Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Equity should mean that everyone gets what they need to succeed to their highest potential. Gifted kids need challenge and rigor or they are highly likely to disengage in school (read the literature on gifted kids). Focusing only on the lowest achievement group is not equity.

If you have 3 gifted kids and 1,000 kids who are lagging, where should you invest resources?

Again, if you kids is truly gifted they will figure themselves out. If your kid can’t figure out for themselves how to get the best out of MCPS you should maybe reconsider if they are truly gifted or motivated. My kid found all sorts of ways to get MCPS to be exactly what she wanted and needed, but it required work and effort on her part, not the entire school district twisting itself into a pretzel for one kid.

It's an insane lie to pretend that those 3 kids: needs cost as much as other the 1000 kids' needs. Stop it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Throwing resources at low performers absolutely will lift them up. And if your kid is really a high performers, they will be a high performer with or without resources.

Yep. Most high performing kids do well at any school Their test scores say high wherever they go.

Why spend more money catering to kids who will be fine either way instead of focusing on kids who need the extra help?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Equal opportunity does not lead to equal outcomes. There is no vast amount of untapped talent. Throwing resources at low performers won't significantly lift them. If equity is the goal, the only way to get there is to handicap the very top performers. This is exactly what MCPS is doing.

My kid is a top performer. In a magnet when they were still competitive and the selection process disadvantaged kids from high performing schools, NMF, math through MCV, LA, DE and beyond.

And, I absolutely think MCPS should invest more in bringing up the many kids that aren’t backed with endless parental involvement rather than giving even more opportunities to my own outlier kid. She will do fine on her own.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Throwing resources at low performers absolutely will lift them up. And if your kid is really a high performers, they will be a high performer with or without resources.

Yep. Most high performing kids do well at any school. Their test scores say high wherever they go.

Why spend more money catering to kids who will be fine either way instead of focusing on kids who need the extra help?

Tell me you don't have a top performer without telling me... It's not about "doing fine". The kids are wasting their time, going excruciatingly slowly over stuff they already know. This happens even at the magnets.

And there are low performers who are wasting their time in classes where they are behind and need more attention to catch up. Without the extra attention, they are too far behind to learn anything.

There aren't enough resources to go around. I'd rather have my tax dollars help the low performers because the high performers will be just fine. Boredom does not cause illness in an otherwise healthy child. Now is a good time to figure out if your child might have some underlying issues.

You can pick up a second job to afford paying private school for your high performer instead of being so entitled that you have to make stupid assumptions concerning people who disagree with you. Spend your energy wisely.

I was a high performer who went to community college, still scored in the 99 percentile on the LSAT and ended up in an Ivy league law school. I have a friend from a similar background who is a cardiologist. We might have been bored throughout school, but we are just fine.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Throwing resources at low performers absolutely will lift them up. And if your kid is really a high performers, they will be a high performer with or without resources.

We don't have an infinite amount of resources though. And why should high performers be ignored? Making the magnets all regional is ignoring the very high performers.

FWIW, I grew up lower income and went to an awful school.

+100

The state should really invest the most in the top quartile in order promote excellence and achievement to benefit our society overall.

Any honest teacher will tell you that the differences intellectual capacity are significant and important. Some kids work hard and have good personalities but are never going to be acing organic chemistry or advanced calculus. And that is OK. There are many low-skilled jobs that are essential to our society and confer value and dignity to those who perform them.

+10000000

Also when we talk about equity, why should we limit it to just academics. Why not, extend it to sports. Anyone who wants to play high school football should be able to play not just the best players.

In athletics, we have a system where most of the resources go to supporting PE classes that are available to everyone and which offer virtually no differentiation for excellent performers. If you excel, you can possibly participate in a limited school program staffed by people who barely get paid. If we had a system like that for math, people would be going crazy about how it's equity run amok.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Equity should mean that everyone gets what they need to succeed to their highest potential. Gifted kids need challenge and rigor or they are highly likely to disengage in school (read the literature on gifted kids). Focusing only on the lowest achievement group is not equity.

If you have 3 gifted kids and 1,000 kids who are lagging, where should you invest resources?

