Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If MCPS has good schools with top-notch education programs, FARMS won't matter one way or the other. Parents that care about education will relocate to the county for their children's educational opportunities.

It seems MCPS has given up trying to provide top-notch programs. Now their only strategy is to shift around poor people in the hopes of watering down issues at their home schools.

However, the assumption that poor=problem is one MCPS CO is making up themselves. Instead the CO should step up and go sit daily at the schools with problems and instead of at Hungerford. And they should sit there, at that school, until it's problems have been fixed.

This is nonsense. Even in MCPS, there's a direct correlation between test scores and poverty. Schools with the least poverty have the highest averages. Even schools where many kids do as well as anywhere have a lower average because they shoulder more poverty. You can try to pretend it doesn't matter but it really does.

Exactly! Kids do worse at schools with concentrated poverty. The county needs to do a better job of spreading this more evenly to ensure all schools can offer a good education to those who want that.

There is no good way to do this beyond busing and rich families aren't going to agree to bussing nor do "poor" families. It really doesn't work well socially either. The county needs to put more resources into the lower preforming schools.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If MCPS has good schools with top-notch education programs, FARMS won't matter one way or the other. Parents that care about education will relocate to the county for their children's educational opportunities.

It seems MCPS has given up trying to provide top-notch programs. Now their only strategy is to shift around poor people in the hopes of watering down issues at their home schools.

However, the assumption that poor=problem is one MCPS CO is making up themselves. Instead the CO should step up and go sit daily at the schools with problems and instead of at Hungerford. And they should sit there, at that school, until it's problems have been fixed.

This is nonsense. Even in MCPS, there's a direct correlation between test scores and poverty. Schools with the least poverty have the highest averages. Even schools where many kids do as well as anywhere have a lower average because they shoulder more poverty. You can try to pretend it doesn't matter but it really does.

This is nonsense. Even in MCPS, you can pretend that FARMS can be solved by the school, but not really.

The "direct correlation between test scores and poverty" is pretty straight-forward. Parents who are educated tend to educate at home and seek out schools with high academic standards. Parents who are not educated, on average, earn less income. A child without academic support at home is less likely to academically succeed. The compensating factor would be to offer free tutoring (which MCPS did). The question is how many FARMS students even took advantage of the program? You can lead a horse to water..

Pretend all you want, but the school can't change a child's parents.

Not to mention that on average, people who are poor are more likely to be low IQ (and so are their children). I know it is a reality that people don't want to face, but it is true.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If MCPS has good schools with top-notch education programs, FARMS won't matter one way or the other. Parents that care about education will relocate to the county for their children's educational opportunities.

It seems MCPS has given up trying to provide top-notch programs. Now their only strategy is to shift around poor people in the hopes of watering down issues at their home schools.

However, the assumption that poor=problem is one MCPS CO is making up themselves. Instead the CO should step up and go sit daily at the schools with problems and instead of at Hungerford. And they should sit there, at that school, until it's problems have been fixed.

This is nonsense. Even in MCPS, there's a direct correlation between test scores and poverty. Schools with the least poverty have the highest averages. Even schools where many kids do as well as anywhere have a lower average because they shoulder more poverty. You can try to pretend it doesn't matter but it really does.

This is nonsense. Even in MCPS, you can pretend that FARMS can be solved by the school, but not really.

The "direct correlation between test scores and poverty" is pretty straight-forward. Parents who are educated tend to educate at home and seek out schools with high academic standards. Parents who are not educated, on average, earn less income. A child without academic support at home is less likely to academically succeed. The compensating factor would be to offer free tutoring (which MCPS did). The question is how many FARMS students even took advantage of the program? You can lead a horse to water..

Pretend all you want, but the school can't change a child's parents.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If MCPS has good schools with top-notch education programs, FARMS won't matter one way or the other. Parents that care about education will relocate to the county for their children's educational opportunities.

It seems MCPS has given up trying to provide top-notch programs. Now their only strategy is to shift around poor people in the hopes of watering down issues at their home schools.

However, the assumption that poor=problem is one MCPS CO is making up themselves. Instead the CO should step up and go sit daily at the schools with problems and instead of at Hungerford. And they should sit there, at that school, until it's problems have been fixed.

This is nonsense. Even in MCPS, there's a direct correlation between test scores and poverty. Schools with the least poverty have the highest averages. Even schools where many kids do as well as anywhere have a lower average because they shoulder more poverty. You can try to pretend it doesn't matter but it really does.

