Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is there any way to find out local norms? Especially for kids come from private school?

Email DCCAPS they will tell you your kid’s score

Thanks for this advice! It was eye opening. My kid with a 93 MAP R has a locally normed score of 69. So not even close to being eligible! Good to know.

That is a big difference between 93 to 69, how could that be possible?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is there any way to find out local norms? Especially for kids come from private school?

Email DCCAPS they will tell you your kid’s score

Thanks for this advice! It was eye opening. My kid with a 93 MAP R has a locally normed score of 69. So not even close to being eligible! Good to know.

Anonymous wrote:I find that whoever make the criteria lottery threshold mostly do well academically l in CES or magnet school. It does not matter if they just met the minimum score threshold or 99 %. So, those just met the minimum score threshold prove that they have potential to grow further.

Sure but I have a consistently 99th percentile kid (was told by one teacher that they had the highest MAP score they had ever seen) and a 95th percentile kid. They are both smart and could do fine in a magnet program. However, the 99th percentile kid is really poorly served by the current state of “enrichment” at our home school. The other one is fine, a little bored sometimes but fine. So it really depends if you care at all about whether the kid can be decently served at their home school (that’s relatively speaking of course, no smart kid is really that well served by MCPS but agree with the posters above they do not care at all about advanced kids or their parents anger). I honestly don’t know what we are going to do. I don’t know of a private that’s going to be a better fit for my 99th percentile kid either.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly if they’re not going to offer accelerated or enriched courses in all subjects at the home schools they should take the kids with the top scores and grades and get rid of the lottery system. What they offer at the home schools is neither comparable nor sufficient for any student who needs above grade level instruction. It is unbelievable to me that they’d take kids with lower scores/demonstrated readiness, and then refuse to meet the needs of the students they don’t have enough seats to accommodate. My own two kids never got off the lottery waiting pool lists and completely languished academically in middle school. Such a missed opportunity.

It’s Birner by school. So those 70th percentile kids are actually way above the rest of their home school. Same as a kids in Bethesda could be in the 90s and be above most of their peers.

Yes I understand how it’s designed, I just don’t agree with it. We don’t do this in other areas. We don’t say oh, we have two gymnasts, one is from a small mediocre local training facility and she’s the best at her facility and the other has been trained by top coaches in a competitive facility and both do a routine and score differently. We don’t then say, oh local training facility candidate scored 7/10 and top facility candidate scored a 9.5/10 on the same routine so 7/10 person should get to go to the Olympics since she was the best at her gym while the 9.5/10 person shouldn’t earn the spot since she was one of several top athletes at her gym.

I think the fundamental error here is seeing middle school magnets as the Olympics. In reality, middle school magnets are the training facility in this analogy. So, if you are looking to build an Olympic team for 2032, you might ABSOLUTELY take the kid who got a 7/10 with virtually no training over the kid who got 9.5/10 with the best training money can buy.

That happens all the time in developmental sports, actually.

Why even have tests then? Should we just go on vibes and guesses about potential? You know colleges tried that out with test optional, and we all know they discovered that resulted in students who were not actually academically prepared for or capable of doing the work. And so they reversed the policy at most schools.

Citation needed on all fronts. Most top universities remain test optional for 25/26. https://www.ivycoach.com/the-ivy-coach-blog/standardized-testing/test-optional-colleges-list/

I find that whoever make the criteria lottery threshold mostly do well academically l in CES or magnet school. It does not matter if they just met the minimum score threshold or 99 %. So, those just met the minimum score threshold prove that they have potential to grow further.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly if they’re not going to offer accelerated or enriched courses in all subjects at the home schools they should take the kids with the top scores and grades and get rid of the lottery system. What they offer at the home schools is neither comparable nor sufficient for any student who needs above grade level instruction. It is unbelievable to me that they’d take kids with lower scores/demonstrated readiness, and then refuse to meet the needs of the students they don’t have enough seats to accommodate. My own two kids never got off the lottery waiting pool lists and completely languished academically in middle school. Such a missed opportunity.

It’s Birner by school. So those 70th percentile kids are actually way above the rest of their home school. Same as a kids in Bethesda could be in the 90s and be above most of their peers.

Yes I understand how it’s designed, I just don’t agree with it. We don’t do this in other areas. We don’t say oh, we have two gymnasts, one is from a small mediocre local training facility and she’s the best at her facility and the other has been trained by top coaches in a competitive facility and both do a routine and score differently. We don’t then say, oh local training facility candidate scored 7/10 and top facility candidate scored a 9.5/10 on the same routine so 7/10 person should get to go to the Olympics since she was the best at her gym while the 9.5/10 person shouldn’t earn the spot since she was one of several top athletes at her gym.

I think the fundamental error here is seeing middle school magnets as the Olympics. In reality, middle school magnets are the training facility in this analogy. So, if you are looking to build an Olympic team for 2032, you might ABSOLUTELY take the kid who got a 7/10 with virtually no training over the kid who got 9.5/10 with the best training money can buy.

That happens all the time in developmental sports, actually.

Why even have tests then? Should we just go on vibes and guesses about potential? You know colleges tried that out with test optional, and we all know they discovered that resulted in students who were not actually academically prepared for or capable of doing the work. And so they reversed the policy at most schools.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly if they’re not going to offer accelerated or enriched courses in all subjects at the home schools they should take the kids with the top scores and grades and get rid of the lottery system. What they offer at the home schools is neither comparable nor sufficient for any student who needs above grade level instruction. It is unbelievable to me that they’d take kids with lower scores/demonstrated readiness, and then refuse to meet the needs of the students they don’t have enough seats to accommodate. My own two kids never got off the lottery waiting pool lists and completely languished academically in middle school. Such a missed opportunity.