Again, if you kids is truly gifted they will figure themselves out. If your kid can’t figure out for themselves how to get the best out of MCPS you should maybe reconsider if they are truly gifted or motivated. My kid found all sorts of ways to get MCPS to be exactly what she wanted and needed, but it required work and effort on her part, not the entire school district twisting itself into a pretzel for one kid.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Throwing resources at low performers absolutely will lift them up. And if your kid is really a high performers, they will be a high performer with or without resources.

Yep. Most high performing kids do well at any school. Their test scores say high wherever they go.

Why spend more money catering to kids who will be fine either way instead of focusing on kids who need the extra help?

Tell me you don't have a top performer without telling me... It's not about "doing fine". The kids are wasting their time, going excruciatingly slowly over stuff they already know. This happens even at the magnets.

And there are low performers who are wasting their time in classes where they are behind and need more attention to catch up. Without the extra attention, they are too far behind to learn anything.

There aren't enough resources to go around. I'd rather have my tax dollars help the low performers because the high performers will be just fine. Boredom does not cause illness in an otherwise healthy child. Now is a good time to figure out if your child might have some underlying issues.

You can pick up a second job to afford paying private school for your high performer instead of being so entitled that you have to make stupid assumptions concerning people who disagree with you. Spend your energy wisely.

I was a high performer who went to community college, still scored in the 99 percentile on the LSAT and ended up in an Ivy league law school. I have a friend from a similar background who is a cardiologist. We might have been bored throughout school, but we are just fine.

They cannot catch up and will never catch up. They need to leave school as early as possible and go on with their lives. Both low and high performers are trapped at schools for too long. The schools could least in principle serve top performers because there is a lot of stuff they could learn.

Very low students might never catch up with top performers, but that means that they really do need all 13 years of public education so that they can develop their reading, writing, math, and critical thinking skills as much as possible before adulthood.

I’ve seen students make huge leaps even after age 15 when they had access to reading intervention on a daily basis. It’s expensive and time consuming, but it makes the difference between being functionally illiterate and being an average reader.

A functionally illiterate person is likely stuck in working minimum wage jobs doing physical labor. They will end up with late fees, penalties, and other financial issues because they cannot understand their lease, bills, and other important documents. They cannot help their children with homework. This can create the next generation of the functionally illiterate. I’m all for spending what we can to break the cycle.

This administration is pushing for teenage births so we get a lot of unskilled workers who lack the ability to advocate for themselves. Encourage dropouts is just one step on that path.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Throwing resources at low performers absolutely will lift them up. And if your kid is really a high performers, they will be a high performer with or without resources.

Yep. Most high performing kids do well at any school. Their test scores say high wherever they go.

Why spend more money catering to kids who will be fine either way instead of focusing on kids who need the extra help?

Tell me you don't have a top performer without telling me... It's not about "doing fine". The kids are wasting their time, going excruciatingly slowly over stuff they already know. This happens even at the magnets.

And there are low performers who are wasting their time in classes where they are behind and need more attention to catch up. Without the extra attention, they are too far behind to learn anything.

There aren't enough resources to go around. I'd rather have my tax dollars help the low performers because the high performers will be just fine. Boredom does not cause illness in an otherwise healthy child. Now is a good time to figure out if your child might have some underlying issues.

You can pick up a second job to afford paying private school for your high performer instead of being so entitled that you have to make stupid assumptions concerning people who disagree with you. Spend your energy wisely.

I was a high performer who went to community college, still scored in the 99 percentile on the LSAT and ended up in an Ivy league law school. I have a friend from a similar background who is a cardiologist. We might have been bored throughout school, but we are just fine.

Part of the issue is that I don't really see MCPS doing anything to help the lower performers.

Take the proposed split regions and regional magnet programs. It's helping ensure all students get access to the desired courses. I'm personally not a fan of so many of the specialized or niche academy type of schools they're having But if there's a demand out there, it's good they're providing it.

But it's only helping students who are already qualified to be eligible for the programs.

MCPS should be focusing tax dollars on improving the foundation/elementary school level. Once those students have a solid mastery, as they advance grades they'll have the demand for the higher and more rigorous classes. The more students at that level at the school, the more justification for the higher level classes at their school.

