Anonymous wrote:Didn't Minifa expand the number of CO employees by 30% to help improve their focus on equity?

Yes, most of the CO funding is to implement equity policies designed to improve optics.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don't know if this has been covered in the last 5-6 pages, but what CO needs is more hands to get the MCAP test results into envelopes to mail them out to families. It is beyond ridonc that students were assessed last Spring and results have yet to be seen by parents (and maybe the schools too). What meaning is there to have students sit for hours for multiple state mandated tests when results take this long to return? So which ever department it is that is in charge of mailing home assessments definitely needs more people to package, or the department needs a machine to do the packaging. And finally the actual mailing. Someone at CO should advocate for release of results earlier than it is taking now. If results can't be sent out in a timely manner, allow families to opt their kid from taking the damn tests. Get it together, Maryland! Rant over.

MCAP is a silly test that has not even been vetted. Further, it is a state test, not MCPS. The county shouldn't waste a dime on this.

Passing the MCAP in high school is a literal graduation requirement. It is very much the responsibility of MCPS to communicate results to parents. Please educate yourself.

Have they fixed all the errors with this test? It was so new and unproven that there were major issues.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don’t forget that the special Ed department is in an actual crisis. Many many schools are left with ZERO certified sped staff (especially in discrete programs such as autism or SCB) and the staff in home school model (general ed inclusion for those who don’t know) are drowning in paperwork and cannot get consults from their instructional specialists or supervisors because there is not enough support in the SPED department. Also- please note that there was ZERO budget for home school model teachers to spend on instructional materials this year. Changes need to made immediately in that department

The terrible state of the Office of Special Education is the next big MCPS scandal that should be the focus of investigation.

This. So much this. Special Education is beyond crisis state, and special ed parents are too exhausted to sound the alarm. Want to talk about pathetic Central Office staff, every single one of them who claim to work for special education need to go

Yes, SN parents are exhausted, but we still sound the alarm all the time. We are ignored, told we should be grateful for the little we do get because there are not enough staff, or we are gaslit. They get away with it because stigma against disabilities still exists. No one thinks that a child with disabilities can learn or succeed. Therefore the school system has NO curriculum packages for even the most basic, well known disabilities like dyslexia (they only have begun to roll out small amounts of OG training). And they have been able to get away with this because until 2017 the standard set by the US Supreme Court for a "free and appropriate public education" was "de minimus", meaning the school merely had to show that a special education student had made a little bit more than "no progress". Now, after Endrew F., the standard is raised a bit but still a very low bar.

Even given the low bar, I talk to parents frequently who are told, illegally, that their kids don't qualify for services or accommodations - that is a failure of central office to
properly train staff who run and participate in special ed meetings. The lack of any curriculum for common special ed problems - dyslexia, dysgraphia, ADHD, autistic learning beyond ADA, social lessons, emotional lessons, etc. is also a failure of central special ed.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A good example of wasting money:

Title One ES
A. Parent coordinator from Linkages to Learning (funding from MoCo)
B. School based PCC (there 5 days a week)
C. CO PCC (there 1 day a week)
D. Community/School Coordinator (5 days a week)

You have four people essentially doing the same job. B may refer a family to A. B may also say, "They don't need me at that school" and not go on their assigned day. D is bringing in organizations/programs that A,B, and C have been working with.

Instead of having 4 people do the same job, why not have 1 FT person doing all the work. This could fund 2 more teacher positions at the school.

These are the type of things that should be sent directly to the BoE during this current operating budget session so it can all thoroughly be looked at. Reporting it to MCCPTA, Black & Brown Coalition and others would also be helpful so they could be advocates for better use of resource and funds.

Could easily cover the costs of 8 paras for that which would likely improve outcomes.

So...with a few weeks in, how is your new boss doing over there at CO?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don’t forget that the special Ed department is in an actual crisis. Many many schools are left with ZERO certified sped staff (especially in discrete programs such as autism or SCB) and the staff in home school model (general ed inclusion for those who don’t know) are drowning in paperwork and cannot get consults from their instructional specialists or supervisors because there is not enough support in the SPED department. Also- please note that there was ZERO budget for home school model teachers to spend on instructional materials this year. Changes need to made immediately in that department

The terrible state of the Office of Special Education is the next big MCPS scandal that should be the focus of investigation.

