Anonymous
Post 01/17/2025 13:23     Subject: Error in my child’s enrichment criteria for magnet consideration. What can be done?
Anonymous wrote:The peer cohort argument is disingenuous considering Magnets were designed to import a better cohort into schools with economically slipping demographics? To say now these studious upper SES kids are fine in their home school because all the kids care about school is redundant. They always have been this isn’t news, the question is what happens when those kids don’t prop up the needy schools test scores and external people’s perception of said schools and opportunities? Does the gap between the perception of the (have and the have nots) cause the SES divide in real estate selection to continue cement in. I guess some families might factor poorer schools being an easier track to academic spotlights but I doubt it.


Right. People need to realize that magnets are NOT about providing gifted students the most opportunity. It's about importing better academic outcomes and test schools for low-to-mid performing schools.
Anonymous
Post 01/17/2025 13:22     Subject: Error in my child’s enrichment criteria for magnet consideration. What can be done?
Anonymous wrote:The peer cohort argument is disingenuous considering Magnets were designed to import a better cohort into schools with economically slipping demographics? To say now these studious upper SES kids are fine in their home school because all the kids care about school is redundant. They always have been this isn’t news, the question is what happens when those kids don’t prop up the needy schools test scores and external people’s perception of said schools and opportunities? Does the gap between the perception of the (have and the have nots) cause the SES divide in real estate selection to continue cement in. I guess some families might factor poorer schools being an easier track to academic spotlights but I doubt it.


Honestly, MCPS needs to stop thinking of students as groups, and of haves and have nots based on assumptions. It would behoove them to think of students as individual human beings.
Anonymous
Post 01/17/2025 13:15     Subject: Error in my child’s enrichment criteria for magnet consideration. What can be done?
The peer cohort argument is disingenuous considering Magnets were designed to import a better cohort into schools with economically slipping demographics? To say now these studious upper SES kids are fine in their home school because all the kids care about school is redundant. They always have been this isn’t news, the question is what happens when those kids don’t prop up the needy schools test scores and external people’s perception of said schools and opportunities? Does the gap between the perception of the (have and the have nots) cause the SES divide in real estate selection to continue cement in. I guess some families might factor poorer schools being an easier track to academic spotlights but I doubt it.
Anonymous
Post 01/17/2025 11:08     Subject: Error in my child’s enrichment criteria for magnet consideration. What can be done?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Mistakes can and do happen, but most of the time the parents are wrong and the child missed something -- for example, a child in a CES program, with more challenging content, got a B in social studies. That would keep them out of the lottery for the humanities magnet.



Child missed something? Or could it be a teacher gave the kid a 'B' when kid should have earned an A, thus preventing that kid's name from being entered for a "lottery."

Or maybe the kid truly deserves a B
Anonymous
Post 01/17/2025 11:04     Subject: Error in my child’s enrichment criteria for magnet consideration. What can be done?
Anonymous wrote:Mistakes can and do happen, but most of the time the parents are wrong and the child missed something -- for example, a child in a CES program, with more challenging content, got a B in social studies. That would keep them out of the lottery for the humanities magnet.



Child missed something? Or could it be a teacher gave the kid a 'B' when kid should have earned an A, thus preventing that kid's name from being entered for a "lottery."
Anonymous
Post 01/17/2025 10:43     Subject: Error in my child’s enrichment criteria for magnet consideration. What can be done?
Anonymous wrote:Why are we all sniping at each other when the main issue is that MCPS does not provide adequate "peer cohorts" at. home schools for those who were in the lotteries, but not accepted?


I've been saying this for YEARS. If we could stop scrabbling like crabs in pots for the limited number of magnet seats, and focus our efforts on getting meaningful differentiation and acceleration in home schools, it would be good for everyone.
Anonymous
Post 01/17/2025 10:37     Subject: Error in my child’s enrichment criteria for magnet consideration. What can be done?
Why are we all sniping at each other when the main issue is that MCPS does not provide adequate "peer cohorts" at. home schools for those who were in the lotteries, but not accepted?
Anonymous
Post 01/17/2025 10:16     Subject: Re:Error in my child’s enrichment criteria for magnet consideration. What can be done?
Just because a given kid was not placed in the pool does not mean there was an actual mistake. Even if they have the necessary A grades and what looks like a high MAP, there may have been enough others in the income bracket who were higher. You can file an appeal, OP, but if the cutoff in your FARMS band was higher than your kid's MAP score, there was no error, just a fence. The appeals form requires documentation and a write-up or letter, and the allowable documentation is specific.
Anonymous
Post 01/17/2025 10:16     Subject: Error in my child’s enrichment criteria for magnet consideration. What can be done?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:I don't know if the OP will come back to update, but a heads up that they used the home school, not the CES school, when determining the peer cohort. This becomes relevant when the home school has a dramatically different poverty rate than the CES school, like Woodlin or Sligo Creek and Oak View for example..



