Is it that time of year again? Let's see if I remember the themes?

1 - It is all dumbed down
2 - Some of the families "gamed the system"
3 - You have to live in a certain neighborhood
4 - Bring back the CoGAT

Did I miss anything?

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Anonymous wrote:Still no cogat this year?
I do worry some of these kids are going to get themselves into a program they can’t handle. Blair and RMIB are not joke, work wise. My kid had to figure out what a cogat was, take it, do the essays herself, etc….if she couldn’t manage all that, not sure how she’d be handling the IB there.

Meanwhile other parents will hire a prep company to help them write their kid's essays.

What percentage of these essays are actually written by the kids?

I suspect maybe 10% of the essays were written by kids without help. I'm curious as to what percent were professionally written with the help of prep companies and how this nonsense effects selection.

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Anonymous wrote:Still no cogat this year?
I do worry some of these kids are going to get themselves into a program they can’t handle. Blair and RMIB are not joke, work wise. My kid had to figure out what a cogat was, take it, do the essays herself, etc….if she couldn’t manage all that, not sure how she’d be handling the IB there.

Don't worry. MCPS will water down the program.

My neighbor teaches at a regional CES and we've talked at length about how the past year or two there are more students who simply can't handle the work. Even with supports in place, the kids just aren't ready for the program.

It was the opposite at TPMS. I had kids go through the program before and after the lottery. The rigor remained constant. Kids that couldn't handle it just dropped out.

Anonymous wrote:Still no cogat this year?
I do worry some of these kids are going to get themselves into a program they can’t handle. Blair and RMIB are not joke, work wise. My kid had to figure out what a cogat was, take it, do the essays herself, etc….if she couldn’t manage all that, not sure how she’d be handling the IB there.

Don't worry. MCPS will water down the program.

My neighbor teaches at a regional CES and we've talked at length about how the past year or two there are more students who simply can't handle the work. Even with supports in place, the kids just aren't ready for the program.

Anonymous wrote:This year’s 8th graders are the last kids who took the COGAT via universal testing in 5th grade. During the admissions process, is there a look back at old COGAT scores or are they completely irrelevant?

I don't see how that's any different than saying the next year's 8th graders were one of the last to take the CogAT in 3rd grade.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Still no cogat this year?
I do worry some of these kids are going to get themselves into a program they can’t handle. Blair and RMIB are not joke, work wise. My kid had to figure out what a cogat was, take it, do the essays herself, etc….if she couldn’t manage all that, not sure how she’d be handling the IB there.

Meanwhile other parents will hire a prep company to help them write their kid's essays.

What percentage of these essays are actually written by the kids?

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Anonymous wrote:Do they need Teachers recommendations this year?

No. No Teacher Recommendations, no Map-R (for SMCSM). Just 7th grades and Q1 8th grades + Map-M + essays/statements. That's it.

What I didn't understand from last night's meeting is whether or not they know if kids went to the TPMS magnet. Transcripts clearly list that the 7th grade math class was "Mag Algebra I" which is only available at TPMS. It also indicates the math class was different (2x speed + more content). Is that scrubbed to eliminate the "Mag" - I think that would be disingenuous and unfair, only because the class is materially different. The answers were unclear.

Do they look at MAP-R for RM IB and Blair CAP? Does anyone know?

Yes for RM IB, not sure about CAP

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do they need Teachers recommendations this year?

No. No Teacher Recommendations, no Map-R (for SMCSM). Just 7th grades and Q1 8th grades + Map-M + essays/statements. That's it.

What I didn't understand from last night's meeting is whether or not they know if kids went to the TPMS magnet. Transcripts clearly list that the 7th grade math class was "Mag Algebra I" which is only available at TPMS. It also indicates the math class was different (2x speed + more content). Is that scrubbed to eliminate the "Mag" - I think that would be disingenuous and unfair, only because the class is materially different. The answers were unclear.

Do they look at MAP-R for RM IB and Blair CAP? Does anyone know?

Sorry *definitely* not defiantly.

Maybe it’s changed now, but TPMS math USED to defiantly be higher and different than regular MCPS. Again, the Algebra 1 they used to do was considerably different and more in-depth. But again, that was when they also used to have Magnet Alg 2 at TPMS, which they do not have anymore. I can say, the math teachers there are VERY VERY good, and one is an alum of TPMS and Blair’s magnet herself.

