Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Since the selection pool was so much larger this year they were able to fill the 100 seats while applying even higher standards. The math is simple.

The top 2.5% of 4000 applicants is better than the top 16% of 600 applicants.

It’s true but there’s a serious case of sour grapes here. People are angry that admissions are more competitive and not as easily gamed.

You guys seriously don't understand statistics, and completely ignore MCPS' own methodology which looks at cohort at the home school. They USED to pick the top 2.5% of all test takers. Now, they look at cohort before they pick the "top" performers. A kid who got a higher score but has a cohort at the home school will be denied entrance.

This is very similar to how the average scores of URM in top universities are much lower than the ORM in those schools.

You can argue that this method is "better", but to say that these students are the top 2.5% is disingenuous and actually, shows that you are clueless about how statistics works.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Since the selection pool was so much larger this year they were able to fill the 100 seats while applying even higher standards. The math is simple.

The top 2.5% of 4000 applicants is better than the top 16% of 600 applicants.

It’s true but there’s a serious case of sour grapes here. People are angry that admissions are more competitive and not as easily gamed.

This is not necessarily true. Expanding the applicant pool and screening more widely was an excellent idea. In theory that should have made admissions more competitive and could have resulted in the county finding highly able candidates who might not have applied in prior years. Unfortunately, it sounds like many students with higher application test scores were rejected in favor of students with lower application test scores based on some BS cohort rationale. The PARRC scores also seem to indicate that around 85% of the students who do well in Math in 5th grade and around 93% of the students who do well in Math in 8th grade come from just 3 groups (white, Asian and mixed race) so simply expanding the pool isn't necessarily going to increase diversity (a valuable goal) unless the school system works harder to ensure that more kids from lower performing groups do better in Math. They need to expand the applicant pool of qualified candidates by improving Math education and Math performance for URMs. They need to do the hard work to close the achievement gap instead of focusing on feel good but ultimately counterproductive measures to change application standards for academically competitive programs.

Anonymous wrote:

Not really. The families that were applying before were truly motivated. The application process was a bear. I think universal screening is great but I think that there should be a little more burden on the students to show interest. The MS magnets are not "gifted" programs in the same way the CES programs should be. When kids are 8 I think many very bright kids aren't motivated yet and could use the exposure to a more rigorous curriculum. By the time they are in MS motivation kicks in for kids or it doesn't. It doesn't mean it's too late if it doesn't but it really starts to mean something.

They are programs with an advanced curriculum for highly motivated gifted students.

No, they are (or were) programs with an advanced curriculum for gifted students with highly motivated parents.

Anonymous wrote:Since the selection pool was so much larger this year they were able to fill the 100 seats while applying even higher standards. The math is simple.

The top 2.5% of 4000 applicants is better than the top 16% of 600 applicants.

Not really. The families that were applying before were truly motivated. The application process was a bear. I think universal screening is great but I think that there should be a little more burden on the students to show interest. The MS magnets are not "gifted" programs in the same way the CES programs should be. When kids are 8 I think many very bright kids aren't motivated yet and could use the exposure to a more rigorous curriculum. By the time they are in MS motivation kicks in for kids or it doesn't. It doesn't mean it's too late if it doesn't but it really starts to mean something.

They are programs with an advanced curriculum for highly motivated gifted students.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm willing to bet that next year's 6th Grade Takoma students will perform worse in highly rated academic competitions compared to before.

funny I’m willing to bet the opposite

Okay, let's check back next winter with some statistics.

Anonymous wrote:Too bad it has negative externalities and most schools and teachers in the system don’t even do ability teaching in the main subjects. That’s the rub. You’re doing charity at the expense of others. Very progressive, just like Smith wanted.

Charity, really, PP? Charity?

I sincerely hope that the many, many posts about the undeservingness of poor, Hispanic, and black children in MCPS represent only a few actual people.

Too bad it has negative externalities and most schools and teachers in the system don’t even do ability teaching in the main subjects. That’s the rub. You’re doing charity at the expense of others. Very progressive, just like Smith wanted.

No one thinks that having a more diverse magnet program is going to close the achievement gap. Finding 15 or even 100 highly able kids of color, and poor/working class kids, will not solve the institutional and systemic challenges that plague those communities.

However, identifying and mentoring highly able kids of color, and poor/working class kids, is a good goal in and of itself whether or not it closes the larger gap.

Based on sculpting a racially and ethically diverse CES program aimed at closing the Achievement Gap once and for all! Tra la la!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nice sentiment, if only what you described is true. If there wasn’t this “peer cohort” criteria added this year, the wider nest and streamlined application wouldn’t have kept all those top kids out.

Correct. It would have kept other highly-able kids out.

Only in the sense there are more demand than spots. But there wouldn’t be this need of opacity in the median scores of admitted kids.

I love how MCPS is pretending that gifted and talented test scores are the same as some “highly able” speculative term they made up this year as a selection factor entirely at their discretion based on nothing.

All the arguments here are valid or not valid, because no one have the data from mcpc to support their statement.
MCPS, please release the data including the following information: raw scores, not the percentiles, mean and median of all tested students, mean and median of all invited students.

Are we still talking about middle school or is this the Hunger Games?

Your child against mine, in endless competition, for the glory of the home district!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nice sentiment, if only what you described is true. If there wasn’t this “peer cohort” criteria added this year, the wider nest and streamlined application wouldn’t have kept all those top kids out.

Correct. It would have kept other highly-able kids out.

Only in the sense there are more demand than spots. But there wouldn’t be this need of opacity in the median scores of admitted kids.

No, not only.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nice sentiment, if only what you described is true. If there wasn’t this “peer cohort” criteria added this year, the wider nest and streamlined application wouldn’t have kept all those top kids out.

Correct. It would have kept other highly-able kids out.

Only in the sense there are more demand than spots. But there wouldn’t be this need of opacity in the median scores of admitted kids.