The difference today from the past is the county is dealing with a historically unprecedented shift in demographics.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:since when has illegal immigration been the global thing to do in this day and age?

Seems pretty cultural for uneducated central americans.

was the achievement gap created by illegal immigrant children, or have we always had an achievement gap? How do you explain the achievement gaps in places where they have very little immigrant children?

stay on task.

Comment 1 was about how culturally acceptable and desirable some Central American cultures view illegally immigrating to America. I'd agree with that claim.

Comment 2 tries to ask something about the academic achievement gap among illegal aliens and academic achievement gaps in general. Unclear what PP is asking. In general I'd say academic achievement gaps are due to parenting, values and culture.

Well, also there's that two shorter/taller than average parents tend to have shorter/taller than average kids, regardless of their parenting, values and culture.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Do you believe that a man and woman can choose to have a baby or not? And then turn around and choose to raise it or not?

This is the Maryland Public Schools forum. We are talking about MCPS educating children/children being educated in MCPS. Not about people choosing whether or not to have or raise babies. If you want to talk about that, post on one of the parenting fora.

You can't really separate parenting and school regarding education. Parental responsibility plays a key role in their kids education. Parents don't have to be rich or even highly educated but they have to care about their kids education, they have to a good role model to work hard, and to be responsible.

Are you saying that if kids pick the wrong parents, there's nothing MCPS can do?

Or that the whole "bottom half" of the MCPS student body (as a previous poster referred to them) have parents who don't care about their kids' education, don't work hard, and aren't responsible?

Before the "kids pick the parents" the woman and man decided to born a baby. The implication is they both would raise, nurture and take care of that child until it was grown and self sufficient. Not much the gov't can do except council housing, food stamps, free HC and free schooling and that doesn't seem to be getting many out of the cycle.

Ok. And what if they don't?

And again, MCPS is not involved in the decisions of women and men to born a baby. MCPS is involved in the education of children, however they were born.

and then the mu factor would be sheer intelligence/IQ coupled with applying oneself.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:since when has illegal immigration been the global thing to do in this day and age?

Seems pretty cultural for uneducated central americans.

was the achievement gap created by illegal immigrant children, or have we always had an achievement gap? How do you explain the achievement gaps in places where they have very little immigrant children?

stay on task.

Comment 1 was about how culturally acceptable and desirable some Central American cultures view illegally immigrating to America. I'd agree with that claim.

Comment 2 tries to ask something about the academic achievement gap among illegal aliens and academic achievement gaps in general. Unclear what PP is asking. In general I'd say academic achievement gaps are due to parenting, values and culture.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:After reading this I'm convinced the best way to close the achievement gap isn't through educational reform but by requiring parenting classes for parents of low performing students.

It is more than parenting though. Close the gap requires a societal approach. Poverty, crime, racism, immigration, none of these issues can be solved by the school system but all contribute to the achievement gap. I think it is too everyone's benefit if the schools are not too focused on the gap. Instead, the schools should focus on value added to each child. A school cannot be good or bad just because they got high /low SES kids. Instead of comparing kids from different demographics, compare the high SES kids from different school and see which school does a better job. Same for the FARM/ESOL kids.

Or by the parents - as you say.

I meant cannot be solved by the schools.

Anonymous wrote:After reading this I'm convinced the best way to close the achievement gap isn't through educational reform but by requiring parenting classes for parents of low performing students.

This makes a lot of sense. If more teenagers and young adults understood the gravity of raising a child and had parenting classes once they decided to have a child they'd have some frameworks and goals.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Do you believe that a man and woman can choose to have a baby or not? And then turn around and choose to raise it or not?

This is the Maryland Public Schools forum. We are talking about MCPS educating children/children being educated in MCPS. Not about people choosing whether or not to have or raise babies. If you want to talk about that, post on one of the parenting fora.

You can't really separate parenting and school regarding education. Parental responsibility plays a key role in their kids education. Parents don't have to be rich or even highly educated but they have to care about their kids education, they have to a good role model to work hard, and to be responsible.

Are you saying that if kids pick the wrong parents, there's nothing MCPS can do?

Or that the whole "bottom half" of the MCPS student body (as a previous poster referred to them) have parents who don't care about their kids' education, don't work hard, and aren't responsible?

Before the "kids pick the parents" the woman and man decided to born a baby. The implication is they both would raise, nurture and take care of that child until it was grown and self sufficient. Not much the gov't can do except council housing, food stamps, free HC and free schooling and that doesn't seem to be getting many out of the cycle.

Montgomery County does have some schools with Wellness Centers and partnerships with other county agencies to provide other social services in some elementary schools. But it is difficult to do it everywhere that there is a need.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:After reading this I'm convinced the best way to close the achievement gap isn't through educational reform but by requiring parenting classes for parents of low performing students.

It is more than parenting though. Close the gap requires a societal approach. Poverty, crime, racism, immigration, none of these issues can be solved by the school system but all contribute to the achievement gap. I think it is too everyone's benefit if the schools are not too focused on the gap. Instead, the schools should focus on value added to each child. A school cannot be good or bad just because they got high /low SES kids. Instead of comparing kids from different demographics, compare the high SES kids from different school and see which school does a better job. Same for the FARM/ESOL kids.

