Montgomery County, Maryland is known for having public schools among the best in the nation, ranking high in test scores and college admissions. But that doesn't mean every school is effective. Especially as the county has become more economically and culturally diverse, its school system has struggled to deal with the challenge of low-performing schools. In six articles spread over two days under the headings "A Growing Divide: Economic Segregation in Montgomery Schools" and "Montgomery Schools Seek a Solution," Brigid Schulte and Dan Keating of The Washington Post explore the ways in which one district is evolving into two separate and unequal school systems, and examine efforts of Montgomery County School superintendent Jerry Weast to combat this tendency.
In a dozen years, the number of schools in the county with more than 40 percent of students qualifying for free or reduced lunch has increased from 6 to nearly 40. In these high-poverty schools, teacher turnover is high, fewer advanced courses are offered, principals find themselves becoming social workers, and test scores lag. Reminiscent of the celebrated Coleman Report of 1966, the Post reporters suggest that the real problem is poor children attending schools with heavy concentrations of other poor children. Analyzing student achievement data, the journalists find that low-income students perform at or above the county average when they attend schools with affluent student bodies (where fewer than 5% of students are poor), but that their scores drop far below the mean when they attend schools where the student body is predominantly poor. On the other hand, Schulte and Keating write, middle class students still "perform well" when they attend high-poverty schools, which "challenges an assumption that has fueled the flight of middle-class parents out of troubled schools." (The data presented in the article tell a somewhat different story, however; wealthy or middle class students enrolled in schools where the student body is more than 25% poor still perform above the county average, but their scores are significantly lower than those of wealthy or middle class students at richer schools.) The reporters profile one poor student who attends an affluent school and one well-off student who attends a high-poverty school to help understand why both youngsters perform well.
An urgent priority for Superintendent Weast is determining how to stem the decline in student performance in a growing number of his schools before it triggers the flight of more middle class families from the public school system itself. The county has doubled the amount targeted to help troubled schools, spending $60 million in the last five years and budgeting as much as $3000 more per pupil at high-poverty schools, but so far has little to show for the effort, as the performance gap between poor and affluent schools has continued to widen. While some school systems (such as San Francisco, Wake County, N.C., and La Crosse, Wis.) have attempted to integrate schools based on economic status, a proposal that appeals to the Post reporters, redrawing school boundaries is understood to be an option that would not be tolerated by wealthier parents in Montgomery County. A "controlled choice" program-in which the boundaries among three high schools were erased, each school was given a special theme, and families were allowed to choose among them-was introduced in one struggling corner of the county and this has produced economic and racial diversity in the three schools as well as a rise in test scores.
Montgomery County is struggling to address the challenges faced by its high-poverty schools without sacrificing the qualities that make many other county schools attractive to middle class parents. Given the importance of solving this dilemma, it's hard to understand why school leaders haven't been more willing to look "outside the box" for strategies to narrow the achievement gap. The Montgomery County school board has already rejected a proposal from some county teachers who would like to create a small charter high school with an International Baccalaureate program aimed at black and Hispanic students (and it is likely to reject a reformulated proposal sometime soon, according to an article in Tuesday's Post). Another possibility, offering incentives for outstanding teachers to transfer to low-performing schools-and assigning these teachers to struggling students in those schools-might not go over well with the county teacher union, but it is a promising strategy for narrowing the gap between rich and poor schools since research suggests that teacher quality is the single most important school factor in explaining student achievement. Being serious about reform means widening the search for solutions beyond timeworn ideas like spending more money and moving students around to make schools less segregated; it may even be necessary to consider proposals that step on the toes of some people in the school system itself.
Sunday, September 2:
"Pupils' Poverty Drives Achievement Gap," by Brigid Schulte and Dan Keating,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27602-2001Aug31.html
"Amid Affluence, Poorer Students Rise to Challenge," by Brigid Schulte and Dan Keating,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27610-2001Aug31.html
"'Gifted' Grow Even in Weak Schools," by Brigid Schulte and Dan Keating,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27607-2001Aug31.html
"Language Problem Masks True Roots of Low Grades," by Brigid Schulte and Dan Keating,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27612-2001Aug31.html
Monday, September 3 "Closing Student Gap Opens Door to Conflict," by Brigid Schulte and Dan Keating,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/education/A33612-2001Sep2.html
"High Praise for School-Choice Test," by Brigid Schulte and Dan Keating,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/education/A33781-2001Sep2.html
Tuesday, September 4
"A Good Idea Whose Time May Never Come," by Marc Fisher,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/metro/columns/fishermarc/A37355-2001Sep3.html
All articles appeared in The Washington Post.