Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:2.0 or no, compared to the rest of the nation MCPS (and, Fairfax county too FWIW) are providing stellar, well above-average educations. According to this tool, student in MoCo perform 66% better than other students nationwide: http://www.theatlantic.com/misc/global-report-card/

USNews goes more in depth, if you Google there's a lot of websites, and overall MoCo is a very strong county. It's hard to speculate on what policy changes will be made in 2 - 3 years. Some of it is being driven by the common core initiative which is a nationwide policy (http://www.corestandards.org/), and then some of it is customizable. I think the best thing to ask yourself is what your goals are for your child's education, and if you're concerned that where you live can't meet those goals, where would you look for a better alternative.

FWIW here's another ranking from SchoolDigger.com. MoCo schools rank #10 in Maryland behind Howard County and others. http://www.schooldigger.com/go/MD/districtrank.aspx

Of course any rankings should be taken with a grain of salt. Quality will vary from school to school (that's especially true in MoCo). And most rely on test scores, which only tells you so much about the quality of a school.

And yes, many complainers are people who just like to complain, which is unproductive. But just as bad is complacency. Thinking that the system is just fine and not looking critically at how things can be improved. There are a good number of this type here as well.

PP here (from the post you quoted), thanks for posting that! I hadn't heard of school digger before, I'll have to look more closely at it. At a cursory glance of their findings that put MCPS at #10, I did notice that the MCPS's score came from 27 ranked high schools, more than double the sample size for any other district. The number 1 district, Calvert, has it's score based on only 4 high schools. I imagine that if you only took 4 MCPS high schools for the ranking you could get widely differing results, with 4 "W"s skewing vastly higher, or 4 with lower SES statuses skewing lower (I like looking at the high schools because it's the compilation of the entire pyramid, inclusive of the ES and MS kids). Of course, MCPS has many more students in it's district which plays into the wide data ranges - just something to consider when interpreting the data. I like USNews because it uses the same data (test scores), but you can review your individual school's ranking compared to the state, and compared nationwide (versus the county aggregated as a whole). Looking at it that way, the top six schools in the state based on test scores are all in MCPS (#1 Churchill, #2 Whitman, #3 Poolesville, #4 Wootton, #5 RM, #6 BCC).

PPs were also discussing Fairfax vs. MoCo, I accurately used the USNews results (which, we all know doesn't tell the whole story, but it's the only objective data available) to compare the two counties. In case you're curious, here were the results in order, for all USNews ranked with a college readiness ranking of 70%+

100%, Thomas Jefferson High School (VA - pulls from most of Fairfax Co.)
85.6%, Winston Churchill High School (MD - Potomac)
84.2%, Walt Whitman High School (MD - Bethesda)
79.2%, Langley High School (VA - Mclean)
75.6%, Poolesville High School (MD - Poolesville)
75.3%, James Madison High School (VA - Vienna)
74.6%, Richard Montgomery High School (MD - Chevy Chase)
74.6%, Thomas S. Wooton High School (MD - Rockville)
74.4%, Mclean High School (VA - Mclean)
72.3%, Walter Johnson High School (MD - Bethesda)
72%, W.T. Woodson High School (VA - Fairfax)
71.7%, Oakton High School (VA - Vienna)
69.7%, Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School (MD - Chevy Chase)

So, I wouldn't write off MCPS as a whole just because of alignment with common core, which is happening across the nation, but I would investigate available programs, talk to parents, and look at test scores to make an informed decision. And, while I've highlighted some of the high performing schools, there are also certainly other schools that are under-performing.

Anonymous wrote:Compacted math.

hmm..well that's unerwhelming..I was hoping you meant kids could take classes in the given curriculum sequence faster and I was hopeful there for a second that my math loving child could actually get more out of his mat time at school. Oh well. Thanks for answering though

Anonymous wrote:My kid is in HGC. Compacted math. He has 30 minutes each day to finish his homework. Then I sit with him for 30 minutes to teach him Math concepts that was being taught to kids in 4th grade a few years back.

I am not going to sit around and wait for what MCPS does. What is the point?

For example?

My kid is in HGC. Compacted math. He has 30 minutes each day to finish his homework. Then I sit with him for 30 minutes to teach him Math concepts that was being taught to kids in 4th grade a few years back.

