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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Does anyone know...when evaluating a 5th grader for these programs who is in a CES, do they use the FARMS rate of their home elementary school or the FARMS rate of the school that houses the CES? [/quote]
I think it would be the FARMS rate of their home MS.[/quote]

MCPS has not been clear about this. It could be either. Thatbis a good question to ask AEI.[/quote]

They were clear about it the first year they did this and it was their home elementary school. [/quote]

It is supposed to be the school they attend, not their home elementary.  Otherwise they might just use a student's individual FARMS status.  They use the school FARMS rate as a proxy for the difficulty in providing depth/enrichment in a particular class.

It's not that high-SES kids are naturally better at Math, per se (though they might be), but that large cohorts of them tend to be easier to manage with enrichment/depth, due both to the lower variation in exposure to material within the a class/school and to supports available at home (e.g., education level of parents, ease of access to tutoring/likelihood of utilizing outside enrichment, etc.).  This difference is reflected in things like MAP scores, which overwhelmingly skew towards level of exposure rather than underlying ability.

Whether that proxy is appropriate to serve that purpose is valid for debate.[/quote]

No you are wrong. They explained this clearly in the past. Home school FARMS status as proxy for SES. Middle school home school as proxy for peer cohort.[/quote]

No, it'a the elementary school attended. In the FAQ (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CD-zDANEJAR5X-g5pMijtx9sCd4JS1IGPEB1VL-0-9Y) the answer to question 2 about local norming says, "In establishing local norms, students in schools with similar FARMS  rates were grouped together for comparison."  Not "in catchments" or "in home schools," but "in schools," as in "in attendance at schools."  There are 5 FARMS rate categories they use, with more at the low-FARMS (presumed high SES/more easily managed student cohorts) end of the scale than the opposite.  You can take my word for it or contact MCPS to confirm.[/quote]

I see the logic there but I don’t know if it’s true. If it is, it’s a little unfair. For instance, say you have a kid whose home school is Carderock, with a very low FARMS pop, who is at the CCES magnet. CCES is low-moderate, so a different SES band, but the vast majority of FARMS students are in the gen Ed program and have no classes with the CES student. So a different student who remained at Carderock bc he didn’t win the CES lottery would be held to a higher standard to enter the middle school pool. They could literally be next door neighbors. Doesn’t seem fair. [/quote]

Agree.  The system has a ways to go, and that is one of the glaring weaknesses.  It's hard to get to fair, but something like that should have been a no-brainer to change (by, say, parsing out the FARMS rate for magnet vs. non-magnet populations, since they tend to be cohorted).[/quote]

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