Math is supposed to be one of the most unbiased and fair subject areas (according to Furious Styles in Boyz in the Hood). True it gets to a point where word problems are introduced. But it seems like before that point, it should be a reasonable expectation that language barriers wouldn't get in the way of a student's understanding and success in math. Maybe the instruction needs to be in another language. And maybe they should consider administering the math test in multiple languages because it's not an English Language Arts test. So doesn't necessarily have to be in English.

But to help the low performing students, MCPS should be focusing on the elementary school level first. And I don't see them making any big splashes or headlines in efforts to do so. Maybe they are doing things for the elementary school level that I'm not aware of.

But as the OP is saying, they shouldn't be holding back the top performers in trying to help the low performers. "Some students are advancing too quickly" and creating the gap and some students aren't grasping the concepts. MCPS shouldn't be holding back and penalizing the students who are able to do well. And if students are struggling in something, that means they didn't have a firm grasp of the subject area and MCPS advanced them before they should have. (inflated grades, just pushing them through, etc)

In another thread, a poster mentioned that new college grads are jobless now. Well almost all of the high performing college grads I know are working desirable jobs like at Apple, Alphabet, etc. To be successful in the job market, applicants need to stand out among the big sea of applicants. Meaning they need to be competitive against the other ones.

But it looks like MCPS is looking to get rid of giving students this competitive edge, which some people are saying they are okay with. But there are families who do want their students to have that competitive edge, so they can have a shot at the exclusive schools, then the coveted jobs, etc. It's like someone once told me, most schools in MCPS only focus on getting students be able to go to college. But there are other schools that are preparing students to go to the ivies. Personally I thought it was a douchey comment but guess it's kind of true.

And if people say, well MCPS has bigger problems and they need to focus on the whole instead of the few who have other means, then the families of the top performers need to consider if MCPS has what they need or are looking for. Maybe current families are already stuck. But future families will look at it and evaluate if MCPS has what they're looking for. Leading to the brain drain of the county and not doing anything to attract anyone coming in to replace them.

MCPS is failing low perfoers because those kids are at home when they should be at school. No one has ever posted a serious proposal to give those kids what they need, which is 10-20 more hours of school per week, including weekends. Our country values individual parental freedom to neglect their kids.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Equity should mean that everyone gets what they need to succeed to their highest potential. Gifted kids need challenge and rigor or they are highly likely to disengage in school (read the literature on gifted kids). Focusing only on the lowest achievement group is not equity.

If you have 3 gifted kids and 1,000 kids who are lagging, where should you invest resources?

Again, if you kids is truly gifted they will figure themselves out. If your kid can’t figure out for themselves how to get the best out of MCPS you should maybe reconsider if they are truly gifted or motivated. My kid found all sorts of ways to get MCPS to be exactly what she wanted and needed, but it required work and effort on her part, not the entire school district twisting itself into a pretzel for one kid.

Tell us how?

I don’t know how your child is gifted or what that means for you. Try dual enrollment at one of several college options and see if you can join the professor’s research project. Or become a TA for an advanced math section at your school. Or do an internship. Or do outside enrichment. Or join the math team. Or take easier classes during the summer at an accelerated pace to make more space for harder sciences during the school year. The options aren’t a secret.

What doesn’t work is to claim the local school isn’t good enough for your gifted child because they need something unique and not be willing to do something unique.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are you all saying gifted kids will figure it out for themselves and don’t need help/resources/harder classes? Gifted doesn’t necessarily mean hard working. A lot of these kids burn out and also need direction.

I personally would like harder classes for all. One of my kids is not gifted and she’s definitely been left behind. Her classes are insanely easy, there’s no good classroom debate on any subjects, and the teachers spends all of her time focuses on kids who can still barely read. My daughter is so curious about everything and loves math but there’s nothing for her.

I’m not saying harder classes shouldn’t be available, but they are available. Maybe that collection of classes doesn’t meet your child’s needs because they are so uniquely gifted, but it still doesn’t make sense for the school to develop a whole new curriculum pathways for a single child when other options are available. Particularly if that comes at the expense of larger swaths of kids that are struggling academically.

but they aren't. those classes are too easy.