Exactly! Kids do worse at schools with concentrated poverty. The county needs to do a better job of spreading this more evenly to ensure all schools can offer a good education to those who want that.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If MCPS has good schools with top-notch education programs, FARMS won't matter one way or the other. Parents that care about education will relocate to the county for their children's educational opportunities.

It seems MCPS has given up trying to provide top-notch programs. Now their only strategy is to shift around poor people in the hopes of watering down issues at their home schools.

However, the assumption that poor=problem is one MCPS CO is making up themselves. Instead the CO should step up and go sit daily at the schools with problems and instead of at Hungerford. And they should sit there, at that school, until it's problems have been fixed.

This is nonsense. Even in MCPS, there's a direct correlation between test scores and poverty. Schools with the least poverty have the highest averages. Even schools where many kids do as well as anywhere have a lower average because they shoulder more poverty. You can try to pretend it doesn't matter but it really does.

Exactly! Kids do worse at schools with concentrated poverty. The county needs to do a better job of spreading this more evenly to ensure all schools can offer a good education to those who want that.

It doesn’t seem to matter to you that this social experiment failed decades ago and also failed else where now. Sure, you can do this experiment again at MCPS, so more of these poor kids would drop out or be chronically absent due to long bus routes and upper middle class would flee to other counties because they won’t tolerate their kids being bussed to other schools. But I guess you’re not gonna pay for this. We tax payers will just keep watching our property tax bill getting higher and higher to satisfy a few people’s fantasy.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If MCPS has good schools with top-notch education programs, FARMS won't matter one way or the other. Parents that care about education will relocate to the county for their children's educational opportunities.

It seems MCPS has given up trying to provide top-notch programs. Now their only strategy is to shift around poor people in the hopes of watering down issues at their home schools.

However, the assumption that poor=problem is one MCPS CO is making up themselves. Instead the CO should step up and go sit daily at the schools with problems and instead of at Hungerford. And they should sit there, at that school, until it's problems have been fixed.

This is nonsense. Even in MCPS, there's a direct correlation between test scores and poverty. Schools with the least poverty have the highest averages. Even schools where many kids do as well as anywhere have a lower average because they shoulder more poverty. You can try to pretend it doesn't matter but it really does.

Exactly! Kids do worse at schools with concentrated poverty. The county needs to do a better job of spreading this more evenly to ensure all schools can offer a good education to those who want that.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If MCPS has good schools with top-notch education programs, FARMS won't matter one way or the other. Parents that care about education will relocate to the county for their children's educational opportunities.

It seems MCPS has given up trying to provide top-notch programs. Now their only strategy is to shift around poor people in the hopes of watering down issues at their home schools.

However, the assumption that poor=problem is one MCPS CO is making up themselves. Instead the CO should step up and go sit daily at the schools with problems and instead of at Hungerford. And they should sit there, at that school, until it's problems have been fixed.

This is nonsense. Even in MCPS, there's a direct correlation between test scores and poverty. Schools with the least poverty have the highest averages. Even schools where many kids do as well as anywhere have a lower average because they shoulder more poverty. You can try to pretend it doesn't matter but it really does.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If MCPS has good schools with top-notch education programs, FARMS won't matter one way or the other. Parents that care about education will relocate to the county for their children's educational opportunities.

It seems MCPS has given up trying to provide top-notch programs. Now their only strategy is to shift around poor people in the hopes of watering down issues at their home schools.

However, the assumption that poor=problem is one MCPS CO is making up themselves. Instead the CO should step up and go sit daily at the schools with problems and instead of at Hungerford. And they should sit there, at that school, until it's problems have been fixed.

This is nonsense. Even in MCPS, there's a direct correlation between test scores and poverty. Schools with the least poverty have the highest averages. Even schools where many kids do as well as anywhere have a lower average because they shoulder more poverty. You can try to pretend it doesn't matter but it really does.

This is nonsense. Even in MCPS, you can pretend that FARMS can be solved by the school, but not really.

The "direct correlation between test scores and poverty" is pretty straight-forward. Parents who are educated tend to educate at home and seek out schools with high academic standards. Parents who are not educated, on average, earn less income. A child without academic support at home is less likely to academically succeed. The compensating factor would be to offer free tutoring (which MCPS did). The question is how many FARMS students even took advantage of the program? You can lead a horse to water..

Pretend all you want, but the school can't change a child's parents.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No one is talking about the Facilities and Boundary hearing that happened last Thursday?

