For all you MoCo data dweebs out there, I’ve posted to my “Documents” section (tab at top of page) the MCPS Grade 2 Global Screening in Spring 2008 report, produced by the Office of Shared Accountabily and the Division of Accelerated and Enriched Instruction. (Also available here from the MCPS website.)
Noteworthy nuggets:
- 40.9% of students were identified as gifted in Montgomery County. We’re just that special.
- Highest ID rate: Bannockburn ES with 72.4% identified as GT
- Lowest ID rate: Watkins Mill ES with 13.3% identified as GT
- “African-American and Hispanic students continue to be identified at disproportionately lower rates.”
- 18 schools reported no African-American screened.
- 15 schools reported no Hispanic students screened.
- 16 schools reported no Asian students screened.
- “The Grade 2 Global Screening do not inform the system of the extent to which accelerated and enriched instruction programming is available among schools. To analyze equity in delivery of advanced instructional programming, MCPS would need more detailed data on services instead of analyzing only identification. Steps have been made in this direction with the collection of data for Math 6 in Grade 5 and Algebra 1 in Grade 8…”
Recommendations:
- “[C]ontinue to closely monitor the issue of access to challenging and rigorous instruction prior to and after Grade 2.”
- (Flashing blue light) Prepare a proposal for the Board of Ed “for restructuring global screening, moving to a more continuous process that includes ongoing assessment of student achievement cognitive abilities. The Grade 2 Accelerated and Enriched Instruction Committee meeting should become yearly articulation meetings that include analysis of individual student data to monitor each student’s participation and performance in designated accelerated and enriched services and to make recommendations for advanced level services for next year.” [Comment: Sounds fine and dandy. But what "services" are we talking here? Math 6 in Grade 5?]
- MCPS should continue to address the variance among schools in expectations, instruction and services.
- “MCPS should expand the current collection of data in mathematics to reading language arts and other content areas to develop a system that documents and communicates enrollment and performance in accelerated and enriched instruction.” [Comment: Uh, yeah. Some of us have only been saying this for years.]
I want to thank you for publishing this. My daughter was identified last spring, and we have applied to the GT Center for next year. This is all new to us and I found your blog while searching for information about MCPS and gifted instruction. I remember what it was like as a student nearly 30 years ago, but it’s changed so much.
[...] what are schools doing? They are forcing every sophomore to take at least 1 AP class. They are reaching gifted identificaiton rates upwards of 40%, then using this to “prove” that the gifted “label” is meaningless, and [...]