My kid is a Blair SMACS senior. He has a great cohort of high achieving Asian-American peers who are instrumental in winning many such STEM competitions. What Blair has provided them has only been the cohort and a curriculum. They accelerate and enrich outside the school for years because their families recognized that curriculum was far inferior to what was being offered in their parents country of origin.

They are kids of STEM professioals - doctors, scientists, programmers, academics, lawyers and businessmen. They are the ones who have artificially propped up MCPS and perhaps every school district in the US which does well. But their parents are sick and tired of MCPS, like I am, and if they have younger kids, they will move to either Bethesda and if they have less money than that then they will move to HoCo. Most do not think highly of the private schools here.

I was really impressed watching the Howard County families fighting the redistricting c p they are trying to pull on them and their kids. I hope they are successful in their fight to keep their communities together. Calling them racist is not going to work, they have seen what happens in other counties when this stuff goes unchecked, I hope, again, that they are successful.

They are building new communities. Asian families are not stupid, they understand exactly what Montgomery County stands for and they fully understand how discriminated against they are in the school system. Lol, the joke is on people like you who continue to hold on with baited breath that Montgomery County will return to its' days of glory. That ship sailed a long time ago. It is just one big social justice experiment now, and unlike the parents in Howard County, Montgomery County parents are too late in the game to correct any of this, so sad. But you keep on laughing.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have family in HoCo and I have a fairly good idea that in terms of rigor they are not any better than MoCo. Yet, the schools are rated higher. Why is that? Is it that MoCo is bottom heavy with HI population, while HoCo is pretty much White/Asian?

There is only one HoCo HS in the top 10, while MCPS has 4.
3 HoCo schools in the top 30 while MCPS has 11.
Enough said

Overall, among school districts, HoCo has been #1 since past two years. I think it has a lot to do with two things - more and more Asians are moving there, less hispanics.

On paper only. HoCo cannot compete academically with MCPS in real life

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have family in HoCo and I have a fairly good idea that in terms of rigor they are not any better than MoCo. Yet, the schools are rated higher. Why is that? Is it that MoCo is bottom heavy with HI population, while HoCo is pretty much White/Asian?

There is only one HoCo HS in the top 10, while MCPS has 4.
3 HoCo schools in the top 30 while MCPS has 11.
Enough said

Overall, among school districts, HoCo has been #1 since past two years. I think it has a lot to do with two things - more and more Asians are moving there, less hispanics.

Anonymous wrote:I have family in HoCo and I have a fairly good idea that in terms of rigor they are not any better than MoCo. Yet, the schools are rated higher. Why is that? Is it that MoCo is bottom heavy with HI population, while HoCo is pretty much White/Asian?

There is only one HoCo HS in the top 10, while MCPS has 4.
3 HoCo schools in the top 30 while MCPS has 11.
Enough said

Anonymous wrote:Bottom heavy?!

Yes, HoCo schools are “rated” higher because they have a lot fewer black and Hispanic kids, who tend not to score as highly on standardized tests. “Ratings” around here are 100% about whiteness/Asianness of a school system. When people say they want “good schools,” you can simply cut and paste “white and Asian schools.”

MCPS:
30.1% Hispanic
29.3% White
21.3% Black
14.3% Asian

HCPS:
22.4% Asian
24.0% Black
11.3% Hispanic
35.8% White

so...not really. You know it's easy to look this stuff up, right?

Here's the difference:

HoCo

Free/Reduced Lunch – 22.7%
Limited English Proficient – 5.7%
Special Education – 9.6%


MoCo:
Free/Reduced Lunch – 34.2%
Limited English Proficient – 17.4%
Special Education – 11.2%

That's what the difference boils down to.

The best of MCPS are better than the best of Howard Co. due to family resources and relatively good schools. Successful kids flourish. The growing FARMS and ESOL population has pulled test scores down. After elementary school it is very hard to get them caught up in test scores. We can improve the scores but not enough to bring the achievement gap closer. HoCo has a different population and can’t be compared directly as a whole. It is probably better to compare specific schools with similar populations.

Howard offers meaningful tracking to abput top 20%-30% of the students, allowing them to flourish and challenging them. MCPS stopped, and found scores slipping. That's all.

“Ratings” around here are 100% about whiteness/Asianness of a school system.

This really is not true. If you look beyond the W schools you will see a higher % of kids not passing than minorities in the school. Newsflash- not every minority kid fails too so there are even more white kids in MCPS not reaching proficiency on the tests that determine rankings. Its great if you work for MCPS to pretend its just the poor kids but its not.

MCPS has far more wealthy and high IQ kids than Howard. MCPS fails for the average to low income kids which is entirely on MCPS staff.

Bottom heavy?!

Yes, HoCo schools are “rated” higher because they have a lot fewer black and Hispanic kids, who tend not to score as highly on standardized tests. “Ratings” around here are 100% about whiteness/Asianness of a school system. When people say they want “good schools,” you can simply cut and paste “white and Asian schools.”

The biggest problem with MCPS is it tries to fix social issues thru education. High performing kids suffer and doesn’t do any good to low performing kids either.

Curriculum 2.0 and too many resources being spent on the overhead.

2.0 is hurting MCPS scores. The JHU audit showed that it was a disaster, had something like a 30% error rate in materials and left wide gaps. This has harmed lower and mid level performing kids who don't have lots of at home supplemental education and who in a different system might not make a 4 or 5 but would certainly earn a 3. Rankings are passed on how many kids hit proficiency. All the W kids getting 5s does not matter when you have schools like QO and others with mostly white/non FARMS kids getting non passing scores. Throw in the schools with high poverty and the combination sinks MCPS. Its a distraction to blame the poor kids when the number of kids not passing far exceeds the number of kids on FARMS within a school.

MCPS is very top heavy. Money and resources is spent on a large central office, consultants and various initiatives rather than putting resources directly into classrooms. Over crowding exists everywhere but MCPS handles it poorly.

MCPS puts far too many demands on teachers for data collection and other non-instructional activities which directly takes away from their ability to help kids that could succeed with more instruction. MCPS places principals based on who gets along with the central office bit based on who can work best with teachers and find ways to teach the students.

I have family in HoCo and I have a fairly good idea that in terms of rigor they are not any better than MoCo. Yet, the schools are rated higher. Why is that? Is it that MoCo is bottom heavy with HI population, while HoCo is pretty much White/Asian?