Yes, which also means kids in the same class will have different criteria to get in.


Which is seriously so messed up.


Yet actually makes sense since the goal is to determine if students have a ready peer group in their home school.


That is not the goal. If that were the goal they wouldn’t include any kids from schools with robust peer groups and they would sweep up all the kids who definitely don’t have a peer group.


Just a friendly reminder that the model you described did exist at one point. In maybe 2019, MCPS moved to a system where they were ostensibly selecting outliers from higher needs schools, while introducing "magnet level" courses in home schools around the county by bringing in AIM and HIGH.

Two things destroyed that initiative (well, three if you count MCPS leadership at the time not being able to follow a plan from year to year):

1) Principals were given discretion in how to "gatekeep" or not HIGH and AIM. Some principals rolled it out to everyone due to pressure from parents (W feeders), and others rolled it out to everyone due to equity concerns (DCC feeders). Within a couple of years, the idea of HIGH and AIM as "magnet level" but at home schools was dead, and then the introduction of "Advanced English" for all put the final nail in the coffin of meeting the needs of highly able learners at home schools.

2) A group of Potomac parents with K and 1st grade kids filed a lawsuit about the new system because they argued that prioritizing kids with no peer cohort constituted anti-Asian discrimination, even though more Asian American kids live outside Potomac than live inside it.

As a result of item 2) we ended up with the current lottery system.
Anonymous
Post 01/17/2025 10:12     Subject: Error in my child’s enrichment criteria for magnet consideration. What can be done?
they have yet to find a system that works. In the name of equity, students who meet the "criteria" for their school and local blah blah still do not make it into the pool. Yet no one here has been able to explain why. Stop with the "it's test scores and grades" crap
Anonymous
Post 01/17/2025 09:41     Subject: Error in my child’s enrichment criteria for magnet consideration. What can be done?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:I don't know if the OP will come back to update, but a heads up that they used the home school, not the CES school, when determining the peer cohort. This becomes relevant when the home school has a dramatically different poverty rate than the CES school, like Woodlin or Sligo Creek and Oak View for example..



Yes, which also means kids in the same class will have different criteria to get in.


Which is seriously so messed up.


Yet actually makes sense since the goal is to determine if students have a ready peer group in their home school.


That is not the goal. If that were the goal they wouldn’t include any kids from schools with robust peer groups and they would sweep up all the kids who definitely don’t have a peer group.
Anonymous
Post 01/17/2025 09:35     Subject: Error in my child’s enrichment criteria for magnet consideration. What can be done?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:I don't know if the OP will come back to update, but a heads up that they used the home school, not the CES school, when determining the peer cohort. This becomes relevant when the home school has a dramatically different poverty rate than the CES school, like Woodlin or Sligo Creek and Oak View for example..



Yes, which also means kids in the same class will have different criteria to get in.


Which is seriously so messed up.


Yet actually makes sense since the goal is to determine if students have a ready peer group in their home school.
Anonymous
Post 01/17/2025 09:03     Subject: Error in my child’s enrichment criteria for magnet consideration. What can be done?
Mistakes can and do happen, but most of the time the parents are wrong and the child missed something -- for example, a child in a CES program, with more challenging content, got a B in social studies. That would keep them out of the lottery for the humanities magnet.

Anonymous
Post 01/17/2025 08:53     Subject: Error in my child’s enrichment criteria for magnet consideration. What can be done?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:DCCAPS runs the data collection and lottery process. That goes for criteria-based magnets (CES, Math/Science/CS MS @ Takoma Park & Roberto Clemente, Humanities MS @ Eastern & King) as well as interest-based magnets (e.g., Middle School Magnet Consortium -- Parkland, Loiederman & Argyle). High school consortia, too. DCCAPS is the point of contact for information/questions, including those about individual cases where criteria may or may not have been met.

AEI and curricular offices help define criteria-based magnet programs, and they (and upper management) work with DCCAPS to identify criteria/selection methodologies (current lottery system). The implementing schools have their own approaches to managing the curriculum and placed population.

