Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I don't think you really want to run with the argument that UMC students in a high FARMS rate school are not reaching their full potential. It runs against the claim embedded in all the pro equity policies that lower SES kids are helped by grouping with high SES kids at no cost to the trajectory of the high SES kids.

DP. No, it doesn't. The point you're trying to rebut is that it doesn't hurt non-poor kids to have poor kids at a low-poverty school. Which it doesn't.

But that's not the issue here. The issue here is high-poverty schools. And high-poverty schools aren't good for anybody.

If high poverty schools aren’t good for anyone, I don’t think the solution would be to pull a few of the best-resourced students out of those schools. I don’t think that would be MCPS’s goal either.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I don't think you really want to run with the argument that UMC students in a high FARMS rate school are not reaching their full potential. It runs against the claim embedded in all the pro equity policies that lower SES kids are helped by grouping with high SES kids at no cost to the trajectory of the high SES kids.

DP. No, it doesn't. The point you're trying to rebut is that it doesn't hurt non-poor kids to have poor kids at a low-poverty school. Which it doesn't.

But that's not the issue here. The issue here is high-poverty schools. And high-poverty schools aren't good for anybody.

Anonymous wrote:

They already list "FARMS" as one of the factors considered by the admissions committee - last year and this year. Why this additional calculation?

There are three factors that affect a child's performance on these types of tests. The child's innate ability, their own SES (FARMS vs. UMC), and the SES of the school they are attending. Presume the purpose of the magnet testing is to try to find children with innate ability that are in need of the opportunities provided in a different school than their home school (if you want to argue this, please start a different thread). Dividing the testing group into three cohorts and comparing within those cohorts seems like a reasonable way to try to adjust for the affect that the current school has on current student performance. FARMS students in an UMC school should be benefiting from that setting and more closely reaching their potential. And the converse is true too. UMC students in a high FARMS rate school are likely not reaching their full potential yet. Students in a CES school should absolutely only be compared with similar schools - they are already receiving a huge benefit that should reflect in improved test scores.

Ideally, every student would be challenged in their home school with a rigorous program perfect for them. Everyone wants the best thing for their child. However, since that isn't happening anytime soon, there has to be some way for the system, which serves all of the students in the county, to allocate its resources as fairly and equitably as possible. You may disagree with the school system's goals, or may disagree with their process, but I for one am glad to see that there is some complexity and thought going into their new process. Everyone was complaining that there was no transparency last year. Well, now they are providing more information. Don't complain that they did.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I don't think you really want to run with the argument that UMC students in a high FARMS rate school are not reaching their full potential. It runs against the claim embedded in all the pro equity policies that lower SES kids are helped by grouping with high SES kids at no cost to the trajectory of the high SES kids.

DP. No, it doesn't. The point you're trying to rebut is that it doesn't hurt non-poor kids to have poor kids at a low-poverty school. Which it doesn't.

But that's not the issue here. The issue here is high-poverty schools. And high-poverty schools aren't good for anybody.

Anonymous wrote:

I don't think you really want to run with the argument that UMC students in a high FARMS rate school are not reaching their full potential. It runs against the claim embedded in all the pro equity policies that lower SES kids are helped by grouping with high SES kids at no cost to the trajectory of the high SES kids.

Anonymous wrote:

They already list "FARMS" as one of the factors considered by the admissions committee - last year and this year. Why this additional calculation?

There are three factors that affect a child's performance on these types of tests. The child's innate ability, their own SES (FARMS vs. UMC), and the SES of the school they are attending. Presume the purpose of the magnet testing is to try to find children with innate ability that are in need of the opportunities provided in a different school than their home school (if you want to argue this, please start a different thread). Dividing the testing group into three cohorts and comparing within those cohorts seems like a reasonable way to try to adjust for the affect that the current school has on current student performance. FARMS students in an UMC school should be benefiting from that setting and more closely reaching their potential. And the converse is true too. UMC students in a high FARMS rate school are likely not reaching their full potential yet. Students in a CES school should absolutely only be compared with similar schools - they are already receiving a huge benefit that should reflect in improved test scores.

Ideally, every student would be challenged in their home school with a rigorous program perfect for them. Everyone wants the best thing for their child. However, since that isn't happening anytime soon, there has to be some way for the system, which serves all of the students in the county, to allocate its resources as fairly and equitably as possible. You may disagree with the school system's goals, or may disagree with their process, but I for one am glad to see that there is some complexity and thought going into their new process. Everyone was complaining that there was no transparency last year. Well, now they are providing more information. Don't complain that they did.