I truly don’t understand the logic here. The schools offer many options for kids of all intelligence and motivation levels. Our school offers MVC, Linear Algebra, AP calc, and AP Stats, in person at our HS. In addition they offer many math classes for kids that are less advanced. Those classes meet the needs of the vast majority of students.

For the let’s say top 3%, they will now offer cluster based accelerated programs. For the kids who are beyond that, let’s say the top .3%, there are other options available like DE and the like. My kid digs physics but there is only one AP physics class at the HS. So she took four semester of Physics classes and labs at the college.

If your kid is a truly unique, one of a kind genius that is curing cancer at 14, then I agree MCPS isn’t going to give them the best diversity of options for academic challenge. I also think it isn’t MCPS’s responsibility to meet every possible desire for a very single outlier kid. For virtually every other high stats/gifted kid it seems to me that there are a wide diversity of options that MCPS offers that can reasonable meet their needs.

Which college?

Montgomery college only offers the equivalent of AP Physics 1 and 2, not even C.

Community colleges have career preparation courses and pre-University classes. They don't have courses for advanced students heading to Liberal Arts and Science majors university.

https://catalog.montgomerycollege.edu/search_advanced.php?cur_cat_oid=21&ecpage=1&cpage=1&ppage=1&pcpage=1&spage=1&tpage=1&search_database=Search&filter%5Bkeyword%5D=phys&filter%5B3%5D=1&filter%5B31%5D=1&filter%5B1%5D=1&filter%5B28%5D=1&filter%5B30%5D=1

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Throwing resources at low performers absolutely will lift them up. And if your kid is really a high performers, they will be a high performer with or without resources.

Yep. Most high performing kids do well at any school. Their test scores say high wherever they go.

Why spend more money catering to kids who will be fine either way instead of focusing on kids who need the extra help?

Tell me you don't have a top performer without telling me... It's not about "doing fine". The kids are wasting their time, going excruciatingly slowly over stuff they already know. This happens even at the magnets.

And there are low performers who are wasting their time in classes where they are behind and need more attention to catch up. Without the extra attention, they are too far behind to learn anything.

There aren't enough resources to go around. I'd rather have my tax dollars help the low performers because the high performers will be just fine. Boredom does not cause illness in an otherwise healthy child. Now is a good time to figure out if your child might have some underlying issues.

You can pick up a second job to afford paying private school for your high performer instead of being so entitled that you have to make stupid assumptions concerning people who disagree with you. Spend your energy wisely.

I was a high performer who went to community college, still scored in the 99 percentile on the LSAT and ended up in an Ivy league law school. I have a friend from a similar background who is a cardiologist. We might have been bored throughout school, but we are just fine.

Part of the issue is that I don't really see MCPS doing anything to help the lower performers.

Take the proposed split regions and regional magnet programs. It's helping ensure all students get access to the desired courses. I'm personally not a fan of so many of the specialized or niche academy type of schools they're having But if there's a demand out there, it's good they're providing it.

But it's only helping students who are already qualified to be eligible for the programs.

MCPS should be focusing tax dollars on improving the foundation/elementary school level. Once those students have a solid mastery, as they advance grades they'll have the demand for the higher and more rigorous classes. The more students at that level at the school, the more justification for the higher level classes at their school.

Math is supposed to be one of the most unbiased and fair subject areas (according to Furious Styles in Boyz in the Hood). True it gets to a point where word problems are introduced. But it seems like before that point, it should be a reasonable expectation that language barriers wouldn't get in the way of a student's understanding and success in math. Maybe the instruction needs to be in another language. And maybe they should consider administering the math test in multiple languages because it's not an English Language Arts test. So doesn't necessarily have to be in English.

But to help the low performing students, MCPS should be focusing on the elementary school level first. And I don't see them making any big splashes or headlines in efforts to do so. Maybe they are doing things for the elementary school level that I'm not aware of.

But as the OP is saying, they shouldn't be holding back the top performers in trying to help the low performers. "Some students are advancing too quickly" and creating the gap and some students aren't grasping the concepts. MCPS shouldn't be holding back and penalizing the students who are able to do well. And if students are struggling in something, that means they didn't have a firm grasp of the subject area and MCPS advanced them before they should have. (inflated grades, just pushing them through, etc)

In another thread, a poster mentioned that new college grads are jobless now. Well almost all of the high performing college grads I know are working desirable jobs like at Apple, Alphabet, etc. To be successful in the job market, applicants need to stand out among the big sea of applicants. Meaning they need to be competitive against the other ones.

