Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Boundary change needs to happen and while doing it if we can avoid situations like two ES in the same cluster ending with 7% and 70% FARMs then we should surely do that.

BOE in their infinite wisdom decided to create boundary with 7% and 70% in RM cluster when new ES came online.

As a survivor of that disastrous boundary change study, school with 70% explicitly fought to stay that way.

Exactly. Also, is there really an RM school with only 7% FARMs? I thought all of the others were about 20-30%.

The projected FARMs rate by MCPS for Ritchie Park ES was 7%.

Figures for 2017/18 show otherwise: https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/regulatoryaccountability/glance/currentyear/schools/02227.pdf

It went down by 2% from last year.

However, take these figures with a grain of salt because now we all know that the MCPS figures can be wrong.

Because 2017/2018 figures are before new boundary.

ah that's right. It opened in 2018. As we are almost done with 2018/19 school year I would think they could publish those numbers by now.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
If they like their current school, is there anything wrong with not wanting to go to another school which appears not as good?

"Not as good", how?

For example, there seems to be a common belief that Northwest HS is "not as good" as Quince Orchard HS. In what was is Northwest HS "not as good"? The teachers are worse? The facilities are worse? The principals are worse? The tennis team/yearbook/honors chorus is worse?

I am not talking about bringing evidence to the court. "A common belief" is a good reason for parents to like one school and not like the other.

This is not trying to convince BoE on anything. This is simply rebutting the PP's implication that it might be morally wrong to not support the changes.
There could be better or worse choices, but there is nothing morally wrong for many parents to choose to oppose the change if they believe it will hurt them.

How does your kid going to a school with a bit more low income kids going to hurt your kid? How is this belief not morally wrong? Is this like the thinking that black kids in the all white school will make the school worse? Was that thinking not morally wrong, either?

If Quince Orchard HS had the FARMs percentage that "not as good" Northwest HS has (22.5%) instead of the FARMs it actually has (21.3%), it would have 24 more kids who qualify for FARMs. 6 per grade.

Lots of Wayside ES parents( currently in Churchill) were worried about getting rezoned for Wootton. I am not surer why.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Boundary change needs to happen and while doing it if we can avoid situations like two ES in the same cluster ending with 7% and 70% FARMs then we should surely do that.

BOE in their infinite wisdom decided to create boundary with 7% and 70% in RM cluster when new ES came online.

As a survivor of that disastrous boundary change study, school with 70% explicitly fought to stay that way.

Exactly. Also, is there really an RM school with only 7% FARMs? I thought all of the others were about 20-30%.

The projected FARMs rate by MCPS for Ritchie Park ES was 7%.

Figures for 2017/18 show otherwise: https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/regulatoryaccountability/glance/currentyear/schools/02227.pdf

It went down by 2% from last year.

However, take these figures with a grain of salt because now we all know that the MCPS figures can be wrong.

Because 2017/2018 figures are before new boundary.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
If they like their current school, is there anything wrong with not wanting to go to another school which appears not as good?

"Not as good", how?

For example, there seems to be a common belief that Northwest HS is "not as good" as Quince Orchard HS. In what was is Northwest HS "not as good"? The teachers are worse? The facilities are worse? The principals are worse? The tennis team/yearbook/honors chorus is worse?

I am not talking about bringing evidence to the court. "A common belief" is a good reason for parents to like one school and not like the other.

This is not trying to convince BoE on anything. This is simply rebutting the PP's implication that it might be morally wrong to not support the changes.
There could be better or worse choices, but there is nothing morally wrong for many parents to choose to oppose the change if they believe it will hurt them.

How does your kid going to a school with a bit more low income kids going to hurt your kid? How is this belief not morally wrong? Is this like the thinking that black kids in the all white school will make the school worse? Was that thinking not morally wrong, either?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

If they like their current school, is there anything wrong with not wanting to go to another school which appears not as good?

"Not as good", how?

For example, there seems to be a common belief that Northwest HS is "not as good" as Quince Orchard HS. In what was is Northwest HS "not as good"? The teachers are worse? The facilities are worse? The principals are worse? The tennis team/yearbook/honors chorus is worse?

I am not talking about bringing evidence to the court. "A common belief" is a good reason for parents to like one school and not like the other.

This is not trying to convince BoE on anything. This is simply rebutting the PP's implication that it might be morally wrong to not support the changes.
There could be better or worse choices, but there is nothing morally wrong for many parents to choose to oppose the change if they believe it will hurt them.

It's certainly a reason. It's not an immoral reason. But it's not a good reason.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Boundary change needs to happen and while doing it if we can avoid situations like two ES in the same cluster ending with 7% and 70% FARMs then we should surely do that.

BOE in their infinite wisdom decided to create boundary with 7% and 70% in RM cluster when new ES came online.

As a survivor of that disastrous boundary change study, school with 70% explicitly fought to stay that way.

Exactly. Also, is there really an RM school with only 7% FARMs? I thought all of the others were about 20-30%.

The projected FARMs rate by MCPS for Ritchie Park ES was 7%.

Figures for 2017/18 show otherwise: https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/regulatoryaccountability/glance/currentyear/schools/02227.pdf

It went down by 2% from last year.

However, take these figures with a grain of salt because now we all know that the MCPS figures can be wrong.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All the people giving them a hard time for not giving their name on an anonymous forum.