I am not going to sit around and wait for what MCPS does. What is the point?

Oh, ok, I misunderstood. Thanks for explaining.

Thankfully they didn't make her go backwards...my point is that they have improved things since then...

Anonymous wrote:Right..my child was forced into 4th grade math in 2nd,3rd, and 4th grade because they ended accelerated math after she took 4th grade math in 2nd grade. If she were in 4th grade now she would be able to have compacted math instead of grade level. Big improvement.

Nonetheless, compacted math is accelerated math.

(If they ended accelerated math after 2nd grade, why did she take 4th grade math in 3rd grade instead of 3rd grade math?)

Right..my child was forced into 4th grade math in 2nd,3rd, and 4th grade because they ended accelerated math after she took 4th grade math in 2nd grade. If she were in 4th grade now she would be able to have compacted math instead of grade level. Big improvement.

Compacted math.

Anonymous wrote:They have already added math acceleration back in and I think we will see it expand with more parents demanding it. I think that (and the report cards) are the major complaints. The old system was far from perfect either.

where have they added accelleration back???

Anonymous wrote:2.0 or no, compared to the rest of the nation MCPS (and, Fairfax county too FWIW) are providing stellar, well above-average educations. According to this tool, student in MoCo perform 66% better than other students nationwide: http://www.theatlantic.com/misc/global-report-card/

USNews goes more in depth, if you Google there's a lot of websites, and overall MoCo is a very strong county. It's hard to speculate on what policy changes will be made in 2 - 3 years. Some of it is being driven by the common core initiative which is a nationwide policy (http://www.corestandards.org/), and then some of it is customizable. I think the best thing to ask yourself is what your goals are for your child's education, and if you're concerned that where you live can't meet those goals, where would you look for a better alternative.

FWIW here's another ranking from SchoolDigger.com. MoCo schools rank #10 in Maryland behind Howard County and others. http://www.schooldigger.com/go/MD/districtrank.aspx

Of course any rankings should be taken with a grain of salt. Quality will vary from school to school (that's especially true in MoCo). And most rely on test scores, which only tells you so much about the quality of a school.

And yes, many complainers are people who just like to complain, which is unproductive. But just as bad is complacency. Thinking that the system is just fine and not looking critically at how things can be improved. There are a good number of this type here as well.

C2.0 content doesn't bother me as much, it is more about how it is implemented and rolled out. I don't like that it is written on the fly, with little teacher training, and rolled out all at once (rather than piloted). I don't like the MCPS disdains parents and tries to hide information from them (everyone get's a P, so you can't tell if your child needs help). I don't like the antipathy towards acceleration for the G/T kids or the lack of effort for the LD kids who just need to barely make on-grade level. In other words, MCPS doesn't care if you reach your potential, they just want you do about the same as everyone else.

I will say that we have had good teachers in a W-school. I will also say that all public school districts probably have problems. And finally, your odds of finding good schools probably increase if you move to a wealthy, educated area (no matter the school district)

Anonymous wrote:OMG some you people are so ignorant I wonder where YOU were educated. Talking about your Chinese co- workers like they are representative of all ASIAN people.
Dollars to donuts they aren't even Chinese, and could not care less about your cockamamie conspiracy theories about MCPS!

Well, I happen to be Chinese, so I think at least I know whether they are Chinese or not. I work in MoCo and hate commute. I said the people I know who works downtown are choosing VA. Howard is more and more popular too.

Data and surveys always come after the fact. Anecdotal stories could point to a trend.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

And I really wonder how you can be so certain that scores will drop. My crystal ball doesn't work that well.

Try looking at your data for once. You know which demographics score high regardless of teacher performance. They leave, you lose your score boosters.

If you have data showing that people of South Asian and East Asian heritage are

1. leaving MCPS
2. moving elsewhere instead of Montgomery County because of MCPS

I'd love to see them.

All I can say is our MCPS elementary school is heavily Asian (both South and East) and getting more so each year.

OMG some you people are so ignorant I wonder where YOU were educated. Talking about your Chinese co- workers like they are representative of all ASIAN people.
Dollars to donuts they aren't even Chinese, and could not care less about your cockamamie conspiracy theories about MCPS!