Are you living under a rock? MCPS has terrible budget problems. Class sizes exploded in elementary schools several years ago. Overcrowding is a serious problem. They just announced delaying many projects that would relieve this. No one wants to talk about boundary changes but there is no other way to address some of these problems.

MCPS also underfunds gifted and special needs programs and services. They can only accommodate 3% of kids who test in the gifted range. Starr has a bad reputation for dealing with the gifted and talent community and a worse reputation with the special needs community. If the OP is hoping for entry into a HGC or magnet she needs to realize that its a lottery among those who qualify. You're better off in VA.

Anonymous wrote:OP I would not buy into MCPS right now. It is downhill and will get much worse before it gets better. If your commutes will be into DC or VA you have other safer options. Arlington, McLean/Great Falls (far out) or Fairfax are all better options. The budget cuts MCPS is dealing with are worse than Fairfax. Fairfax doesn't have the same problems as MCPS in terms of bad curriculum, policy changes, etc. If your kids are younger you could also stay in DC if you can swing living in one of the better ES school zones and decide to move before middle school.

Which budget cuts is MCPS dealing with?

OP I would not buy into MCPS right now. It is downhill and will get much worse before it gets better. If your commutes will be into DC or VA you have other safer options. Arlington, McLean/Great Falls (far out) or Fairfax are all better options. The budget cuts MCPS is dealing with are worse than Fairfax. Fairfax doesn't have the same problems as MCPS in terms of bad curriculum, policy changes, etc. If your kids are younger you could also stay in DC if you can swing living in one of the better ES school zones and decide to move before middle school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I have a child that is more motivated than they are bright (DC is smart enough but her work ethic is greater than her intelligence.) and a school that caters to that kind of student would be a better fit.

This is the type of kid that will not do well with the new MCPS system. Achievement is not recognized,rewarded or encouraged at all. If your child is gifted you can escape to the GT center and the gifted kids can get ES grades from time to time. Your child will figure out quickly that no matter how hard she works she will get the same "P" grade as if she put forth no effort at all. For kids that are more into sports or social activities, this is great. Its also great for students who struggle because they never know that they are at the bottom of the class. For kids with a strong work ethic it is very demoralizing.

Unfortunately this.

People keep saying this but my children are both consistently getting ESs - my older kid basically got mostly ES's last year and pretty much this year, too (without putting forth much effort at all), and my younger one (who we didn't expect to excel as much because he's younger than most of his class, is also getting ESs here and there, and the teachers have been consistent about explaining why they would get ESs vs. P vs. I (In Progress) (and believe me, my younger one is all over the map on his report card, so the explanations do vary.) It's the type of thinking that occurs in the classroom that the teacher observes, not the quantity - how the kid - without instruction, tries to get from point A to point B to answer a problem - whether they employ skills beyond rote memorization and doing exactly what was taught the day before and how the kid employs their learning and explains their reasoning (say in reading group). I have been fascinated with the amount of information that the teachers are seeing and providing to parents.

Anonymous wrote:I wouldn't recommend MCPS to anyone who have a motivated kid. Curriculum 2.0 is terrible. I initially gave it chance buts its worse than just low standards. The repetition between K-2nd is beyond belief. Your child will not just be bored the first time around. Your child will be bored by the same material again and again and again. Its not even age appropriate material. They could get more from watching the preschool Sprout channel.

Good grief.

I wouldn't recommend MCPS to anyone who have a motivated kid. Curriculum 2.0 is terrible. I initially gave it chance buts its worse than just low standards. The repetition between K-2nd is beyond belief. Your child will not just be bored the first time around. Your child will be bored by the same material again and again and again. Its not even age appropriate material. They could get more from watching the preschool Sprout channel.

I would buy in a community that you like and one that does not have failing schools nearby. I wouldn't focus so much on buying in the best school district as you will pay a pretty penny for that luxury. I was talking to a coworker over lunch that bought in the "best" area in VA and his children were redistricted into a lower performing school. The key is to find a school that has enough higher performing kids. Worst case if you spend $100-$200K less on your house, you'll have money for private.

Anonymous wrote:Letting our little ones sit in class completely bored doing what they call baby work is not letting them enjoy life. Learning can be fun and challenging just not in MCPS.

Is that what's happening in your MCPS elementary school? It's not what is happening in my MCPS elementary school.

Letting our little ones sit in class completely bored doing what they call baby work is not letting them enjoy life. Learning can be fun and challenging just not in MCPS.

Anonymous wrote:I wonder if the posters who say that MCPS is failing kids who are motivated and bright have any kids in HS? That is where the rubber meets the road and my motivated and bright kids are completely stressed out and burning the midnight oil. Let your little ones enjoy their childhood and quite obsessing about challenging the daylights out of them. It will all work out.

ITA!