In this meeting, many parents and students described the unsafe conditions at Wootton, including students who suffered autoimmune flair ups from exposure to mold. After 15 years of delaying renovations, and recent announcements that further delays are likely, it is clear that repeating the same pleas for renovation are not going to fix the situation. MCPS has already shown that they don't believe the health hazards that these kids are currently being exposed to every day are compelling enough to warrant action.

At this point, I wonder if a class action lawsuit on behalf of children who are affected would be a better approach. Legal consequences, further budget constraints, and other means of directly affecting board members are likely to prove more effective at preventing further damage to the health and safety of these students.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If MCPS has good schools with top-notch education programs, FARMS won't matter one way or the other. Parents that care about education will relocate to the county for their children's educational opportunities.

It seems MCPS has given up trying to provide top-notch programs. Now their only strategy is to shift around poor people in the hopes of watering down issues at their home schools.

However, the assumption that poor=problem is one MCPS CO is making up themselves. Instead the CO should step up and go sit daily at the schools with problems and instead of at Hungerford. And they should sit there, at that school, until it's problems have been fixed.

This is nonsense. Even in MCPS, there's a direct correlation between test scores and poverty. Schools with the least poverty have the highest averages. Even schools where many kids do as well as anywhere have a lower average because they shoulder more poverty. You can try to pretend it doesn't matter but it really does.

You are confusing correlation with causation. The kids have high test scores because of their affluent and highly educated parents. Parental background is by far the largest predictor of student performance. This is something that the schools has no control over. Shuffling around students will make the metrics look better, but it will have minimal impact on individual student outcomes. Equal outcomes is impossible unless we put everyone in government run childcare institutions and the kids have no contact with their family.

"Shuffling around students" actually does have a measurable impact on individual student outcomes for students from low-income families. That has been well-established.

Plus, if it has minimal impact on individual student outcomes, why worry about your kids (assuming they have an affluent, highly-educated family) having to go to school with poor kids?

Unfortunately, many of these parents find this undesirable and they will pull their kids out of public school or relocate school attendance zones to avoid schools with high numbers of low-income kids. In cities like NYC (many high poverty public schools), Kids in wealthy census tracts have private school enrollment rates above 50%.

But this thread is about MCPS.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If MCPS has good schools with top-notch education programs, FARMS won't matter one way or the other. Parents that care about education will relocate to the county for their children's educational opportunities.

It seems MCPS has given up trying to provide top-notch programs. Now their only strategy is to shift around poor people in the hopes of watering down issues at their home schools.

However, the assumption that poor=problem is one MCPS CO is making up themselves. Instead the CO should step up and go sit daily at the schools with problems and instead of at Hungerford. And they should sit there, at that school, until it's problems have been fixed.

This is nonsense. Even in MCPS, there's a direct correlation between test scores and poverty. Schools with the least poverty have the highest averages. Even schools where many kids do as well as anywhere have a lower average because they shoulder more poverty. You can try to pretend it doesn't matter but it really does.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If MCPS has good schools with top-notch education programs, FARMS won't matter one way or the other. Parents that care about education will relocate to the county for their children's educational opportunities.

It seems MCPS has given up trying to provide top-notch programs. Now their only strategy is to shift around poor people in the hopes of watering down issues at their home schools.

However, the assumption that poor=problem is one MCPS CO is making up themselves. Instead the CO should step up and go sit daily at the schools with problems and instead of at Hungerford. And they should sit there, at that school, until it's problems have been fixed.

This is nonsense. Even in MCPS, there's a direct correlation between test scores and poverty. Schools with the least poverty have the highest averages. Even schools where many kids do as well as anywhere have a lower average because they shoulder more poverty. You can try to pretend it doesn't matter but it really does.

You are confusing correlation with causation. The kids have high test scores because of their affluent and highly educated parents. Parental background is by far the largest predictor of student performance. This is something that the schools has no control over. Shuffling around students will make the metrics look better, but it will have minimal impact on individual student outcomes. Equal outcomes is impossible unless we put everyone in government run childcare institutions and the kids have no contact with their family.

"Shuffling around students" actually does have a measurable impact on individual student outcomes for students from low-income families. That has been well-established.

Plus, if it has minimal impact on individual student outcomes, why worry about your kids (assuming they have an affluent, highly-educated family) having to go to school with poor kids?

Unfortunately, many of these parents find this undesirable and they will pull their kids out of public school or relocate school attendance zones to avoid schools with high numbers of low-income kids. In cities like NYC (many high poverty public schools), Kids in wealthy census tracts have private school enrollment rates above 50%.