Anonymous wrote:The academic achievement gap between the different race groups, the gap between the red zone and green zone schools, and the gap between middle class kids ans FARM kids. Which gap concerns you the most? What if mcps starts a reverse magnet program? Busing the poorest neighborhood kids, the low 20% kid from a heavily Farm/ESOL school to a school in the green zone for ES level. The kids will have a choice of staying on for MS and HS.
The gap between the schools will be reduced immediately, the red zone school will have more resource for middle class kids, and the green zone kids will see kids whose primary concerns are not the P or I on their report cards, the poor kids will feel the pressure to study hard.

Chapter 220, Milwaukee's bussing social experiment, did just this. Millions of dollars and a decade later, the bussed inner city students did not perform better on tests, applications, gpa, pregnancy rates, or anything. The "achievement gap" did not statistically significantly reduce. The suburban sports teams did better tho... And the schools got rowdier...

Just curious, what are the PPs defining as "middle class"? Something tells me they define themselves as middle class, and like every other subset of MoCo, they have convinced themselves that MCPS is out to get them specifically.

Oh, and to the people at the beginning of this thread extolling their childhood experiences in wonderfully inclusive public schools in small New England towns, please give me a break. I grew up in one of those too, and if you think the differentials between the richest and poorest there were anywhere near what they are here, you're delusional.

MoCo is just too big and too diverse to do everything right. It does a lot of things well, in my view. Achieving a common racial and economic balance in its schools is not one of them. But I think that's a problem that is really bigger than the schools themselves. And what can the county really do at this point - you can't retroactively mandate economic diversity, and sorry, busing is just not a practical solution given the size and distances (and of course all the other problems that were associated with big busing programs historically.)

I don't have a solution, but I do agree there is a big problem. I don't think it's unique to this area, it just plays out differently in other areas (including in those lovely NE towns, where the better school systems always command a premium for home prices.)

Is there a map for green vs. red zone? SOrry if it has been posted up thread, don't want to wade through all the pages.....

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
MCPS enrollment will never drop because they build more homes, condos, townhouses and apartments to overcrowd the schools every year. But yes homeschooling has gone up the last 10 years and all the privates have massive wait lists. Not sure about parochial.

I'm waiting for data. Thanks.

Our MC parochial has a mass waiting list. Thank you 2.0.

DD's BFF is in a MC parochial school. The BFF probably gets better reading and arts instruction, and more PE. But her math instruction is definitely behind DD's math instruction at MCPS.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
MCPS enrollment will never drop because they build more homes, condos, townhouses and apartments to overcrowd the schools every year. But yes homeschooling has gone up the last 10 years and all the privates have massive wait lists. Not sure about parochial.

I'm waiting for data. Thanks.

Our MC parochial has a mass waiting list. Thank you 2.0.

Anonymous wrote:I think one of the peopel who commented on the artilce said it best. you can put a donkey in a stable but it doesn't make them a race horse.

You can put a race horse on a mountain pass and it will break unlike a mule.

It works both ways.

In DC where you have intelligent parents (some with grad degrees from good programs), but due to the COL, don't make enough to get in the right 'pyramid' - what do you do with their bright children who come from a family that values education?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The academic achievement gap between the different race groups, the gap between the red zone and green zone schools, and the gap between middle class kids ans FARM kids. Which gap concerns you the most? What if mcps starts a reverse magnet program? Busing the poorest neighborhood kids, the low 20% kid from a heavily Farm/ESOL school to a school in the green zone for ES level. The kids will have a choice of staying on for MS and HS.
The gap between the schools will be reduced immediately, the red zone school will have more resource for middle class kids, and the green zone kids will see kids whose primary concerns are not the P or I on their report cards, the poor kids will feel the pressure to study hard.

I wonder how the people in Bethesda/Potomac would react if MCPS proposed to do this.

And here lies the problem - for some reason, the county is dead set on keeping western MC snowflake village. The high income families appear to have much more influence that the middle class.

The only way you are ever going to excel in school is if the parents and students take their studies seriously. That goes for everything in life.

Anonymous wrote:The academic achievement gap between the different race groups, the gap between the red zone and green zone schools, and the gap between middle class kids ans FARM kids. Which gap concerns you the most? What if mcps starts a reverse magnet program? Busing the poorest neighborhood kids, the low 20% kid from a heavily Farm/ESOL school to a school in the green zone for ES level. The kids will have a choice of staying on for MS and HS.
The gap between the schools will be reduced immediately, the red zone school will have more resource for middle class kids, and the green zone kids will see kids whose primary concerns are not the P or I on their report cards, the poor kids will feel the pressure to study hard.

I wonder how the people in Bethesda/Potomac would react if MCPS proposed to do this.

The academic achievement gap between the different race groups, the gap between the red zone and green zone schools, and the gap between middle class kids ans FARM kids. Which gap concerns you the most? What if mcps starts a reverse magnet program? Busing the poorest neighborhood kids, the low 20% kid from a heavily Farm/ESOL school to a school in the green zone for ES level. The kids will have a choice of staying on for MS and HS.
The gap between the schools will be reduced immediately, the red zone school will have more resource for middle class kids, and the green zone kids will see kids whose primary concerns are not the P or I on their report cards, the poor kids will feel the pressure to study hard.

Anonymous wrote:

If you tested American graduates of MIT and Cal Tech I'm sure you would think that US math education is the best in the world. India has a billion+ people, the ones that are here are cream of the crop. When you test all Indians they do very poorly; significantly worse than the US.

I know many of these graduates are Indians and Asians!

Indians ARE Asians. I am not Indian.

Right - I am among the countless middle class families that finally gave up on MCPS. Most of my neighbors went parochial. For every one of our children that left the system, I'm sure they were replaced by children in the neighboring apartment complex. Enrollment is certainly going up, but at least where I'm from, middle class participation is on the decline. That may not be the case in the green zone, but things are getting bad enough in certain parts of the red zone. I may not have hard data, but I've seen it in action. MCPS turns a blind eye to this trend. Caring about what will bring middle class families back to declining red zone schools should be part of their plan, but it's not. I think MCPS has lost its way.