Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hope Montoya stays on top of this. I doubt anyone else will.

One lone board member can't do anything. She needs four board members to make things happen.

Why? BOE cannot intervene MCPS implementation, right? All they can do is to fire TT if they truly dare to hold him accountable.

Besides asking questions and asking for reporting, and passing non-binding resolutions, they can also change the MCPS gifted policy to require certain kinds of acceleration and/or cohorting in certain subjects starting at certain grade levels. So they could put in the policy that gifted kids must have access to cohorted classes in math and ELA starting in grade 4, or whatever, and then MCPS has to follow it.

Naah, Grace has told Montoya that MCPS didn't violate the law and was complying with MDSE new policy. Besides Yang, Montoya cannot get any hook with other board members to push this and she is apparently partially satisfied that her younger child in 4th grade compacted math would be assured to stay with the same cohort. She is a total fighter whenever her children are going to be impacted. If not, she only cares about her racial group.

What an utter mess. I can’t believe how bad Taylor has proved to be, at basically everything.

It seems like no one at central office or the board of ed cares about what families or teachers think. It’s very depressing. We keep voting out board of education members and nothing improves. It’s a constant merry go round of curriculum and the only people who benefit are the ones who sell the curricula.

I’ve been in McPS for 15 years now — another 3 and we are done. But as a member of the community, it makes me very sad that the goal is to dumb down public education. So now only the ultra rich that can pay for private school get a top tier education? Talk about an equity problem. This is not the way to build a workforce that can compete with AI and foreign workers. It’s not just the math — the ELA situation is even worse.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you have a gifted or advanced kid, MCPS is basically telling you that it no longer will serve them. Math acceleration will now be within a heterogenous class just like model 2 of the CKLA enrichment this year. And they are getting rid of homogenous groups for CkLA enrichment next year. If you care at all, write to the board today before they discuss this this afternoon: Here is the deck for today’s presentation to the board on math. It looks like they are getting rid of compacted math all together and doing “acceleration” in mixed classrooms (however that will work). 5th graders are going to end up repeating content. They’re also proposing to get rid of cohorted enrichment for ELC. If you are concerned about this like I am, please reach out to the board today before they discuss this afternoon:
https://go.boarddocs.com/mabe/mcpsmd/Board.nsf/files/DTUE6G38E612/$file/Accelerate%20Enrich%20Learn%20Literacy%20Math%20260507%20PPT.pdf

What homogeneous groups are you talking about for ELA? Our ES only has that during FIT

41 ESs adopted the homogeneous setting (Model 1), while the rest adopted the heterogeneous setting (Model 2). For the former one, some parents reported on this board that they were forced to just speed up and skip contents, so it proves again that implementation is critical, and MCPS is never good at that. Then, based on 3-months of data (basically winter MAP and fall MAP difference), they concluded that Model 1 is not successful and therefore let's go with Model 2 because the latter is more equitable.

We are in one of those Cohorted model 1 classes. My guess is parents complain even MORE if model 1 classes because it’s less clear why they ditched ELC. Multiple parents seem to think if they complain ELC will come back, they don’t really they will instead get a different, even crappier version of ELA. I do not think a sign parent is asking for heterogeneous classes. They are manipulating the truth (shocker)

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you have a gifted or advanced kid, MCPS is basically telling you that it no longer will serve them. Math acceleration will now be within a heterogenous class just like model 2 of the CKLA enrichment this year. And they are getting rid of homogenous groups for CkLA enrichment next year. If you care at all, write to the board today before they discuss this this afternoon: Here is the deck for today’s presentation to the board on math. It looks like they are getting rid of compacted math all together and doing “acceleration” in mixed classrooms (however that will work). 5th graders are going to end up repeating content. They’re also proposing to get rid of cohorted enrichment for ELC. If you are concerned about this like I am, please reach out to the board today before they discuss this afternoon:
https://go.boarddocs.com/mabe/mcpsmd/Board.nsf/files/DTUE6G38E612/$file/Accelerate%20Enrich%20Learn%20Literacy%20Math%20260507%20PPT.pdf

What homogeneous groups are you talking about for ELA? Our ES only has that during FIT

41 ESs adopted the homogeneous setting (Model 1), while the rest adopted the heterogeneous setting (Model 2). For the former one, some parents reported on this board that they were forced to just speed up and skip contents, so it proves again that implementation is critical, and MCPS is never good at that. Then, based on 3-months of data (basically winter MAP and fall MAP difference), they concluded that Model 1 is not successful and therefore let's go with Model 2 because the latter is more equitable.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you have a gifted or advanced kid, MCPS is basically telling you that it no longer will serve them. Math acceleration will now be within a heterogenous class just like model 2 of the CKLA enrichment this year. And they are getting rid of homogenous groups for CkLA enrichment next year. If you care at all, write to the board today before they discuss this this afternoon: Here is the deck for today’s presentation to the board on math. It looks like they are getting rid of compacted math all together and doing “acceleration” in mixed classrooms (however that will work). 5th graders are going to end up repeating content. They’re also proposing to get rid of cohorted enrichment for ELC. If you are concerned about this like I am, please reach out to the board today before they discuss this afternoon:
https://go.boarddocs.com/mabe/mcpsmd/Board.nsf/files/DTUE6G38E612/$file/Accelerate%20Enrich%20Learn%20Literacy%20Math%20260507%20PPT.pdf

What homogeneous groups are you talking about for ELA? Our ES only has that during FIT

Yes, for this year they let schools choose between a single advanced classroom or mixed-level ELA classrooms.