I wonder if the posters who say that MCPS is failing kids who are motivated and bright have any kids in HS? That is where the rubber meets the road and my motivated and bright kids are completely stressed out and burning the midnight oil. Let your little ones enjoy their childhood and quite obsessing about challenging the daylights out of them. It will all work out.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do you mean "weaker elementary schools"? Or do you mean "elementary schools with lower test scores, fewer white and Asian kids, and more poor kids"?

Both.

How do you know they're weaker, aside from having fewer white and Asian kids and more poor kids, which is typically associated with lower test scores, even at outstanding schools?

Well, for example, you could look at the data and see that 85-95+% of FARMS students at Rachel Carson are achieving proficiency on MSAs, and that in percentage for FARMS students is in the ~70s at Brown Station.

Yes, and the FARMS percentage at Rachel Carson is 16.7% (18.3% ever FARMS), compared to 62.6% (69.3% ever FARMS) at Brown Station. That doesn't mean that Rachel Carson is a better school than Brown Station. It means that poor students do better at low-poverty schools than at high-poverty schools.

http://tcf.org/assets/downloads/tcf-Schwartz.pdf

Low poverty students do better at RC. High poverty students do better at RC. White students do better at RC. Latinos do better at RC. You can hold steady for pretty much any data point that MCPS reports and RC does better. This is not an indictment of the teachers or admin, I'm just noting the reality that RC sends a stronger academic group to Lakelands than Brown Station, and hence, Lakelands will score lower than places like Robert Frost, Hoover and Cabin John (which have no schools like Brown Station feeding in). Sorry if you're offended by the use of the term "weaker," but we're actually saying the same thing, which is that RC/Lakelands/QO probably doesn't fit the criteria that the OP is asking for.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP the better private schools in this area do give grades.

It would be OK not to give grades and only give feedback but then you have to really not give grades. MCPS gives out a grading scale N, I, P and ES but there is nothing consistent or equal in how these grades are derived. A motivated kid that does everything on a rubric may or may not get an ES. They may get an ES for no reason at all. They usually all get Ps whether they work hard or do the bare minimum. This is demoralizing to students who are very motivated....its sending them the message that learning doesn't matter or that assessments are inherently unfair.

Under the old report card, half of the grades now getting P/I/N got O/S/N (was it N? was it I? I don't remember). How, specifically, is O/S/N motivating and consistent, but P/I/N isn't?

And under the old report cards, were the A/B/Cs always consistent everywhere? Every teacher gave exactly the same grade for exactly the same thing, everywhere in every school in MCPS? That's not my experience of it.

I also want to know how everybody knows that everybody gets Ps in everything. And how the kids in my elementary school managed to learn anything (and even like school!), given that we didn't get any grades.

And, finally, extrinsically-motivated kids may do things for grades. But extrinsic motivation is not the only kind. Nor is it the kind I want to encourage among elementary school students at school. In the long run, intrinsic motivation serves people a lot better.

Not the pp you're quoting, but I agree with that PP wholeheartedly. I'll give you an example. Unit tests. It used to be that, after learning a certain amount of work in math, a unit test was given. The test was graded and a report was sent home. It said, for example, 15 out of 17 correct in computation; 13 out of 15 correct in algebraic functions, etc. It was very specific and very clear. The student knew exactly where he stood, as did the parents. Now, unit tests are gone. In their place, a few questions might be asked during class and the teacher decided whether or not the child "gets" the concept. Talk about subjective - to say nothing of the lack of testing retained knowledge and performing in a testing environment. Let's take the letter grades out of the argument. Something fishy is going on with the new way of grading in MCPS -- it simply appears that the schools do not want he students to be tested and graded accordingly. If I thought that they had some effective alternative, I might be able to buy in to what they are doing. But, a rational alternative hasn't been suggested. Instead, we have murky, subjective grading that simply looks like hide-the-ball.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do you mean "weaker elementary schools"? Or do you mean "elementary schools with lower test scores, fewer white and Asian kids, and more poor kids"?

Both.

How do you know they're weaker, aside from having fewer white and Asian kids and more poor kids, which is typically associated with lower test scores, even at outstanding schools?

Well, for example, you could look at the data and see that 85-95+% of FARMS students at Rachel Carson are achieving proficiency on MSAs, and that in percentage for FARMS students is in the ~70s at Brown Station.

Yes, and the FARMS percentage at Rachel Carson is 16.7% (18.3% ever FARMS), compared to 62.6% (69.3% ever FARMS) at Brown Station. That doesn't mean that Rachel Carson is a better school than Brown Station. It means that poor students do better at low-poverty schools than at high-poverty schools.

http://tcf.org/assets/downloads/tcf-Schwartz.pdf

Anonymous wrote:What about Rosemary Hills and Chevy chase ES? Do folks feel good about sending their kids there?

Yes, very. Check the archives. You may find a rare dissenter but most RHPS parents are surprised at how much they like the school despite its size. CCES and NCC are also great.