Anonymous wrote:There is a valid argument that URM students do perform better when they attend a higher SES/higher performing school BUT those gains disappear after the ratio crosses a very small amount 10-20%. URM students do do better in schools like Churchill etc but they do not better in schools with 30% FARMS. There also is research that when the lower performance goes above 30% the average to above average performing students do worse.

The research is about low-income students, not about black and Latino students, and no, the gains do not disappear when the percentage of low-income students is higher than 20%.

https://tcf.org/assets/downloads/tcf-Schwartz.pdf

Also, please stop using the term "URM". You're talking about black and Latino students. It's ok to say those words.

There is a valid argument that URM students do perform better when they attend a higher SES/higher performing school BUT those gains disappear after the ratio crosses a very small amount 10-20%. URM students do do better in schools like Churchill etc but they do not better in schools with 30% FARMS. There also is research that when the lower performance goes above 30% the average to above average performing students do worse.

There really is zero benefit to URM kids in redistributing/bussing to make all schools have 30% or higher lower performing students. Their performance doesn't increase and the average student declines. This diverts dollars away from things that do work such as more teachers and wrap and around services to pay for bus transportation. It also explodes the wrap around services budget because instead of being located in several schools you now need them in every school.

The ONLY people this benefits over time are the school administrators. It creates the perception that all schools are equal and performing the same. It doesn't solve the achievement gap but it makes MCPS look better on another data view. The only people that it benefits in the short term are the people who live in poorly performing schools who hope that seeing other schools drop will make their area more attractive or people who hope to be rezoned into a better school.

The uncertainty of boundary changes does suppress real estate prices in a county like MOCO which is just a residential community. Very few potential buyers are willing to take a risk or gamble to be on the better side of the change and most will reconsider their options for safer bets like Howard, Frederick or VA. With all the other financial problems in Montgomery County, announcing a two year county wide boundary survey with DCC parents foaming on about breaking down the W schools and busing kids all over is economic suicide across the county. Ironically, the wealthier sections of the W districts where private school is an easy option would be less impacted by something like this. You would see stagnation/decline in areas like Rockville, Silver Spring, North Potomac, Gaithersburg, North Bethesda- the economic middle that makes up a good chunk of property tax.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I made sure to buy in the middle of the best clusters so that if they changed boundaries, it wouldn’t impact us. I am all for regular tweaking of boundaries anyway, since that’s what’s best for the county demographically.

There are zero guarantees. You could live a stone's throw from the HS and still be rezoned.

Exactly, which is why we live where the surrounding high schools are ALL good. I was clear enough in my first post.

So you're in favor of boundary changes, as long as they don't affect you? That's nice, I guess.

I would lmao if that person got rezoned to a "lower" performing school, or they shipped in tons of undesirables into their cluster - either could actually happen.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I made sure to buy in the middle of the best clusters so that if they changed boundaries, it wouldn’t impact us. I am all for regular tweaking of boundaries anyway, since that’s what’s best for the county demographically.

There are zero guarantees. You could live a stone's throw from the HS and still be rezoned.

Exactly, which is why we live where the surrounding high schools are ALL good. I was clear enough in my first post.

So you're in favor of boundary changes, as long as they don't affect you? That's nice, I guess.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I made sure to buy in the middle of the best clusters so that if they changed boundaries, it wouldn’t impact us. I am all for regular tweaking of boundaries anyway, since that’s what’s best for the county demographically.

There are zero guarantees. You could live a stone's throw from the HS and still be rezoned.

Exactly, which is why we live where the surrounding high schools are ALL good. I was clear enough in my first post.

The fact is that MCPS is besieged from every direction, whether it's Howard, DC, or NoVa. It will tread very carefully before making changes that further incentivize families to live in other jurisdictions.

But, please, keep spinning your theories, if only because you like to see people squirm.

Anonymous wrote:Still think it's not happening after the MCCPTA CIP Chair testified for it last year before the Board of Education? Read the story in the new Bethesda Magazine (not available on line or I'd post a link). They are definitely headed in that direction.

Why? Because they (County Council, Board of Education and Superintemdent Smith) believe it will solve the opportunity gap.

It's worth reading the Bethesda magazine article to get a sense of the thinking of the leaders we have in place. I find it puzzling and disturbing that Floreen and others think there's some great virtue in trying to force a demographic distribution at each school that mirrors overall county composition. First, the composition of Montgomery county is different from Maryland, and different than the overall US. Why is is so important for local schools to reflect the arbitrary demographic composition of MoCo?
Second, having ethnic/economic heterogeneity across neighborhoods is true the world over. I fail to see this is as a problem that requires sub optimal and costly transportation choices for many thousands of kids and parents.

Criminal justice reform
Free trade schools compared to at-cost colleges
And nationalization of the health care system

Would do more to close the gap then bussing poor kids to highend neighborhoods where the schools are set up as college for all factories. Even if a few kids respond, at best it would be individual change and not systemic. People underestimate the quantity of need and the size of the gap. There isn’t enough buses or rich kids.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

They can always practice their jumpshot or their jazz hands. You’re wrong capitalism’s formula requires a wide and broad minimum waged working class. You tell me who you are going to slot there when you talk about lifting others out. We as a nation can tweak the floor and some of the levels (the new deal and globalism has America’s poor with some of the best quality of life in the world) but it is totally a numbers game. Trying to fix it with a “college track for all” scholastic approach makes me think people are more concerned with the perception of equality more then actual results.

Henry Ford disagreed with you.