They already list "FARMS" as one of the factors considered by the admissions committee - last year and this year. Why this additional calculation?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Well, you are making a huge assumption that the difference between the high SES and middle SES groups could make a student who is lower percentile nationally 19 percentage points higher than a student in the other group who is actually higher nationally. I think that's really unlikely, but only someone with access to all the numbers could say for sure. If you have two students who are both 98% nationally and one from a low SES group ends up with an MCPS 99% and one from a high SES group ends up with an MCPS 96% do you still think that makes no sense? We don't know what these numbers actually are and how much the national % and MCPS % are different, but based on what 5th grade parents were reporting on other threads I don't think you can be 98 or 99% nationally and be 80% MCPS. I don't think it changes that much. They are reporting both scores to parents, so if there are differences that large, there should be people here who can attest to it (of course, anonymous, so...)

As a PP has said, MCPS does not have information about socioeconomic status This is what they have:

1. Whether or not you receive free or reduced meals.
2. Where you live.

Is that a proxy for your socioeconomic status? Yes. Is it a good one? Not very, but it's all they've got.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^^ It also depends where they do the cut-off for low, middle, high. The FARMS rate for RCF to use PP's example, is only about 5 percentage points higher than for CCES. One falls on the <20% (barely) and one falls on the >20%, but they are not hugely different. Hard to know how they decided to split up the schools.

This is exactly the problem. The cut offs between what is a high versus middle versus low SES school is not clear.

And they know the actual FARMs status of each child, right? Not seeing how this can be justified. They can see some non farms kids getting farms "cohort" benefit. Do they ignore that (bad!) do they rejigger results to fix (bad!). Were last year's changes so inadequate they had to layer this on before the smoke had cleared?

Honestly, desegregation is a work in progress and there will be errors and rethinking along the way. That doesn't make it a bad goal.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^^ It also depends where they do the cut-off for low, middle, high. The FARMS rate for RCF to use PP's example, is only about 5 percentage points higher than for CCES. One falls on the <20% (barely) and one falls on the >20%, but they are not hugely different. Hard to know how they decided to split up the schools.

This is exactly the problem. The cut offs between what is a high versus middle versus low SES school is not clear.

And they know the actual FARMs status of each child, right? Not seeing how this can be justified. They can see some non farms kids getting farms "cohort" benefit. Do they ignore that (bad!) do they rejigger results to fix (bad!). Were last year's changes so inadequate they had to layer this on before the smoke had cleared?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^^ It also depends where they do the cut-off for low, middle, high. The FARMS rate for RCF to use PP's example, is only about 5 percentage points higher than for CCES. One falls on the <20% (barely) and one falls on the >20%, but they are not hugely different. Hard to know how they decided to split up the schools.

This is exactly the problem. The cut offs between what is a high versus middle versus low SES school is not clear.

Anonymous wrote:

Well, you are making a huge assumption that the difference between the high SES and middle SES groups could make a student who is lower percentile nationally 19 percentage points higher than a student in the other group who is actually higher nationally. I think that's really unlikely, but only someone with access to all the numbers could say for sure. If you have two students who are both 98% nationally and one from a low SES group ends up with an MCPS 99% and one from a high SES group ends up with an MCPS 96% do you still think that makes no sense? We don't know what these numbers actually are and how much the national % and MCPS % are different, but based on what 5th grade parents were reporting on other threads I don't think you can be 98 or 99% nationally and be 80% MCPS. I don't think it changes that much. They are reporting both scores to parents, so if there are differences that large, there should be people here who can attest to it (of course, anonymous, so...)

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Where are you getting this? There are no best practices. Different school systems are overhauling their selection criteria and are settling on different methods depending on what is convenient for their goals.
NYC is redoing it's system and they have the same goals as MCPS to increase diversity but given most of the Asian kids they are trying to push out of the magnets in their system are poor they do not want to compare those poor Asian kids to poor Hispanic or poor black kids.

The most "fair" system I have heard of is in Miami where individual students who are FARMS get some amount of extra points. This did end up giving them their desired demographics.

PP is getting it from the MCPS quote which says "Gifted and talented experts recommend the use of local norms..." I assume "best practices" was inferred by PP from "G&T experts recommend." It's not a crazy reading of the quote, but it is accepting the MCPS statement completely at face value and assuming "best practices" have been established as opposed to there being various experts making various recommendation and MCPS has chosen the one they like best. I agree that MCPS is flailing around trying to find a system that increases the racial and socio-economic diversity of the magnet programs, which I do not think is a completely irrational or inappropriate goal. But this system does seem as likely if not more likely to select students who are in the 20% non-FARMS cohort at 80% FARMS schools rather than to select students who are adversely affected by poverty.

+1 Completely agree with last sentence. Local norms could simply be MCPS norms but, again, that would lead to "too many" Asians being admitted.

They already list "FARMS" as one of the factors considered by the admissions committee - last year and this year. Why this additional calculation?

Anonymous wrote:^^^ It also depends where they do the cut-off for low, middle, high. The FARMS rate for RCF to use PP's example, is only about 5 percentage points higher than for CCES. One falls on the <20% (barely) and one falls on the >20%, but they are not hugely different. Hard to know how they decided to split up the schools.