Anonymous wrote:I have SN child - GTLD with very high IQ. Generally nonviolent, but who would love to misbehave if he gets support of class or another clown. Why not to have fun instead of studying if teacher lets it go or cannot control class? He will use absolutely every opportunity due to immaturity.
The only environment this kid can learn is regular magnet (not GTLD one). The reason is - magnet kids are more accommodating and pushing this kid to learn instead of fulling around with other clowns all day.
Basically in any non-magnet class my child goes for lowest common denominator in work and behavior.
This is in support that mixing kids is really bad idea.
If you will put my child in mixed class, he will learn nothing... On the other hand he is not disruptive in magnet environment. He is absolutely disruptive (non-violently) in regular environment.
For us magnet is life saver, otherwise my child would get nothing out of public education in MCPS. I am sure that there are many kids like mine, but most of them did not get to magnet.
Probably most of them are fulling around our public systems and will end up with zero knowledge.

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Anonymous wrote:Can I ask what you think is different? Are there more kids with these behavioral issues? Or were they in different classrooms instead of being mainstreamed before?

No discipline. No parenting. This wasn’t a thing when we were young. For better or for worse, kids knew they’d get it from their parents if they misbehaved, so they didn’t.

There also was corporal punishment. The jr. high math teacher would take the disruptive boy into the hallway, slam him against the lockers, and tell him to get his act together. Lest you feel sorry for the boy, he did get his act together and retired in his 30s after a nice (albeit brief) VC career. He was fine and the rest of us, boy included, got to learn.

Anonymous wrote:I know of multiple kids in our school with one-to-one aides, but they are kids with severe developmental delays, not kids with ED, which I know is harder to diagnose/make the case for that kind of support. My friend who is in an administrative position in elementary was telling me about how they handle it if a kid walks out of school property. I had never really thought about how something like that should be handled. Though I did know a young adult who had a history as an elementary schooler of leaving school and walking home in the middle of the day. And a parent who didn’t march him right back.

Anonymous wrote:No school in the world will raise and parent your kid unless you are talking pricey boarding schools in Europe or Asia.

If you are only working unstable cash jobs, 2 or 3 shifts, no father figure around, living in a group home: Do Not Have More Kids.

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Anonymous wrote:Unfortunately, parental involvement is something that cannot be solved by re-engineering the districts. I live in a wealthy public school district in the NYC suburbs and even with the relatively homoegeneous student population (racially diverse but not economically diverse), it is the students whose parents feel the school district should raise and educate their kids that have the worst outcomes.

Single parents and poor parents are struggling to put food on the plate, maybe working 2 jobs, or are suffering because they are unemployed and thus for a variety of reasons they cannot instill educational virtue into their children. Do we let such disadvanged children of disadvantaged parents (not saying being a single parent is a disadvantage, it’s a blessing of course but single parents will on average be more busy). No, by mixing the advanced students with the disadvanged... the disadvanged can watch, learn, see from the well performing peers how to be a better student. Better students get the benefit of being a role model. Also we can use the SSL requirement to our advantage. We can assign underperforming students to high achieving students and for SSL hours, they can tutor and assist with homework the academically challenged. Since the under performers need SSL hits too, since they too are experiencing a multicultural experience... they can get SSL hours for this type of learning. Since perhaps these children would be working after school to support the family, and not doing homework and now we’ve restricted their free time in this SSL-tutor model. We can pay these students a SSL credit ‘cash award’. Thus they learns that education pays dividends. A great lesson. This would be affordable because as they become better students, the county will spend much less on all the special programs.
Then think of the social benefits. New opportunity for boyfriend and girlfriend relationships outside the static stale undiverse options now available. Kids will learn poor kids are people too, learn rich kids aren’t so bad after all, colors religions creeds and cultural barriers break down as children enjoy their shared human experience. I know this sounds cheesy but point is these are real word lessons many don’t learn until they are an adult, now they can learn them when their life is dedicated to learning. When these kids grow up they will likely be more harmonious with ‘others’ more open minded, ideally less likely to partake in the divisive and partisan political behavior the current crop in office our forcing upon society. This isn’t ‘hope and change’ rhetoric but change we can work on to hopefully bring more peaceful and prosperous future for all of our children.

Isn’t this worth a try? You say it failed in NYC, their failure is our opportunity to improve. MoCo is growing and expanding with increases of immigrants and diverse peoples, do we throw our hands up and say it can be done, so we build more walls to live behind? Or do we embrace our new neighbors, friends, and in time,our new family members. Now is the time to embrace the future for our county.

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This is based on the assumption that educational opportunities are a zero-sum game. I.e., if it helps you, it hurts me. It doesn't have to be that way.

Part of the problem is that MCPS has made it a very zero sum game and has a track record of ignoring any need or issue coming from non-poverty areas. MCPS is famous for saying things that it recognizes that it is not serving the high achieving students but it doesn't matter because there are too many low performing students to care about the rest. MCPS looks for short cuts so doing things like placing magnets in bad schools to change the optics of the school performance, dumbing down the curriculum, removing exams, reducing math acceleration, and not allowing PTAs to find aides in schools with high ratios is more about trying to throttle higher achieving students to make up the gap than helping low achieving students perform better.

It's tough to put a robotics lab into a school where only 50% of 9th graders are passing federal standards in reading and math.

We know this, because Wheaton is our sister school, so whatever we donate to our HS's fund, 10% of it goes to Wheaton. We've even had theft issues at Wheaton for things the fund and PTAs jointly put in to the HS (i.e. stolen computers).

It's really a sad state of affairs. Academic basics aren't mastered, people whine for state-of-the-art everything, then they steal and physically wreak what is given.

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I actually have a student at Wheaton. They have a robotics lab and the robotics team kicks ass. The school is three years old and still looks very new. My child has never witnessed any destruction of school property and has only heard about one kid taking a chrome book home.

I thought our rich "sister" school only donated money for the after prom.

Were you around in hs 5 years ago? Pre-Wheaton program within Wheaton? It wasn’t pretty.
Check out who funded the robotics lab 2-5 years ago. And what kids got major ssl hours going over there.

Ive had a child at Wheaton for 4 years. The very tiny magnet program started 7 years ago. Yes, the old building wasn't pretty, but it has always had a very fostering community with involved teachers and administration. I'm not aware of how the robotics program was funded.

Maybe your angry about having to share some money with Wheaton (again I've only heard about donations to the after prom, which all high schools are required to do. I personally think the extreme costs of after prom is money that could be spent on better things to benefit the whole school), but your perception of the school is misguided.

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Anonymous wrote:Can I ask what you think is different? Are there more kids with these behavioral issues? Or were they in different classrooms instead of being mainstreamed before?

You know, there are more kids in general, that could be part of it. 30 years ago there were a lot more 400 student schools and a lot fewer 750 student schools (elementary). Perhaps that has made it harder for administrators to deal with disruptive kids - there are more of them per principal?