He is dead and his Industry has required multiple bailouts (even if ford avoided the last round of handouts) and massive amounts of shipping jobs to other countries all while spending billions to replace humans with automation.

Even though you’re right and ford will always have better level employees, where will those employees eat, where will they shop? For every factory worker there are dozens of support workers making nothing keeping Walmart prices down, McDonald’s value menu competitive and food processing/farmers kept not speaking English so that the (sort of) middle class ford worker can buy stuff.

Even in your utopia basic economics would require dozen of countries with slave or cheap labor sweating away in the background making your shirts, phones or produce let alone mining your rare earths or diamonds. Let me guess that’s fine with that and only care about American equality?

Capitalism is a pyramid structure. Everyone can’t consume at the same rate. If you inflate the base you have to either increase/subdivide production or redistribute. Even with an inflated base they will still be “the base” and human nature will make whoever that is bitter.

That said we should utilize our wealth and do healthcare for all and fundamentally strip down our criminal panelization system and turn it into a rehabilitation system save for the very worst offenders. The police and jail system are forms of economic redistribution for the poor to the middle class. It is what it is

Anonymous wrote:

They can always practice their jumpshot or their jazz hands. You’re wrong capitalism’s formula requires a wide and broad minimum waged working class. You tell me who you are going to slot there when you talk about lifting others out. We as a nation can tweak the floor and some of the levels (the new deal and globalism has America’s poor with some of the best quality of life in the world) but it is totally a numbers game. Trying to fix it with a “college track for all” scholastic approach makes me think people are more concerned with the perception of equality more then actual results.

Henry Ford disagreed with you.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Exactly but these are aspirational neighborhoods with aspirational schools all with high achieving residents and students. These are linked and there will always be a gap in capitalism. It just sucks when demographics are the leading indicator of said gap instead of.... I don’t know what the acceptable criteria to funnel people into have-nots. I just know there will always be have-nots, where you start will highly influence where you end up and it is absolutely generationally accumulative.

Bringing poor kids to rich areas will only help so much, got to send them home eventually and the high achieving kids which are in higher percentages will only tolerate slowing down to teach to some kids who might never get it.

Why waste any resources on the poor kids? The sooner they accept that they will spend their life being poor, the better for them and for the rich kids. Right?

Good grief, PP.

No, it's not acceptable to write poor kids off for choosing the wrong parents, and capitalism doesn't require it, either.

They can always practice their jumpshot or their jazz hands. You’re wrong capitalism’s formula requires a wide and broad minimum waged working class. You tell me who you are going to slot there when you talk about lifting others out. We as a nation can tweak the floor and some of the levels (the new deal and globalism has America’s poor with some of the best quality of life in the world) but it is totally a numbers game. Trying to fix it with a “college track for all” scholastic approach makes me think people are more concerned with the perception of equality more then actual results.

Anonymous wrote:
I made sure to buy in the middle of the best clusters so that if they changed boundaries, it wouldn’t impact us. I am all for regular tweaking of boundaries anyway, since that’s what’s best for the county demographically.

There are zero guarantees. You could live a stone's throw from the HS and still be rezoned.

I made sure to buy in the middle of the best clusters so that if they changed boundaries, it wouldn’t impact us. I am all for regular tweaking of boundaries anyway, since that’s what’s best for the county demographically.

Anonymous wrote:

Exactly but these are aspirational neighborhoods with aspirational schools all with high achieving residents and students. These are linked and there will always be a gap in capitalism. It just sucks when demographics are the leading indicator of said gap instead of.... I don’t know what the acceptable criteria to funnel people into have-nots. I just know there will always be have-nots, where you start will highly influence where you end up and it is absolutely generationally accumulative.

Bringing poor kids to rich areas will only help so much, got to send them home eventually and the high achieving kids which are in higher percentages will only tolerate slowing down to teach to some kids who might never get it.

Why waste any resources on the poor kids? The sooner they accept that they will spend their life being poor, the better for them and for the rich kids. Right?

Good grief, PP.

No, it's not acceptable to write poor kids off for choosing the wrong parents, and capitalism doesn't require it, either.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Still think it's not happening after the MCCPTA CIP Chair testified for it last year before the Board of Education? Read the story in the new Bethesda Magazine (not available on line or I'd post a link). They are definitely headed in that direction.

Why? Because they (County Council, Board of Education and Superintemdent Smith) believe it will solve the opportunity gap.

It won’t solve any gap, it will just hide poor Latino and black test scores in higher performing schools while subjecting them to being shipped to the corners of the county for the privilege of being “those” kids. If the board gets too aggressive they will have to develop costly magnet or specialized programs to placate the local higher SES parents or risk similar white flight that other parts of the county are experiencing. If they don’t they risk losing the halo schools status as such which will reverberate across the real estate and tax base putting the system in jeopardy of destabilization.

I can see Woodward being included in the DCC as a token but halos Churchill, Whitman and BCC will be left completely alone.

It's not halos. It's geography. You are either going to have some schools with largely wealthy populations, or you are going to have boundaries that make little sense geographically and have kids busing across the county rather than going to a school nearby.

Exactly but these are aspirational neighborhoods with aspirational schools all with high achieving residents and students. These are linked and there will always be a gap in capitalism. It just sucks when demographics are the leading indicator of said gap instead of.... I don’t know what the acceptable criteria to funnel people into have-nots. I just know there will always be have-nots, where you start will highly influence where you end up and it is absolutely generationally accumulative.

Bringing poor kids to rich areas will only help so much, got to send them home eventually and the high achieving kids which are in higher percentages will only tolerate slowing down to teach to some kids who might never get it.