No if you want disadvantaged students to perform better shuffling the chairs on the deck won’t make any difference. What would make a difference would be paying students and their families.

Attendance is one of the biggest problems with FARMs kids. Pay their families a monthly or weekly stipend when they meet attendance goals.
Hire after school tutors that provide supervised afterschool care and homework help.

Invest in creating a better community college system. MC is horrible. Integrate dual enrollment into all the high schools. Focus vocational and associate degree attainment while in high school into the high farms area. Give monetary awards for FARMs students completing these degrees. People hear vocational AA or certificates and think it’s mean being a plumber. It includes medical technicians, paralegals, and lots of other professions. Offer scholarships into UMD good for up to a five year delayed start. Let the kids be able to work for several years if they need money.

Hiring more central office staff, shuffling rich people around or anything other than meeting poor kids where they are and giving them the ability to succeed in a path they want to follow with real incentives won’t work.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi OP - You are not accounting for the fact that I paid a fortune for a house in an expensive area just so I could send my kid to a better school.

I pay a huge amount in property taxes, so I'm definitely subsidizing schools in other parts of the county. I don't feel that I need to do so even more than I bargained for when I bought my high cost/high tax home.

These are public schools. You’re not entitled to more.

Actually the PP is. Their property values and housing prices are directly tied to the value of the schools. In fact, it's been estimated to be at least a $200K differential. And those real estate values (and the ad valorem taxes paid) go directly to the county. Let's dispense with the illusion that property values aren't tied to the public schools.

I certainly never said that. But PP is entitled to nothing. Of course I understand when people are disappointed to be rezoned, but the county doesn’t owe PP anything.

I understand why no one wants to be bused far away; I wouldn’t either.

But at low income schools, I don’t think there’s any substitute for a higher percentage of involved parents and (related) more high achieving kids. I know elementary schools didn’t fall within the scope of this study but the zoning near me (DTSS) is particularly bad. We’ve had kids attend two in the area that actually border each other and given the vastly different FARMs rates, it has been night and day. It’s a shame too because you could redraw some of these borders in ways that made geographic sense — not always possible!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi OP - You are not accounting for the fact that I paid a fortune for a house in an expensive area just so I could send my kid to a better school.

I pay a huge amount in property taxes, so I'm definitely subsidizing schools in other parts of the county. I don't feel that I need to do so even more than I bargained for when I bought my high cost/high tax home.

These are public schools. You’re not entitled to more.

Actually the PP is. Their property values and housing prices are directly tied to the value of the schools. In fact, it's been estimated to be at least a $200K differential. And those real estate values (and the ad valorem taxes paid) go directly to the county. Let's dispense with the illusion that property values aren't tied to the public schools.

Anonymous wrote:Hi OP - You are not accounting for the fact that I paid a fortune for a house in an expensive area just so I could send my kid to a better school.

I pay a huge amount in property taxes, so I'm definitely subsidizing schools in other parts of the county. I don't feel that I need to do so even more than I bargained for when I bought my high cost/high tax home.

These are public schools. You’re not entitled to more.

Anonymous wrote:Hi OP - You are not accounting for the fact that I paid a fortune for a house in an expensive area just so I could send my kid to a better school.

I pay a huge amount in property taxes, so I'm definitely subsidizing schools in other parts of the county. I don't feel that I need to do so even more than I bargained for when I bought my high cost/high tax home.

That's not a fair attitude. I also have an expensive house zoned for excellent schools, but my kids don't deserve a better education than others just because DH and I are high earners. We need to make sure all our kids' needs are being met.

I have no problem directing more funding to schools that need it more, provided that the rules change to allow PTAs to fund more at the other schools. (Right now there are lots of things PTAs cant spend money on for "fairness"). It's obviously not an ideal solution, as it would basically lead to the creation of quasi-private schools, but if it gets the maximum number of kids what they need . . .

Frankly, it shouldn't be necessary - there are a lot of changes MCPS can and should make to improve the situation within their current budget. I firmly believe we have lowered standards, removed discipline and consequences, and de-empowered teachers to everyone's detriment. And as some others have pointed out, some things can't be altered by anything MCPS does - home life chief among those.

This is obviously a "me" issue, but it's already so hard to drag my kids out of bed and they just don't get enough sleep. And I like being able to go to the inconvenient school events in the middle of the day, help out at class parties, go to the school picnic at 6pm, or pick my kids up if they're sick. I support shortest travel time to school possible, over any other factor. And yes, would pay more myself into PTA to make that happen.

Notice that the majority of higher earners subsidizing schools have fewer kids than those in lower ses families?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stuyvesant is #1 high school in NYC, 48% students come from economically disadvantaged households. It’s not about the money, it’s the culture of your family that will determine and influence a kid’s academic success.

And Stuyvesant has no greater funding per pupil than any other un NY with ~50% economically disadvantaged households, right? And it's not as though it selects students of similar ability/interest to form a more efficiently manageable cohort, right?

No, PP, Stuyvesant is about cream skimming applicants. I’ll bet every school would be successful if you could only take 850 out of 30,000 applicants with the highest scores. In the real world, you have to take all comers rather than the top 3-5% of the disadvantaged student cohort.