Anonymous wrote:Farms schools get extra money and have lower class sizes. They are obnoxious.

Yeah, I hate it when everyone isn't rich, like you. LOL.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s referring to the RATE, not the kids. It’s a 40% FARMS rate.

I work in a Title I school with a very very high FARMS rate. The pp who said it’s annoying that there are lower class sizes and more staff—I can assure you that this is very needed and your kids will still have far better outcomes than the vast majority of our students who are still low performing despite their hard work and ours. You have nothing to be jealous of, these kids have very few opportunities.

It’s this correlation that I always have issue with. Low income does not necessary mean low performing or capability. This is the issue that people take with Title 1 funding. All kids will do better with smaller class sizes and more people able to provide individualized attention.

An EML student who is just learning English isn’t necessarily low performing just because they don’t match the expected level of where we believe a native English speaking 1st grader should be.

This is exactly why people need to review and listen to the full reporting of various assessments, because then they can hear the detail that matters.

I'm very happy that you don't have any decision making power on these things. The correlation is absolutely there. For various reasons, poorer students don't do as well. The point of Title 1 and analyzing the FARMS rates is to make sure that there are supports to help the kids. If you get offended by talking about reality, please remove yourself from the conversation.

Anonymous wrote:It’s referring to the RATE, not the kids. It’s a 40% FARMS rate.

I work in a Title I school with a very very high FARMS rate. The pp who said it’s annoying that there are lower class sizes and more staff—I can assure you that this is very needed and your kids will still have far better outcomes than the vast majority of our students who are still low performing despite their hard work and ours. You have nothing to be jealous of, these kids have very few opportunities.

It’s this correlation that I always have issue with. Low income does not necessary mean low performing or capability. This is the issue that people take with Title 1 funding. All kids will do better with smaller class sizes and more people able to provide individualized attention.

An EML student who is just learning English isn’t necessarily low performing just because they don’t match the expected level of where we believe a native English speaking 1st grader should be.

This is exactly why people need to review and listen to the full reporting of various assessments, because then they can hear the detail that matters.

Anonymous wrote:Since Covid, there was a push to provide free breakfast and lunch to *all* students in many states and counties.

Since the FARMS rate is used for a lot of other analysis, how would free meals and the lack of families providing this income data affect this analysis?

In the studies I've seen, those years are kind of considered one offs and out of the norm.

It's part of a reason why there was a big push for eligible families to submit FARMS applications once there was return to school, even if they were getting free meals either way.

We say FARMs because poor children are farmed for meat. That’s why we give away so much corn sugar and flour.

Anonymous wrote:The way the term is used on here seriously rubs me the wrong way. Like, here's a made up, but common, example: That school has 30% FARMs. Pretty soon it's going to have 40% FARMs and property values will go way down.

Why not just say the school has a lot of kids from lower income families. Calling them FARMs is so de-humanizing.

Also i'm sure plenty have people come on here for the first time and wonder what the hell FARMs even means.

You are correct.

But children are not respected in Montgomery County so your observation will be disregarded.

YOU are making it bad. And, in the meantime you are destroying the ability to communicate, and you are a making a mockery of education. Because you want to be offended. Not even for yourself. Just because your ignorant mind assumes others should be offended. Mind your own business and stop destroying the country.

Since Covid, there was a push to provide free breakfast and lunch to *all* students in many states and counties.

Since the FARMS rate is used for a lot of other analysis, how would free meals and the lack of families providing this income data affect this analysis?

People say farms as a proxy for ‘farms rate’ which is not dehumanizing children it is just a statistic. You are being pedantic and derailing the discussion of an actual problem instead of offering any useful solutions.

Farms rate is extremely significant and research show that any school with a farms rate above 30% generally reduces the performance of all students. So yes, we need to talk about solutions for these schools, like differentiated instruction, and also how to equally distribute the burden across all schools, so that we don’t end up with concentrations of poverty and failed schools.

But since you think bickering about language is helping any kids you are just part of the problem.

Go ahead and go to a BOE education meeting. And whenever they try to focus on helping FARMS students, shout out and protest "They're not FARMS, they're human beings!"

This is how we refer to the students in the school system and education field in the area in general.

So if you have an issue with it take it up with them.

There's now a broader shift in focus from FARMS to Economically Disadvantaged/Directly Certified students.

These are families that are determined to be FARMS eligible by outside agencies, such as county social work. Compared FARMS eligible, which are based on applications submitted to the school system by families.

So maybe you'll eventually won't see the term FARMS as much in the future. But you'll see the terms Directly Certified or Economically Disadvantaged more instead.

Word policing like this is how we got Trump. Relax before you ruin the whole world, if you haven’t already

The M in FARMs is Meals. We’re counting meals. It’s a readily available statistic with a concrete meaning that can be used to compare school populations. Instead of being mad about counting the percentage of kids that qualify for meals, save your outrage for the fact that some schools have a a minuscule number of kids needing extra support and some schools are almost all poor kids.

I don’t think refers to the kids Per se, it most often means the statistical baggage that comes with poverty. Behavioral issues, lack of resources, disengaged kids and low brow behavior by the community all come at a greatly increased propensity and that specifically is what people are trying to avoid.

Trolls aside, people know that there are lovely poor people and trashy well off people but poor culture simply doesn’t have the best tract record of doing anything but producing more poor people and there comes a point where enough bad kids makes a class unteachable where the teachers focus is more on the disruptions than the learners. FARMs is the easiest indicator of that, maybe laziest works there too but it isn’t wrong statistically.

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