It’s Birner by school. So those 70th percentile kids are actually way above the rest of their home school. Same as a kids in Bethesda could be in the 90s and be above most of their peers.

Yes I understand how it’s designed, I just don’t agree with it. We don’t do this in other areas. We don’t say oh, we have two gymnasts, one is from a small mediocre local training facility and she’s the best at her facility and the other has been trained by top coaches in a competitive facility and both do a routine and score differently. We don’t then say, oh local training facility candidate scored 7/10 and top facility candidate scored a 9.5/10 on the same routine so 7/10 person should get to go to the Olympics since she was the best at her gym while the 9.5/10 person shouldn’t earn the spot since she was one of several top athletes at her gym.

I think the fundamental error here is seeing middle school magnets as the Olympics. In reality, middle school magnets are the training facility in this analogy. So, if you are looking to build an Olympic team for 2032, you might ABSOLUTELY take the kid who got a 7/10 with virtually no training over the kid who got 9.5/10 with the best training money can buy.

That happens all the time in developmental sports, actually.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly if they’re not going to offer accelerated or enriched courses in all subjects at the home schools they should take the kids with the top scores and grades and get rid of the lottery system. What they offer at the home schools is neither comparable nor sufficient for any student who needs above grade level instruction. It is unbelievable to me that they’d take kids with lower scores/demonstrated readiness, and then refuse to meet the needs of the students they don’t have enough seats to accommodate. My own two kids never got off the lottery waiting pool lists and completely languished academically in middle school. Such a missed opportunity.

It’s Birner by school. So those 70th percentile kids are actually way above the rest of their home school. Same as a kids in Bethesda could be in the 90s and be above most of their peers.

Yes I understand how it’s designed, I just don’t agree with it. We don’t do this in other areas. We don’t say oh, we have two gymnasts, one is from a small mediocre local training facility and she’s the best at her facility and the other has been trained by top coaches in a competitive facility and both do a routine and score differently. We don’t then say, oh local training facility candidate scored 7/10 and top facility candidate scored a 9.5/10 on the same routine so 7/10 person should get to go to the Olympics since she was the best at her gym while the 9.5/10 person shouldn’t earn the spot since she was one of several top athletes at her gym.

Anonymous wrote:Is there any way to find out local norms? Especially for kids come from private school?

Email DCCAPS they will tell you your kid’s score

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is there any way to find out local norms? Especially for kids come from private school?

There was an MPIA request a few years back, it was posted on DCUM so you can search and probably dig it up-- short version is that the middle category was about the national 85th percentile, the high-poverty schools the cutoffs were 70-something percentile I think, and the two different categories of low-poverty schools I think the cutoffs were somewhere in the 90th-95th percentile range (national percentiles.) I believe for private school kids it's based on what your home school would be if you were in MCPS.

Just keep in mind the local norms change every year based on the group of kids going through the process, so the list from a few years ago may give you an idea but it may not be the same.

I meant to say normed by school

Anonymous wrote:Honestly if they’re not going to offer accelerated or enriched courses in all subjects at the home schools they should take the kids with the top scores and grades and get rid of the lottery system. What they offer at the home schools is neither comparable nor sufficient for any student who needs above grade level instruction. It is unbelievable to me that they’d take kids with lower scores/demonstrated readiness, and then refuse to meet the needs of the students they don’t have enough seats to accommodate. My own two kids never got off the lottery waiting pool lists and completely languished academically in middle school. Such a missed opportunity.

It’s Birner by school. So those 70th percentile kids are actually way above the rest of their home school. Same as a kids in Bethesda could be in the 90s and be above most of their peers.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought Clemente was criteria based and Parkland was lottery?

Clemente is a criteria-based lottery, where you have to meet certain criteria and if you do you're automatically entered into the lottery (the criteria are basically that you have to be in roughly the top 15% of your elementary school and similar SES schools by MAP scores, and get As in the relevant subject in the first marking period.) Parkland is an interest-based lottery (anyone who is interested is eligible to enter themselves into the lottery.). But they are both lotteries, and once you're in the lottery you get picked at random from the lottery pool.

Didn't all the paperwork and info sessions explain this?

I never applied for Clemente only Parkland so was surprised with one twin got the invite as we did not apply for that school. Thanks for explaining it to me.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly if they’re not going to offer accelerated or enriched courses in all subjects at the home schools they should take the kids with the top scores and grades and get rid of the lottery system. What they offer at the home schools is neither comparable nor sufficient for any student who needs above grade level instruction. It is unbelievable to me that they’d take kids with lower scores/demonstrated readiness, and then refuse to meet the needs of the students they don’t have enough seats to accommodate. My own two kids never got off the lottery waiting pool lists and completely languished academically in middle school. Such a missed opportunity.

Or just cancel the programs. Our home school needs more smart kids with involved parents desperately but we lose so many to those programs, and it really hurts those left behind in terms of peer group and class offerings.

How many could you possibly lose? There are only like 200 seats for the math magnet at TPMS for the entire lower county.

Anonymous wrote:I thought Clemente was criteria based and Parkland was lottery?

Clemente is a criteria-based lottery, where you have to meet certain criteria and if you do you're automatically entered into the lottery (the criteria are basically that you have to be in roughly the top 15% of your elementary school and similar SES schools by MAP scores, and get As in the relevant subject in the first marking period.) Parkland is an interest-based lottery (anyone who is interested is eligible to enter themselves into the lottery.). But they are both lotteries, and once you're in the lottery you get picked at random from the lottery pool.

Didn't all the paperwork and info sessions explain this?