Your Call to Action

by Frederick Stichnoth


The Board of Education will adopt the 2010-2015 Our Call to Action/Strategic Plan, on Monday, June 28, 2010 at approximately 7:10 pm.

Why should we pay attention? Our Call to Action is a central document that states what MCPS thinks it's doing and where MCPS wants to take our kids. The Board will be focused on this strategy very briefly, and we're invited to help them focus. Whether we like what they're doing or we don't, it's the best time to weigh in.
(I know a lot of people think this Board/Our Call to Action stuff is sorta abstract and political--not related to what programming is available to my kid, and how can I get it. I think we have to be political, and talk to the Board and the Superintendent Dr. Weast, in order for the programming our kids need to be provided. It's not absent by accident.)

I don't like what Our Call to Action says MCPS is doing regarding Gifted and Talented and regarding the red zone. Here's why.

Gifted and Talented(GT):

1. SET NUMERICAL GT GOALS. In order to drive improvement in GT student performance, numerical goals are necessary. Look at the goals that OCA establishes for GT programming: GT screening percentages, Math 6 in Grade 5, AP and IB enrollment, AP and IB performance (measured at AP 3 or higher). (See page 12 of the 2009 Our Call to Action)


These are not GT goals. Forty percent of students are screened GT; 49% take Math 6 in Grade 5; 50% score AP 3+. So, instead of focusing on the top 3%, or 10% or 20% of students, MCPS' "GT" focus is directed at kids right in the middle of the pack. These middle-performing kids should be well-served, of course. But we need GT goals for GT kids: you know, "serve ALL the children."

My recommendation. First, scrap MCPS' pseudo-GT goals. Second, establish goals that focus on the top performers--maybe the top 20%. My goal would be to attain year-by-year increases in the median scores of the top 20% on TN/2, SAT, ACT; and to increase the percentages scoring AP 4 and AP 5. The goals would apply to each school and to each disaggregated subgroup.

MCPS would have to publicly report the median scores of the top 20%, disaggregated, school-by-school, each year.

2. LEAVE A BLANK WHERE GT PROGRAMMING IS DISCUSSED. Why not?--there isn't any (other than William & Mary). The draft Our Call to Action that MCPS and the BOE currently are discussing, under the heading "Continuum of Accelerated and Enriched Instruction," discusses two things: the supposed "continuum of programming" and the new SIPPI articulation and screening process. First, both of these notions pertain to MCPS education as a whole, not to "accelerated and enriched" (fka GT) education in particular. Second, how can MCPS claim to have a "continuum" and a placement process if there are no advanced programs along the continuum in which placement is made? A bridge to nowhere. Third, the continuum paragraph says stuff like "programs that encourage all students to achieve at their highest level" and "students may accelerate learning and participate in advanced-level course work at their local schools." This just doesn't pass the laugh test.

So I would leave a few inches of white paper under the subheading "Continuum of Accelerated and Enriched Instruction."

RED ZONE:

3. DISTRICT PERFORMANCE TARGETS: PITIFUL FACADE. Look at 2009 Our Call to Action pages iv and v, and the Annual Report pages xi -xiv. MCPS sets targets for individual students. Then MCPS sets targets for the number of schools that will hit the targets for students, with the number of schools increasing each year. So first, MCPS projects that certain schools will be the last to reach the targets. And which schools would those be?


Second, you can see that while MCPS rosily ratchets up the number of schools projected to hit the targets, year after year, especially for African-American and FARMS students, MCPS grossly misses the targets. The targets have lost touch with what's real. And where do the majority of African-American and FARMS students go to school?

The sad fact is that realistic targets differ between the red and green zones. MCPS says that it can't admit this--it can't get real, because parents and press would rip them up. Better to just pretend, and hope to fly under the radar of public scrutiny (or snoozing).

Whatever happened to the BOE's commitment to equity? to "serve the neediest first!" and "whatever it takes!" The reliance on rhetoric varies inversely with actual functioning and the bona fide expectation of progress.

4. SEE GT ABOVE. Given the low average level of student (and MCPS) performance in the red zone, top red zone performers fall farther and farther behind their green zone counterparts without real GT programming (homogeneous grouping) in the red zone.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?--COMMENT

Email the Board and/or testify at the Monday meeting.

Email the Board at  boe@mcpsmd.org

To testify Monday at 6:15 pm, you need to sign up in advance by calling 301-279-3617 between 10 and 10:30 am Monday 6/28. The public comment rules are at here.

The new Our Call to Action may be posted with the meeting agenda by the end of the week. See the Agenda here. Otherwise, you can probably get it by contacting, and then fetching it from, the Board office at Carver Educational Services Center, 850 Hungerford Drive, Rockville. is now available here.

Keep pushing.