This. So much this. Special Education is beyond crisis state, and special ed parents are too exhausted to sound the alarm. Want to talk about pathetic Central Office staff, every single one of them who claim to work for special education need to go

Exactly right. You have career bureaucrats like George Moore taking up space when he can’t even remember what he says in an IEP meeting. Sorry if this man has some kind of mild cognitive impairment but he shouldn’t be making decisions for our kids

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A good example of wasting money:

Title One ES
A. Parent coordinator from Linkages to Learning (funding from MoCo)
B. School based PCC (there 5 days a week)
C. CO PCC (there 1 day a week)
D. Community/School Coordinator (5 days a week)

You have four people essentially doing the same job. B may refer a family to A. B may also say, "They don't need me at that school" and not go on their assigned day. D is bringing in organizations/programs that A,B, and C have been working with.

Instead of having 4 people do the same job, why not have 1 FT person doing all the work. This could fund 2 more teacher positions at the school.

We had a Panamanian guy for our CO PCC who never came to our school. Our admin requested a new person. Our new person is so much better but I wonder if the other guy is still milking the system.

What does his nationality have to do with anything?

DCUM Dog Whistle

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A good example of wasting money:

Title One ES
A. Parent coordinator from Linkages to Learning (funding from MoCo)
B. School based PCC (there 5 days a week)
C. CO PCC (there 1 day a week)
D. Community/School Coordinator (5 days a week)

You have four people essentially doing the same job. B may refer a family to A. B may also say, "They don't need me at that school" and not go on their assigned day. D is bringing in organizations/programs that A,B, and C have been working with.

Instead of having 4 people do the same job, why not have 1 FT person doing all the work. This could fund 2 more teacher positions at the school.

We had a Panamanian guy for our CO PCC who never came to our school. Our admin requested a new person. Our new person is so much better but I wonder if the other guy is still milking the system.

What does his nationality have to do with anything?

Anonymous wrote:A good example of wasting money:

Title One ES
A. Parent coordinator from Linkages to Learning (funding from MoCo)
B. School based PCC (there 5 days a week)
C. CO PCC (there 1 day a week)
D. Community/School Coordinator (5 days a week)

You have four people essentially doing the same job. B may refer a family to A. B may also say, "They don't need me at that school" and not go on their assigned day. D is bringing in organizations/programs that A,B, and C have been working with.

Instead of having 4 people do the same job, why not have 1 FT person doing all the work. This could fund 2 more teacher positions at the school.

We had a Panamanian guy for our CO PCC who never came to our school. Our admin requested a new person. Our new person is so much better but I wonder if the other guy is still milking the system.

Anonymous wrote:A good example of wasting money:

Title One ES
A. Parent coordinator from Linkages to Learning (funding from MoCo)
B. School based PCC (there 5 days a week)
C. CO PCC (there 1 day a week)
D. Community/School Coordinator (5 days a week)

You have four people essentially doing the same job. B may refer a family to A. B may also say, "They don't need me at that school" and not go on their assigned day. D is bringing in organizations/programs that A,B, and C have been working with.

Instead of having 4 people do the same job, why not have 1 FT person doing all the work. This could fund 2 more teacher positions at the school.

These are the type of things that should be sent directly to the BoE during this current operating budget session so it can all thoroughly be looked at. Reporting it to MCCPTA, Black & Brown Coalition and others would also be helpful so they could be advocates for better use of resource and funds.

A good example of wasting money:

Title One ES
A. Parent coordinator from Linkages to Learning (funding from MoCo)
B. School based PCC (there 5 days a week)
C. CO PCC (there 1 day a week)
D. Community/School Coordinator (5 days a week)

You have four people essentially doing the same job. B may refer a family to A. B may also say, "They don't need me at that school" and not go on their assigned day. D is bringing in organizations/programs that A,B, and C have been working with.

Instead of having 4 people do the same job, why not have 1 FT person doing all the work. This could fund 2 more teacher positions at the school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Didn't Minifa expand the number of CO employees by 30% to help improve their focus on equity?

And how did they do?

They've done a lot to tweak the optics on closing the gap by creating more honors for all programs and reducing opportunities for advanced learners with all these lottery programs.

How did the lottery reduce opportunity for advance learners? It just made it so all advanced capable learners had a chance. And they created ELC and expanded to all ES.