Anonymous wrote:How are they looking at cohorts this year?

I don’t think the HS programs ever considered cohort.

How are they looking at cohorts this year?

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Anonymous wrote:There must be many hundreds of kids of both genders with As in math and science and 99th percentile MAP. How do they differentiate? Did not attend the open house but the information being shared here is confusing.

Not true. I believe there are about 11,000 current eighth graders. Which means that the top 1 percent is 110 kids. There are 200 places county wide in SMACS for example, plus IB programs, CAP and others. And not all of those kids will have all As. Now I know you will claim that the MCPS scores skew much higher, but that’s simply not true. My child bought home their MAP report this week and it clearly shows the MCPS averages are almost identical to the national.

You do know how averages work right? The argument is that the distribution is different in MCPS with a lot at the top and a lot closer to the bottom making the average about the same as the average nationally but meaning there is a lot more competition at the top.

Mean. You’re talking about the mean. That’s probably what the PP was using when s/he wrote “average,” but it could be the median, too.

Sure, there probably are more high-achieving kids, proportionally, in MCPS than in the rest of the country, but I think the idea that everyone has to have straight As and amazing everything is misguided and more about the parents than the kids.

On what basis are you claiming there are more high achieving kids in the county than elsewhere? These assumptions are made every time this comes up but the only actual evidence suggests otherwise.

What evidence? This county has one of the most highly educated parent populations in the country. Do you think that doesn’t matter for their children’s achievement?

The actual data that has been released showing the numbers closely tracking. I’ll take data over your “this area is so highly educated it must be true” any day.

Then SHOW the actual data. Link to it. I could very well be wrong, but you haven’t shown anything to suggest otherwise.

I’m not sure if this is directly comparable but this document shows that the mean MAP-M score for fall 8th grade in 2019 and 2020 was about 210. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED614789.pdf The NWEA docs show that 225 is about the 50th percentile nationally, so this seems to suggest that MCPS is performing more poorly than national for 8th grade.

I think you are reading the wrong table -- the 210 for 8th grade fall MAP-M shows up in table 9, which is "limited English proficiency (LEP)" students. Table 7 shows an average of 233 for all students.

Stop using facts to destroy their crazy narrative!

Are you nuts? Either way it proves that the numbers are substantially similar. Even if twice as many people were in the top 1% nationally in MCPS that would only be 220 kids county wide. Let’s say 99th percentile nationally is actually the equivalent of the top 5 percent in MCPS, as you claim? That’s 550. Of that 550 some won’t want to travel to a school that’s not local to them, some will not be interested in the magnet, some will not have As in their STEM subjects and some will prefer to go to an IB program or another selective program. The remainder will be split between Blair and Poolesville. Suddenly the competition doesn’t sound so bad! There’s only about 800 applicants to Blair, so a one in 8 chance of getting in.

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:OMG, just have your kid write the little essay, fill out the forms and move on with your life. Why so much guess work and handwringing about whether they will know if your kid was in a magnet or not. You can’t influence the process in any way except for the essay so why are you all wasting so much energy on these other questions?

I disagree. The kids who are in magnet paced classes have a higher bar to achieve an A. It's just harder: the content and the pace. That is relevant in terms of the grade they earn, especially when compared to others who are taking classes that have the same name but are not actually the same class.

This can be true while it is also true that many of the kids taking non magnet Algebra or Geometry or Science or whatever could handle and deserve to be in the magnet. But not everyone ends up taking magnet classes in the end.

My kid is in the magnet and the classes have not been particularly rigorous. At no point has he been particularly challenged, he breezes though it so just as in the past and I get the impression none of the kids struggle. I really haven’t seen them go as far “in depth” as we were told they would. In all, it’s really not that special. The one exception is that they get to take computer science which has been great. I really question that his As in those subjects should really be worth more than an A in the non magnet version of the courses. Algebra is algebra, for example.

My older DC did not go to TPMS. They said my younger one at TPMS covered topics in Algebra 1 that weren’t covered in the regular MCPS curriculum until Algebra 2.

Don't listen to that poster. These parents just want to psych everyone out or boast or whatever. If true, how much math enrichment has this kid done? Also, even if kid is aops'd to the max, the Mag Geom teacher at TPMS has a depth of material she gives to those kids. Just ignore these people and keep on keeping on.