Unless your school reported incorrect information to central for DCCAPS' use in the central identification process, they likely had nothing to do with any error. Please consider that when communicating with them.

The only MAP scores at which one can be comfortably sure of qualification are those at/above the 99th percentile nationally, as the algorithm used to identify the locally normed 85th percentile starts with that 99th national percentile, identifies the associated RIT score and compares that to the scores of the population of students in each FARMS tranche. If that score or higher was achieved by 15 or more percent of that population, then they adopt that as the locally normed 85th percentile. If not, they move down one national percentile, taking that RIT score and identifying whether 15 or more percent of that FARMS-tranche population achieved at least that score. This is repeated until the condition is true, at which point that national percentile/RIT score becomes the locally normed 85th percentile for the year for that tranche.

That can mean slightly more than 15 percent of MAP scores qualify, but it also means that anyone from the same FARMS tranche assigned the same national percentile on the MAP report is treated similarly from the perspective of lottery inclusion. It also means that nobody reported as 99th percentile is excluded for that criterion (grades or reading level may do so).

The 99th national percentile RIT scores from the 2020 norms (this will change next year with the 5-year NWEA cycle) for Fall 5th grade MAP are:

MAP-M: 244
MAP-R: 243

Of course, for higher-FARMS tranches, the 85th locally normed percentile would be expected to be at a lower RIT/national percentile. However, this is not guaranteed to be the case.


There it is, so what is guaranteed to be the case, MCPS?? Students who meet whatever "criteria" are not even placed into the pool.


What was meant, there, was that it is possible that a lower FARMS-rate tranche ends up with higher scores/a higher locally normed 85th percentile than a higher FARMS-rate tranche. That wouldn't be expected, though.


No need to explain, you’re replying to a single poster who repeatedly insists that there is a conspiracy. Leave her to her tin hats. It was clear what it meant.
Anonymous
Post 01/17/2025 08:45     Subject: Error in my child’s enrichment criteria for magnet consideration. What can be done?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:DCCAPS runs the data collection and lottery process. That goes for criteria-based magnets (CES, Math/Science/CS MS @ Takoma Park & Roberto Clemente, Humanities MS @ Eastern & King) as well as interest-based magnets (e.g., Middle School Magnet Consortium -- Parkland, Loiederman & Argyle). High school consortia, too. DCCAPS is the point of contact for information/questions, including those about individual cases where criteria may or may not have been met.

AEI and curricular offices help define criteria-based magnet programs, and they (and upper management) work with DCCAPS to identify criteria/selection methodologies (current lottery system). The implementing schools have their own approaches to managing the curriculum and placed population.

Unless your school reported incorrect information to central for DCCAPS' use in the central identification process, they likely had nothing to do with any error. Please consider that when communicating with them.

The only MAP scores at which one can be comfortably sure of qualification are those at/above the 99th percentile nationally, as the algorithm used to identify the locally normed 85th percentile starts with that 99th national percentile, identifies the associated RIT score and compares that to the scores of the population of students in each FARMS tranche. If that score or higher was achieved by 15 or more percent of that population, then they adopt that as the locally normed 85th percentile. If not, they move down one national percentile, taking that RIT score and identifying whether 15 or more percent of that FARMS-tranche population achieved at least that score. This is repeated until the condition is true, at which point that national percentile/RIT score becomes the locally normed 85th percentile for the year for that tranche.

That can mean slightly more than 15 percent of MAP scores qualify, but it also means that anyone from the same FARMS tranche assigned the same national percentile on the MAP report is treated similarly from the perspective of lottery inclusion. It also means that nobody reported as 99th percentile is excluded for that criterion (grades or reading level may do so).

The 99th national percentile RIT scores from the 2020 norms (this will change next year with the 5-year NWEA cycle) for Fall 5th grade MAP are:

MAP-M: 244
MAP-R: 243

Of course, for higher-FARMS tranches, the 85th locally normed percentile would be expected to be at a lower RIT/national percentile. However, this is not guaranteed to be the case.


There it is, so what is guaranteed to be the case, MCPS?? Students who meet whatever "criteria" are not even placed into the pool.


What was meant, there, was that it is possible that a lower FARMS-rate tranche ends up with higher scores/a higher locally normed 85th percentile than a higher FARMS-rate tranche. That wouldn't be expected, though.