids are being taught math concepts far more than 1 grade level ahead.  They are explicitly being taught reading, writing, vocabulary building strategies, again, far above grade level.  By contrast, MCPS teaches math at most 1 grade level ahead.  MCPS has terrible explicit reading and writing instruction.  It should come as no surprise that, on a test with questions on above grade level material, Dr. Li will have many kids who perform better than MCPS kids who didn't go to his "prep".  I'm sure also there are many kids in his program who don't score well, but we don't hear about them.

I don't think that Dr. Li alum are "whining".  They have a legitimate gripe, IMO.  They already know all the on grade level material and much of the above grade level material.  Why should a kid who is a hard worker and performing well academically be denied access to a program simply because they have hardworking peers?  Especially, since at the time of complaining, it is entirely unclear if they will have any comparable magnet instruction at their home school.  Although the peer concept seems geographic, it is not unreasonable to wonder if it is also motivated by racism, since in our society, for a variety of historical reasons, geography and race are overlapping.  In fact, since being prohibited from using race as an explicit admissions factor by the Supreme Court in the Eisenberg v. MCPS case, MCPS itself has used other (legal) criteria such as race and SES status as proxies to ensure racial diversity in admissions.  So, when MCPS uses geography to keep certain students out and many of those students happen to be of a similar ethnicity, it's no surprise if the parents wonder if there is an aspect of racial bias.

BTW, I say this as a non-Asian parent, whose non-Asian child didn't get into the HS magnet despite having attended a MS magnet and being very bright.  So, I don't have a personal gripe about Dr. Li.  [/quote]

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