The sudden departure of Joshua Starr, superintendent of Montgomery County Public Schools, caught many by surprise—including Starr. That’s a depressing sign of a dysfunctional school board, one whose members failed to signal serious concerns with their superintendent, even as recently as last fall’s school board elections.
If the board has any hope of recruiting a talented new leader for MCPS, among the largest districts in the country with more than 153,000 students, it needs to be crystal-clear about the direction it wants the system to take. As an MCPS parent and incorrigible education reformer, let me offer a few suggestions.
First, MCPS needs to recommit to its core mission: dramatically raising student achievement. As Starr’s struggles with the board burst into public view, he made a last-ditch effort to convince its members, and MCPS’s many ardent constituents, of his commitment to narrowing the achievement gaps between poor and minority students and white and Asian students. I don’t doubt his sincerity. But the achievement gap is measured primarily by test scores, and Starr made his name by speaking out against tests. At the least, he sent a mixed message about his commitment to academic achievement.
It’s not entirely fair to blame him for that. Starr was hired in part because he represented a change in style and approach from his hard-charging predecessor Jerry Weast, who was obsessed with boosting achievement among the county’s growing number of poor and minority students. Weast’s single-minded focus came to be seen as tyrannical and, perhaps, negligent of the needs and priorities of the rest of the county. But there are signs that his forceful changes paid off, in higher test scores and especially in significant recent gains in the graduation rate.
Many of us would welcome a return to Weast’s “obsession” with achievement (countywide, this time, and without the tyranny). If that’s what this board wants, it should say so.
Next, the district should send a clear message: Achievement is for everybody. The county’s poor, minority, and immigrant populations deserve special attention since they tend to underperform on almost every measure of academic achievement. But that can’t be an excuse to ignore MCPS’s white, Asian, and middle class students. The goal of any great school system should be to fulfill the learning potential of all students. MCPS, then, has to walk and chew gum at the same time. It has to work to escalate the performance of poor kids while giving all kids great opportunities to make significant progress every day.
A particular challenge is ensuring that the county’s high achievers have that opportunity. MCPS has a good start with its “centers for the highly gifted” for fourth- and fifth-graders and its magnet middle and high schools, but it could use more, plus a commitment to give high achievers the acceleration they deserve.
My next recommendation is just as important: Don’t pretend that college is the only worthwhile aspiration for students. Like many education systems, MCPS is myopic in its focus on college prep. This goes back at least to Weast’s “Seven Keys to College Readiness” campaign. Getting a large proportion of students ready for college should be the goal of MCPS and other great districts. It’s also what huge numbers of county residents expect for their kids. But college should mean more than four-year degrees, and Montgomery County has some serious work to do in this regard.
The most successful technical training programs tend to start in high school, in stand-alone career and technical education schools or in career academies within traditional, comprehensive schools. The best of these programs have a strong record of engaging teenagers through hands-on, relevant learning and site-based apprenticeships. This well-traveled path can lead students into postsecondary education, typically at a community college where they can earn an associate’s degree or certifications. Yet fewer than 5 percent of Montgomery County’s forty thousand high school students are engaged in a significant way in career or technical education. That’s outrageous.
Finally, Starr's successor should embrace school choice. One of Starr’s smarter decisions was to launch a commission to study the county’s school choice programs. That’s worth continuing, at least if the goal is to expand MCPS’s offerings. Demand for these specialized schools far outstrips supply, and adding many more can be an effective strategy for dealing with the system’s crowding challenges.
Because of strong growth, MCPS schools are bursting at the seams. But especially in the county’s more affluent areas, parents are loath to allow new schools and the redrawing of school boundaries. There’s an obvious solution: Add more schools of choice in those areas.
If MCPS itself won’t embrace more school choice, it had better watch out, because Republican Governor Larry Hogan would like to empower the State Board of Education to create charter schools across Maryland. That would provide a healthy nudge to get the system to act.
Some members of the Montgomery school board will disagree with at least some of my suggestions. So be it. But tell us where you stand, what you want the system to achieve and what you seek in a new leader. Don’t let it be just about “personality” or “tone” or “working style.” Make it about the vision for the county and its schools. Mostly: Make it clear.
Editor's note: This post originally appeared in a slightly different form in the Washington Post