Post your name here folks, if you would do it there, do it here.

In the mean time, someone please explain to me how an under-performing student is suddenly going to do well in an over-performing school.

Does BoE draw boundaries based on student test scores? I don't remember student test scores being a factor in boundary decisions.

If they did not claim certain SES groups did not perform well and they wanted to help those groups performing, there would no point in making such SES considerations at all.

SES = socioeconomic status (based on income, education, occupation)

MCPS does not make decisions based on students' parents' socioeconomic status. In fact, MCPS doesn't even have data about students' parents' socioeconomic status.

What's more, even if MCPS did have data about students' parents' socioeconomic status (which it doesn't) and made boundary decisions based on students' parents' socioeconomic status (which it doesn't), an individual student's parents' socioeconomic status still would tell you NOTHING - zip, zero, zilch - about that individual student's test scores.

Isn't FARMS part of SES?

And of course I know nothing about an individual student' performance. But I do know their school's average performance. Without more data, I would naturally assume a neighborhood from a high-performing/low-performing school contains more high-performing/low-performing students.

FARMs is a binary measure of household income - either you qualify for FARMs, or you don't. You could be $1 over the limit, you could be $1 million over the limit, you could be $1 under the limit, you could have a household income of $0, it's all the same.

And household income is only one aspect of socioeconomic status.

DCUM likes to use FARMs as a proxy measure of socioeconomic status, but it's not a good one.

Also, as with SES, here's what you know about an individual student's test scores when you know the average test scores of the school the individual student attends: nothing.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

If they like their current school, is there anything wrong with not wanting to go to another school which appears not as good?

"Not as good", how?

For example, there seems to be a common belief that Northwest HS is "not as good" as Quince Orchard HS. In what was is Northwest HS "not as good"? The teachers are worse? The facilities are worse? The principals are worse? The tennis team/yearbook/honors chorus is worse?

I am not talking about bringing evidence to the court. "A common belief" is a good reason for parents to like one school and not like the other.

This is not trying to convince BoE on anything. This is simply rebutting the PP's implication that it might be morally wrong to not support the changes.
There could be better or worse choices, but there is nothing morally wrong for many parents to choose to oppose the change if they believe it will hurt them.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

If they like their current school, is there anything wrong with not wanting to go to another school which appears not as good?

"Not as good", how?

For example, there seems to be a common belief that Northwest HS is "not as good" as Quince Orchard HS. In what was is Northwest HS "not as good"? The teachers are worse? The facilities are worse? The principals are worse? The tennis team/yearbook/honors chorus is worse?

I recall someone on this forum saying that QO was better because it was ruled by the predominately white and rich Lakelands/Kentland families.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Boundary change needs to happen and while doing it if we can avoid situations like two ES in the same cluster ending with 7% and 70% FARMs then we should surely do that.

BOE in their infinite wisdom decided to create boundary with 7% and 70% in RM cluster when new ES came online.

As a survivor of that disastrous boundary change study, school with 70% explicitly fought to stay that way.

Exactly. Also, is there really an RM school with only 7% FARMs? I thought all of the others were about 20-30%.

If you are refusing boundaries to be redrawn to alleviate crowding then you are basically saying to shove more kids into an over crowded school.

Do you understand what "more" means? 160% would be more than 150%. Keeping it at 150% cannot be called "shove more kids into". I am not saying it is good to keep it at 150%. But apparently you feel that is not enough to establish a valid argument, and you had to interpret other people's view of "not changing" as "putting more into"?

If one cluster has 125% capacity, and the neighboring has 100%, and you think it's fine to keep putting more kids into the 125% capacity school, then essentially, you are saying it's fine to shove more kids into an already crowded school so long as your kids don't have to move.

Anonymous wrote:
If you agree that boundaries should be redrawn to alleviate overcrowding in neighboring schools, then you must know that this could include you and your's. Otherwise, you're the worst kind of NIMBY.

Of course it could include any neighborhood near the boundary. But people can certainly express their willingness or unwillingness to contribute, right?

Sure, never said you shouldn't and can't express your views, just as others can express their views about your views. Then who should move? Certainly not you, apparently. Let me guess... let the poor people move?

Anonymous wrote:

The question of "which neighborhood" boils down to this:

1. BOE wants to spread out FARMs because studies have shown that low income kids do better in schools that have a FARMs rate of 23% or lower, while the upper income kids are not hurt by the presence of more low income kids

Bogus study. People doing research are well aware of the problems in interpreting these kind of studies. But that's fine. Politicians do things based on studies much less reliable so this is no surprise.

Where's your "research" that shows those other research citing this is bogus?

Anonymous wrote:
2. some people don't want their kids to go to school with more low income kids

Getting more low income kids is fine. Getting kids from different race is fine. Getting more low performing kids? Is there anything wrong with trying not to have that?

Low income kids usually make up a large portion of the low performing kids. Yes, it's wrong to not want low performing kids in your school if it will help those kids but won't hurt your kids. I am not talking a horde. I am talking 10% or so.

Anonymous wrote:
3. some people don't care about #1 or #2. They just don't want their kids to be bused to the neighboring school, which could be like 2 miles away, thus adding a few minutes to the commute time, which makes one suspect of whether they really don't care about #1 or #2.

If they like their current school, is there anything wrong with not wanting to go to another school which appears not as good?