I grew up in extreme poverty with both parents being illiterate. What works on my and my school mates' education was for the school and teachers to take more responsibility and power of parents. My parents didn't care about my homework, my grades or provide me any enrichment. The teachers had the power to force the students to finish homeworks, to spend more time on studying if grades go down. They were strict and had the authority to award or punish certain student behaviors. It was not a sweet childhood memory and I didn't enjoy it very much because schools can never meet the emotional need of small children and teenagers. However, it did lift the lives of majority of the students beyond their parents. We can now let our kids being kids and have the knowledge and resource to better care for them. I don't think it's very efficient to just provide resources to families without the power to override poor judgements of parents. Just my two cents.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:After reading this I'm convinced the best way to close the achievement gap isn't through educational reform but by requiring parenting classes for parents of low performing students.

What would you "teach" those parents?

Lesson 1) Be born in the United States as a native English speaker

Lesson 2) Have more money

Lesson 3) Have more time

Lesson 4) ...........?

Seriously. How you could possibly come to that conclusion from these posts is beyond me.

Maybe the poster was thinking of the model of the Harlem Children's Zone, which includes wrap-around services and parenting classes that start when parents are first expecting. I think they've had some success, but it's expensive, and they have private donors. And this model shouldn't be mandatory, but perhaps incentivized.

https://hcz.org/

Something like this is worth exploring. I don't see how public school can address these problems in isolation.

Then what you need isn't parenting classes, which is an offensive suggestion. What you need is wrap-around services, which is enormously expensive. For that to work, you would need every high needs elementary school to have:

* A dedicated psychologist
* A dedicated social worker to handle overflow from the psychologist AND to help folks access services
* A stand-alone food bank
* A medical clinic and maybe monthly dental clinic

All of this needs to be at the school, to make the school the center of the community and services.

That's a lot. It works, but it costs a lot and takes up a lot of real estate in the school.

Yep. I used to work at a non-profit that provided evening workshops for parents at failing schools (and by failing, I mean designated as failing by the test scores) in DCPS. The workshops weren't about how to parent--that would've been offensive to the communities there--but rather were about how the parents can advocate for their children's needs. They all desperately wanted to help their kids (despite what DCUM thinks, the vast majority of people want what's best for their kids) but they just didn't understand how the system works.

We covered topics like how to establish a relationship with your child's teacher at the beginning of the year, what it means that your school is designated as failing, how to navigate the charter school lottery (which they ALL wanted to know about), etc.

Because these were high poverty areas where most parents didn't have childcare available, we always provided dinner and activities for the kids while the parents were in the workshop. We also let the kids pick out 2 books to bring home.

The idea was to empower the parents. The organization was on a shoestring budget and it was a pain to get the schools to agree to host us, but parents were desperate for the information we provided to them.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:After reading this I'm convinced the best way to close the achievement gap isn't through educational reform but by requiring parenting classes for parents of low performing students.

It is more than parenting though. Close the gap requires a societal approach. Poverty, crime, racism, immigration, none of these issues can be solved by the school system but all contribute to the achievement gap. I think it is too everyone's benefit if the schools are not too focused on the gap. Instead, the schools should focus on value added to each child. A school cannot be good or bad just because they got high /low SES kids. Instead of comparing kids from different demographics, compare the high SES kids from different school and see which school does a better job. Same for the FARM/ESOL kids.

Or by the parents - as you say.

Anonymous wrote:After reading this I'm convinced the best way to close the achievement gap isn't through educational reform but by requiring parenting classes for parents of low performing students.

It is more than parenting though. Close the gap requires a societal approach. Poverty, crime, racism, immigration, none of these issues can be solved by the school system but all contribute to the achievement gap. I think it is too everyone's benefit if the schools are not too focused on the gap. Instead, the schools should focus on value added to each child. A school cannot be good or bad just because they got high /low SES kids. Instead of comparing kids from different demographics, compare the high SES kids from different school and see which school does a better job. Same for the FARM/ESOL kids.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:After reading this I'm convinced the best way to close the achievement gap isn't through educational reform but by requiring parenting classes for parents of low performing students.

What would you "teach" those parents?

Lesson 1) Be born in the United States as a native English speaker

Lesson 2) Have more money

Lesson 3) Have more time

Lesson 4) ...........?

Seriously. How you could possibly come to that conclusion from these posts is beyond me.

Maybe the poster was thinking of the model of the Harlem Children's Zone, which includes wrap-around services and parenting classes that start when parents are first expecting. I think they've had some success, but it's expensive, and they have private donors. And this model shouldn't be mandatory, but perhaps incentivized.

https://hcz.org/

Something like this is worth exploring. I don't see how public school can address these problems in isolation.

Then what you need isn't parenting classes, which is an offensive suggestion. What you need is wrap-around services, which is enormously expensive. For that to work, you would need every high needs elementary school to have:

* A dedicated psychologist
* A dedicated social worker to handle overflow from the psychologist AND to help folks access services
* A stand-alone food bank
* A medical clinic and maybe monthly dental clinic

All of this needs to be at the school, to make the school the center of the community and services.

That's a lot. It works, but it costs a lot and takes up a lot of real estate in the school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:After reading this I'm convinced the best way to close the achievement gap isn't through educational reform but by requiring parenting classes for parents of low performing students.

What would you "teach" those parents?

Lesson 1) Be born in the United States as a native English speaker

Lesson 2) Have more money

Lesson 3) Have more time

Lesson 4) ...........?

Seriously. How you could possibly come to that conclusion from these posts is beyond me.

Maybe the poster was thinking of the model of the Harlem Children's Zone, which includes wrap-around services and parenting classes that start when parents are first expecting. I think they've had some success, but it's expensive, and they have private donors. And this model shouldn't be mandatory, but perhaps incentivized.

https://hcz.org/

Something like this is worth exploring. I don't see how public school can address these problems in isolation.