Reply to Did the Takoma MS magnet got MORE white this year?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think the correct question to ask is if the achievement gap was mystically closed this year.  I think not. [/quote]

No, that's not the correct question. Closing the achievement gap was not the purpose of the pilot change to the MS gifted magnet admissions process.[/quote]

good joke. [/quote]

Starr and Smith are on the record saying that was their goal. They spent 2017 instigating that and here in Spring 2018 we see the results of their new selection process. [/quote]

Could you please cite some instances where Starr and/or Smith said that MCPS should redo the admissions process for Takoma/Eastern and Roberto Clemente in order to close the achievement gap?

Keeping in mind that Starr left MCPS over a year (February 2015) before Metis presented their report to the BoE in March 2016.
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[b]The yearlong, $200,000 study by New York-based Metis Associates was undertaken largely at the prodding of former superintendent Starr, who had focused on issues around selective admission programs when he ran the Stamford, Connecticut, school system before coming to Maryland.

Some sources suggest that Starr regarded the study and its findings as a project for a second term. His failure to win reappointment a month after the Choice study was commissioned has left Smith with a political hot potato. “I think Josh saw this study as a way to push the question of ‘How progressive is this community?’ ” says Lloyd, the Montgomery County Education Association president. “It’s not going to be resolved in a single year. …It’s going to be a very tense conversation. Anytime you deal with race and class, it’s going to be uncomfortable.”[/b]

Among the findings of the Choice study: While these programs were initially designed to promote voluntary racial integration within MCPS, the 14.5 percent of the county school population currently participating in them is disproportionately white and Asian-American. The study has produced a divide, to a significant degree along racial lines, between those who benefit from the status quo and those who want to see it changed. Says the Board of Education’s O’Neill: “People feel very passionately in Montgomery County, and if it’s going to gore your ox, or, as you perceive it, take something away, it’s a very difficult situation.”

Several of those at the Walter Johnson session waved placards reading “No on 3A.”[b] Recommendation 3A of the study suggests the use of “non-cognitive criteria” in considering admission to the programs in question,[/b] taking into consideration a student’s “motivation and persistence,” as well as test scores. Entrance to language immersion classes is by lottery, but other programs covered by the study generally involve selective admissions.

[b]Many of the Asian-Americans who turned out for the Walter Johnson meeting were clearly concerned that would put them at a disadvantage: While a little less than 15 percent of the countywide student population is Asian-American, the percentage of Asians-Americans in the heralded mathematics magnet program at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring is nearly four times that.  [/b]

Following the Walter Johnson session, O’Neill met with a group of Chinese-American parents. “They’re very concerned we’re going to a quota system,” she says. “Those are illegal, but some in the community, particularly in the Asian community, believe that.” O’Neill points to a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that places restrictions on the use of race in assigning students to particular schools.

Some high school principals are said to have complained privately that these programs skim off top students, leaving other schools in an academically weakened condition. Navarro is among those who contend that the future emphasis needs to be on “how can you provide the best opportunities for learning in all schools…versus having these particular programs here and there.”

Defenders of programs such as the Blair math magnet, created in the early 1980s, say they provide opportunities to high-achieving students that would not be academically or financially viable otherwise. They also [b]criticized the Choice study for not assessing the quality or value of these programs, focusing instead on who is being admitted to them.[/b]

What is not in dispute is that the demographic makeup of the students who apply to and get into these programs is highly disproportionate to the overall makeup of the county school system. Furthermore, awareness of the programs—and the ability to deal with an often complicated application process—often varies sharply by race and socioeconomic status.

[b]When asked if Smith faces a difficult political task in balancing the needs and demands of schools in such widely varying circumstances, Rice acknowledges that he does—to an extent.

“With our W cluster schools [a reference to Walt Whitman, Walter Johnson, Winston Churchill and Thomas S. Wootton high schools], I would say that if we saw a difference in terms of those children not getting into quality schools, not following the career pathways that they wanted to follow, I’d be more concerned. But that’s not what we’re seeing. We’re not seeing those children be the ones who are incarcerated, recruited into gangs, or just falling between the cracks. All of those things are the kinds of things we see with some of our challenged schools.
[/b]
[b]“Let’s focus on these pieces that aren’t performing—get them up to speed and then we lift everything up and accelerate.”

Smith acknowledges that the system needs to adapt. “I am absolutely confident that we can increase opportunities for students and maintain the opportunities that exist now in different ways and with different ways of thinking—because the world changes, and we have to change.”[/b]

http://www.bethesdamagazine.com/Bethesda-Magazine/September-October-2016/Are-Montgomery-County-Public-Schools-Still-the-Best/[/quote]

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