Reply to MCPS to end areawide Blair Magnet and countywide Richard Montgomery's IB program

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I did not find the parents arguments for keeping the system as is in the Bethesda magazine article convincing at all. One parent mentioned how her kid got to take quantum mechanics at Blair. No one needs to take quantum mechanics in HS and if that is indeed your jam, you can take a college class for it. 
Also, parents of a 4th grader expressing concern that their kid is on track to take multivariable calculus in 9th grade and what will the kid do then. Almost no students are ready to take multivariable calculus in 9th grade. And if they are, then take the next class at MC or UMD or virtual. Public school systems are not designed to serve the tiniest of tiny percentage of outliers. There is a case for regional magnets[/quote]

Public schools can differentiate to meet the needs of a variety of student cohorts. If magnet schooling isn't something you see happening for your student, MCPS has plenty of other choices. The school district doesn't need to stop the current magnets to provide additional programming. Why is this an either/or situation?[/quote]

As with most things, it’s fundamentally a fairness issue. If most highly performing kids are shut out for one reason or another, and the only people who want to keep the program as-is are those who are currently in it or have been in it, or are in the tiniest of tiny outliers, then you have a fairness issue. [/quote]

So your solution is to just ignore them? [/quote]

Well no one is asking me, but my solution isn’t to ignore them (if “them” is the young Sheldons). Public school should provide equal programming across high schools so that top performers can access the same classes wherever they are in the county. There’s no need to ration it if you have enough kids who can handle the classes. You can accommodate the young Sheldons within that, or they can take classes at MCC or wherever, but you shouldn’t shut kids out to cater to people who want things to stay exactly the same because they think the program won’t be as good if more (equally eligible) people can take the classes. [/quote]
I don’t think we have enough seats in the magnets and I support expanding the number of students admitted. I also think it would be good to add some mid-county magnets that are the equivalent of the current downcounty/upcounty STEM and humanities programs so kids don’t have such long commutes.

However, there’s a big difference in cohort between the top students in one half or one third of the county versus the top students in this or that sixth of the county. Having this many magnet programs shrinks the pools from which you draw students dramatically, and requires significantly more teachers who are up to the challenge of teaching these courses. In the name of increasing access to rigorous programs, we’re abandoning the things that enabled them to be so rigorous. Instead of 1% of students being in top notch programs, we’ll have x% in pretty good programs. That sounds good to people whose children have been denied entry to these programs, but it’s sounds like a misstep to people whose children have benefited from these programs.[/quote]

Well said[/quote]

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