Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If these threads are to be believed, this argument is turning into Chinese moms from the west county against white liberal moms from the east county. Meanwhile, MCPS really can run its system any way it wants.

Definitely East vs West.

Chinese vs White is secondary and will soon be blurred as people make strategic housing decisions for magnet admission.

Problem is that since the diversity situation is not improving, the easiest way forward is closing magnets altogether.

There is zero chance that people will begin moving to Silver Spring to game the magnet admissions process. I am one of the liberal moms who is happy here but make no mistake, Chinese parents and wealthy white patents are absolutely allergic to our neighborhoods. They will never move here.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am as race-blind as MCPS is. Racial composition is not a goal, but a result, right?

I think diversity is a goal for MCPS. But one result of that is reduced Asian participation in the magnets because more seats are opening up for other children who qualify and who might have been overlooked before. You would think that would also reduce the number of white participants but I'm not sure that it did.

Apparently, MCPS cannot select directly on race because that is strictly illegal. So they did a workaround by "cohort", effectively excluding students from the 270 corridor. These students, for cultural and geographic reasons, have previously comprised the backbone of both middle and HS magnets. However, since there is no race-based selection, MCPS ended up with reasonably accomplished students from East of the county. For cultural and geographic reasons, that resulted in fewer Asian students and more white students. Numbers of black and hispanic students remained steady.

I agree with the assessment above, however, I always thought that 'closing the achievement gap' meant attracting more black and Hispanic students to the magnets. How come MCPS failed to do that?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You know that didn’t happen. More like everyone noticed students in the magnet were all coming from the same home middle school. Hey, why don’t we let these kids stay at their home school and give them high level instruction and keep the magnet for those who don’t have a peer cohort? You know? Like a *magnet school* should operate: drawing students from all over.

They stopped taking the W students, but have not provided the curriculum. Give the W families the curriculum and opportunity for their children to study the advanced material, and they will never bother MCPS again. It's not like people are considering the long ride to Blair to be a bonus!

But that would defeat the whole purpose. I think that it's settled science that the goal in everything MCPS does is to close the achievement gap. If they were to give the W's the curriculum then that would most likely raise the test scores and overall performance of the W's. They must keep the W's where they are (or lower performance) in order to shrink the achievement gap. If the kids that would have gone to the Magnet leave for private school, this too will help the cause. This obsession over the achievement gap is really a disease.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You know that didn’t happen. More like everyone noticed students in the magnet were all coming from the same home middle school. Hey, why don’t we let these kids stay at their home school and give them high level instruction and keep the magnet for those who don’t have a peer cohort? You know? Like a *magnet school* should operate: drawing students from all over.

They stopped taking the W students, but have not provided the curriculum. Give the W families the curricilum and opportunity for their children to study the advanced material, and they will never bother MCPS again. It's not like people are considering the long ride to Blair to be a bonus!

Exactly! Or to Takoma. Or to Eastern. Geez.

Anonymous wrote:You know that didn’t happen. More like everyone noticed students in the magnet were all coming from the same home middle school. Hey, why don’t we let these kids stay at their home school and give them high level instruction and keep the magnet for those who don’t have a peer cohort? You know? Like a *magnet school* should operate: drawing students from all over.

They stopped taking the W students, but have not provided the curriculum. Give the W families the curricilum and opportunity for their children to study the advanced material, and they will never bother MCPS again. It's not like people are considering the long ride to Blair to be a bonus!

You know that didn’t happen. More like everyone noticed students in the magnet were all coming from the same home middle school. Hey, why don’t we let these kids stay at their home school and give them high level instruction and keep the magnet for those who don’t have a peer cohort? You know? Like a *magnet school* should operate: drawing students from all over.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MCPS uses geographic location as a proxy for race and exercises racial modeling. Basically too many Asians were taking up spots in the magnets. MCPS has been clear that to them this is a problem. In the 90s, they lost court cases when they tried to use race as a criteria to balance racial demographics for transfer requests (per the Metis report). MCPS is now trying to use geographic location and "cohort" to achieve racial modeling.

If you live in a area with a large asian population/high performing then its very unlikely that your kids will get in. Your kid can get a 99% and be rejected while a kid (even a white kid) in a low performing school can get a 96% and get in. Your kids will get to take a class with an enriched label but it isn't the same curriculum as the magnet and not much different than the courses in the home school before. Welcome to MCPS!

Maybe the folks who fought so hard not to allow MCPS to consider race should have considered downstream effects?

DP... are you saying MCPS should allow for race-based admission? Wow.

This is exactly what they are doing now. It's actually quite ingenious how they got around the law. I pulled this from an old thread.....