But it looks like MCPS is looking to get rid of giving students this competitive edge, which some people are saying they are okay with. But there are families who do want their students to have that competitive edge, so they can have a shot at the exclusive schools, then the coveted jobs, etc. It's like someone once told me, most schools in MCPS only focus on getting students be able to go to college. But there are other schools that are preparing students to go to the ivies. Personally I thought it was a douchey comment but guess it's kind of true.

And if people say, well MCPS has bigger problems and they need to focus on the whole instead of the few who have other means, then the families of the top performers need to consider if MCPS has what they need or are looking for. Maybe current families are already stuck. But future families will look at it and evaluate if MCPS has what they're looking for. Leading to the brain drain of the county and not doing anything to attract anyone coming in to replace them.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The new AP Seminar offered in English departments for 10th graders is bringing back tracking, by the way. The high achieving 10th graders now take that for English and “Honors” English 10 is by default actually on level. So- all the kids with IEPs and behavioral issues.

MCPS is so messed up. Honors for all! Then… well, except for this.

That's the way it has been in 11th and 12th grade English, so why not the same for 10th?

I think it’s kind of silly to pretend there’s a large cohort of sophomores ready for college-level English. So it’d make more sense to just have an advanced HS class.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are you all saying gifted kids will figure it out for themselves and don’t need help/resources/harder classes? Gifted doesn’t necessarily mean hard working. A lot of these kids burn out and also need direction.

I personally would like harder classes for all. One of my kids is not gifted and she’s definitely been left behind. Her classes are insanely easy, there’s no good classroom debate on any subjects, and the teachers spends all of her time focuses on kids who can still barely read. My daughter is so curious about everything and loves math but there’s nothing for her.

I’m not saying harder classes shouldn’t be available, but they are available. Maybe that collection of classes doesn’t meet your child’s needs because they are so uniquely gifted, but it still doesn’t make sense for the school to develop a whole new curriculum pathways for a single child when other options are available. Particularly if that comes at the expense of larger swaths of kids that are struggling academically.

but they aren't. those classes are too easy.

I truly don’t understand the logic here. The schools offer many options for kids of all intelligence and motivation levels. Our school offers MVC, Linear Algebra, AP calc, and AP Stats, in person at our HS. In addition they offer many math classes for kids that are less advanced. Those classes meet the needs of the vast majority of students.

For the let’s say top 3%, they will now offer cluster based accelerated programs. For the kids who are beyond that, let’s say the top .3%, there are other options available like DE and the like. My kid digs physics but there is only one AP physics class at the HS. So she took four semester of Physics classes and labs at the college.

If your kid is a truly unique, one of a kind genius that is curing cancer at 14, then I agree MCPS isn’t going to give them the best diversity of options for academic challenge. I also think it isn’t MCPS’s responsibility to meet every possible desire for a very single outlier kid. For virtually every other high stats/gifted kid it seems to me that there are a wide diversity of options that MCPS offers that can reasonable meet their needs.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The new AP Seminar offered in English departments for 10th graders is bringing back tracking, by the way. The high achieving 10th graders now take that for English and “Honors” English 10 is by default actually on level. So- all the kids with IEPs and behavioral issues.

MCPS is so messed up. Honors for all! Then… well, except for this.

That's the way it has been in 11th and 12th grade English, so why not the same for 10th?

I think it’s kind of silly to pretend there’s a large cohort of sophomores ready for college-level English. So it’d make more sense to just have an advanced HS class.

Any advanced class will always end up becoming an honors for all class, unless some criteria are strictly enforced, or there’s an across-board consistent test attached to the course. AP belongs to the latter.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Equal opportunity does not lead to equal outcomes. There is no vast amount of untapped talent. Throwing resources at low performers won't significantly lift them. If equity is the goal, the only way to get there is to handicap the very top performers. This is exactly what MCPS is doing.

Okay Harrison Bergeron.

I often wonder if public education administrators have read this.