And reading between the lines, MCPS basically admitted in their presentation today that principals were telling them "Parents are complaining to us that we could have chosen the cohorted class and we didn't. So you should require everyone to do mixed-level classes so they don't blame us for it." (Pretty sure that's what she meant by "administrators were telling us to pick one model districtwide.")

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:YES to Montoya!! I was not expecting this from her.

See, this is why it's great to have current parents on the Board of Ed. A parent of a 4th grader in a good compacted math class and a crappy homogenous ELC class is the exact person to know what's up and call it out.

Crappy heterogeneous/Model 2 ELC class, I mean.

So, "good compacted math class"

"Crappy hetergenous class"

Got it

Anonymous wrote:We were on the fence about CES last year, but I'm really glad we did it.

This policy change makes CES even more inequitable.

Anonymous wrote:If you have a gifted or advanced kid, MCPS is basically telling you that it no longer will serve them. Math acceleration will now be within a heterogenous class just like model 2 of the CKLA enrichment this year. And they are getting rid of homogenous groups for CkLA enrichment next year. If you care at all, write to the board today before they discuss this this afternoon: Here is the deck for today’s presentation to the board on math. It looks like they are getting rid of compacted math all together and doing “acceleration” in mixed classrooms (however that will work). 5th graders are going to end up repeating content. They’re also proposing to get rid of cohorted enrichment for ELC. If you are concerned about this like I am, please reach out to the board today before they discuss this afternoon:
https://go.boarddocs.com/mabe/mcpsmd/Board.nsf/files/DTUE6G38E612/$file/Accelerate%20Enrich%20Learn%20Literacy%20Math%20260507%20PPT.pdf

What homogeneous groups are you talking about for ELA? Our ES only has that during FIT

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hope Montoya stays on top of this. I doubt anyone else will.

One lone board member can't do anything. She needs four board members to make things happen.

Why? BOE cannot intervene MCPS implementation, right? All they can do is to fire TT if they truly dare to hold him accountable.

Besides asking questions and asking for reporting, and passing non-binding resolutions, they can also change the MCPS gifted policy to require certain kinds of acceleration and/or cohorting in certain subjects starting at certain grade levels. So they could put in the policy that gifted kids must have access to cohorted classes in math and ELA starting in grade 4, or whatever, and then MCPS has to follow it.

Anonymous wrote:MCPS used to be a recommended district for gifted students. Next up is whatever they're going to end up doing to the CES program. And then what?

I truly don't want to send my kid to private school nor do I want to move, but I may well have to to keep her engaged in school.

Yeah, Montoya brought this up. It was actually a fairly surprising and impressive stretch of truth-telling that we don't usually see... differentiation and enrichment in mixed classes usually doesn't actually work in practice, MCPS is pretending they're being forced into this by the state when they're not, families are leaving MCPS for private because their kids aren't being challenged, etc.

I really think every public school official that is contributing to the constant curriculum changes with no pilots and constantly creating new programs and then eliminating them should rot in hell.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hope Montoya stays on top of this. I doubt anyone else will.

One lone board member can't do anything. She needs four board members to make things happen.

Unfortunately my sense is that the other Board members hate her. Maybe if Yang spearheads it something can get through, though. I think Stewart and Rivera-Oven and maybe Zimmerman are gettable for something that layers their current plan with an actual cohorted acceleration approach for that top 3-5% of kids.

Truly? That would be the ideal solution. But that will cost $$ for additional teachers which they just don't have right now.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hope Montoya stays on top of this. I doubt anyone else will.

We'll see whether she loses some of that fire after being told mid-presentation that her 4th grader gets to be the last class cohorted in 5th, or if she stays equally committed to the broader principles. I hope it's the latter.

They still haven't clarified what the rising 5th graders are going to be learning in this "final" compacted math year. Someone still needs to figure out how to rectify the differences between Amplify and Eureka... and now that its only one year, are they actually going to put in that effort?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hope Montoya stays on top of this. I doubt anyone else will.

One lone board member can't do anything. She needs four board members to make things happen.

Unfortunately my sense is that the other Board members hate her. Maybe if Yang spearheads it something can get through, though. I think Stewart and Rivera-Oven and maybe Zimmerman are gettable for something that layers their current plan with an actual cohorted acceleration approach for that top 3-5% of kids.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hope Montoya stays on top of this. I doubt anyone else will.

One lone board member can't do anything. She needs four board members to make things happen.

Why? BOE cannot intervene MCPS implementation, right? All they can do is to fire TT if they truly dare to hold him accountable.