Administrator #1: "Wow, look at those SAT scores over there at Blair. It's really amazing isn't it? We need to send out a press release!"
Administrator #2: "Definitely! Hold on a second, all these names of Intel Scholars sound Asian. Let me see the full list of Magnet students. All these names sound Asian and White."
Administrator #1: "Yea, they've been gaming the system for years. Sending their kids to tutors, supplementing education, and actually filling out the application"
Administrator #2: "Oh no, we can't have that! That isn't fair"
Administrator #1: "I know. We send parents information and leave phone mail message constantly in both English and Spanish but Hispanics and African Americans don't apply"
Administrator #2: "It sounds like we need try and make the application easier."
Administrator #1: "I've got a better idea! Lets get rid of the application all together. Test everyone."
Administrator #2: "Brilliant! But what about the fact that Black and Hispanics test lower across the board on all standardized tests, how do we overcome that?"
Administrator #1: "We should just set up quotas by race."
Administrator #2: "I wish. They passed a stupid law against quotas."
Administrator #1: "Let's think, how can we get around the law. Most Whites and Asians like to live in the same snobby rich areas, right?"
Administrator #2: "Right... God I hate those Whites and Asians!"
Administrator #1: "Then lets say that if you live in an area where your home school has other really smart kids then you get penalized in the admissions process."
Administrator #2: "Great Idea! That way, we can say that we aren't giving preference to race, we can disguise it as preference by opportunity."
Administrator #1: "Wait, but won't that make the SAT scores at Blair go down? Won't that make us look bad?"
Administrator #2: "Of course it will but we are doing it for the greater good. Plus, we work for the Government. What are they going to do fire us?"
Administrator #1: "Ha ha ha ha ha ha!"
Administrator #2: "Ha ha ha ha he he ha ha!"

That sometimes means they admitted the tippy-top outliers in a group of very high performing students in a middle school, and sometimes a small handful of similarly very high performing students from a pack of less gifted or accomplished students in a home MS.

THIS is it. The "tippy-top outliers" from some cohorts might be the ones who literally got zero wrong on the test as well as perfect MAP and PARCC scores. My kid is on the waitpool, and even that seemed like a miracle considering only three of DC's CES classmates (that we know of) were invited -- one, the outlier among the outliers, was invited to both, whereas the other two were invited to the program correlating to the middle school for which they were already zoned. Same thing at home school, one kid (who turned down the CES) invited to both, one kid on waitpool. Under the old system, I have no doubt my kid (as well as many of yours) would've gotten in... DC's scores were higher than older sibs accepted straight away to a magnet.

I'm curious to see how many kids off the waitpool get accepted, though, as last year it was supposedly much higher than in years past.

But ultimately this is all we can do:

Now for the rest of us, how about we work with our MS to get them so that our children reach there potential.

Sorry I was waving at the other UPCOUNTY Mom.

PP +1000
Congrats to all children who have been extended the invitation. Now for the rest of us, how about we work with our MS to get them so that our children reach there potential.

Proud Mom of a Non-CES child with high CoGAT and MAP scores!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If these threads are to be believed, this argument is turning into Chinese moms from the west county against white liberal moms from the east county. Meanwhile, MCPS really can run its system any way it wants.

Definitely East vs West.

Chinese vs White is secondary and will soon be blurred as people make strategic housing decisions for magnet admission.

Problem is that since the diversity situation is not improving, the easiest way forward is closing magnets altogether.

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

-Chicken Little

Maybe, but in the end, the best way forward is to unroll that curriculu. To more MCPS schools. Use it or lose it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If these threads are to be believed, this argument is turning into Chinese moms from the west county against white liberal moms from the east county. Meanwhile, MCPS really can run its system any way it wants.

Definitely East vs West.

Chinese vs White is secondary and will soon be blurred as people make strategic housing decisions for magnet admission.

Problem is that since the diversity situation is not improving, the easiest way forward is closing magnets altogether.

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

-Chicken Little

Anonymous wrote:If these threads are to be believed, this argument is turning into Chinese moms from the west county against white liberal moms from the east county. Meanwhile, MCPS really can run its system any way it wants.

Definitely East vs West.

Chinese vs White is secondary and will soon be blurred as people make strategic housing decisions for magnet admission.

Problem is that since the diversity situation is not improving, the easiest way forward is closing magnets altogether.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am as race-blind as MCPS is. Racial composition is not a goal, but a result, right?

I think diversity is a goal for MCPS. But one result of that is reduced Asian participation in the magnets because more seats are opening up for other children who qualify and who might have been overlooked before. You would think that would also reduce the number of white participants but I'm not sure that it did.

Apparently, MCPS cannot select directly on race because that is strictly illegal. So they did a workaround by "cohort", effectively excluding students from the 270 corridor. These students, for cultural and geographic reasons, have previously comprised the backbone of both middle and HS magnets. However, since there is no race-based selection, MCPS ended up with reasonably accomplished students from East of the county. For cultural and geographic reasons, that resulted in fewer Asian students and more white students. Numbers of black and hispanic students remained steady.

Agree with every of your sentence except the last two: only Asian is decreasing dramatically. White, black are rising while hispanic remain steady. There are bar-charts on bethesda magzine or some other sources that have been cited last year here.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

The argument of curriculum expansion applies to both.

HS admission algorithm is also rapidly changing. Plus, magnet middle schools are no longer in the role of taking the highest scoring MS students countywide and giving them an almost infinitely rigorous curriculum, with the option of taking advanced classwork in HS magnets. Middle MS magnets have been converted to the great East/West equalizers.

An almost infinitely rigorous curriculum! Oh my!

By the way, we're still here in the upcounty. *waves*

Upcounty works the same way. I am familiar with examples of kids taking magnet precalc and/or functions while still in middle school. There are also singular examples of kids taking magnet analysis in middle school.