Are you being deliberately obtuse? The kids with the highest scores are the most advanced learners. Their scores indicate the highest level of mastery. If you create a larger lottery pool including students with good, but less high scores, and a lower scoring student wins a lottery seat and a higher scoring student does not win a seat, you have reduced opportunity for the more advanced learner who would have gained admission through the prior paradigm. You can debate the merits of either paradigm based on your personal values and agenda, but the lottery absolutely gave students with less evidence of giftedness or mastery of advanced material more potential access to rigorous programming and reduced access for outlier students by widening the pool.

That same DP. While I agree with your general thought, high exposure-related scores don't correlate well enough with learning ability. We need to modify the identification paradigm to take outside prep, which isn't an evil in and of itself, out of it and focus on that ability instead of relying on exposure.

I agree with you it would be better to identify innate ability rather than mastery, but this is the data the district has available, so it’s all we have to go on right now. That said, families shouldn’t be fighting each other for scraps. The district should provide all identified students equivalent access to appropriate enriched coursework, not just a small portion of randomly selected students out of the pool. The fact that kids identified for ELA enrichment literally re-read novels in 6th and 7th grade that are part of the elementary school curriculum while magnet kids forge ahead with a bespoke experience is highly problematic.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Didn't Minifa expand the number of CO employees by 30% to help improve their focus on equity?

And how did they do?

They've done a lot to tweak the optics on closing the gap by creating more honors for all programs and reducing opportunities for advanced learners with all these lottery programs.

How did the lottery reduce opportunity for advance learners? It just made it so all advanced capable learners had a chance. And they created ELC and expanded to all ES.

Are you being deliberately obtuse? The kids with the highest scores are the most advanced learners. Their scores indicate the highest level of mastery. If you create a larger lottery pool including students with good, but less high scores, and a lower scoring student wins a lottery seat and a higher scoring student does not win a seat, you have reduced opportunity for the more advanced learner who would have gained admission through the prior paradigm. You can debate the merits of either paradigm based on your personal values and agenda, but the lottery absolutely gave students with less evidence of giftedness or mastery of advanced material more potential access to rigorous programming and reduced access for outlier students by widening the pool.

That same DP. While I agree with your general thought, high exposure-related scores don't correlate well enough with learning ability. We need to modify the identification paradigm to take outside prep, which isn't an evil in and of itself, out of it and focus on that ability instead of relying on exposure.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Didn't Minifa expand the number of CO employees by 30% to help improve their focus on equity?

And how did they do?

They've done a lot to tweak the optics on closing the gap by creating more honors for all programs and reducing opportunities for advanced learners with all these lottery programs.

How did the lottery reduce opportunity for advance learners? It just made it so all advanced capable learners had a chance. And they created ELC and expanded to all ES.

DP. Have a chance at what? An accelerated local Math course? ELC? HIGH? These hardly are at the same level or breadth as the programming available at the magnets, which have far too few seats to meet the needs of the identified population. And unless you are lucky enough to be with a large cohort, many schools "implementing" the latter two are doing so without fidelity, having to reduce the intended enrichments/challenge because of more heterogeneous levels of students they are including in those classes to manage class size.

And CES, itself, is less broad than the HGC model that preceded it. One can say it is more focused to a particular test result/subject area competency, but that doesn't mean those with such results aren't highly capable in other areas. Some CES programs effectively cohort for math, some don't. Where's science in all of this?

There's been a crusade against GT programming for decades. It's ridden the wave of equity, which isn't bad in and of itself, but creates a monster when paired, with budgetary decisions of convenience drawing from old analyses showing inequitable GT identification/program admittance (which may still occur). Those have resulted in slashing of GT programming, swapping one kind of inequity for another, instead of the robust expansion that would address both.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Didn't Minifa expand the number of CO employees by 30% to help improve their focus on equity?

And how did they do?

They've done a lot to tweak the optics on closing the gap by creating more honors for all programs and reducing opportunities for advanced learners with all these lottery programs.

How did the lottery reduce opportunity for advance learners? It just made it so all advanced capable learners had a chance. And they created ELC and expanded to all ES.

Are you being deliberately obtuse? The kids with the highest scores are the most advanced learners. Their scores indicate the highest level of mastery. If you create a larger lottery pool including students with good, but less high scores, and a lower scoring student wins a lottery seat and a higher scoring student does not win a seat, you have reduced opportunity for the more advanced learner who would have gained admission through the prior paradigm. You can debate the merits of either paradigm based on your personal values and agenda, but the lottery absolutely gave students with less evidence of giftedness or mastery of advanced material more potential access to rigorous programming and reduced access for outlier students by widening the pool.