Getting the History Right

by Joseph A. Hawkins

August 24, 2009

According to The Washington Post (“Over 10 Years, Montgomery’s Weast Aced Tough Tests,” 7/28/2009), the sun officially sets on the Jerry Weast MCPS superintendency on June 30, 2011. There are less than two years left. So, for those truly interested in setting the record straight it is time to roll up your sleeves and get busy.

Personally, I’m interested in setting the historical record straight on two fronts. On one front is the notion—almost a given now—that Weast was the first MCPS superintendent courageous enough to put race on the table. I assume this means others before him were scared to talk about race or never talked about it at all or both. The second front is the notion—also a given now—that Weast made it safe for MCEA—the teachers union—to come out of the dark and participate in decision-making.

Both of these notions are false.

In this posting, I would like to briefly deal with the history of MCPS putting race on the table. In a future posting, I will deal with MCEA—since I was an active member just prior to Weast’s arrival, I think I’m in a good position to set the historical record straight with regards to the teachers union.

Race was on the table during the 1970’s

I always remember when I began working for MCPS because the Washington, DC area experienced one of the worst snow storms ever. I was scheduled to start my new MCPS job in the Department of Educational Accountability the week of February 19, 1979. Unfortunately, the President’s Day Snowstorm of February 19, 1979, shut the region down for more than a week—postponing my introduction to life in MCPS.

My first research assignment for MCPS was documenting the impacts of a required in-service training course. The title of that course was HR (Human Relations) 18—Black Experience and Culture. In 1974, with its own recently established Minority Relations Monitoring Committee providing input, the Montgomery County Board of Education mandated that all MCPS employee complete this 45-hour course. The course content was created by a well-renowned Howard University history professor. For the most part the course was cognitive in nature; however, it was well understood by employees that the course also was to impact non-cognitive issues, including attitudes (and heck—conversations about race relations). My 1980 HR-18 evaluation report is online and can be downloaded via ERIC (a free U.S. Department of Education document storage database). The document can be found here.

It is critically important to point out that HR-18 did not exist in a vacuum. The course was one of many actions MCPS was taking to improve minority education achievement and race relations. Specifically, HR-18 was a mandate under what was then known as The Black Action Steps. There is no doubt about it—race was on the table more than 20 years before Weast arrived in Rockville, Maryland in 1999.

By the way, I officially ended my MCPS employment in 1998, more than a year before Weast arrived.

Black Actions Steps morph into Priority 2 but race is still on the table

In the early 1980’s, the Black Actions Steps of the 1970’s morphed into Priority 2. The switch in plans made sense given the county’s increasing Latino population. Priority 2 was officially known as the Minority Student Achievement Plan. And the plan came with its own “minority student czar.” In terms of goals, the plan was fairly comprehensive and for the first time, MCPS put down in black and white numeric goals—that if achieved—would narrow achievement gaps.

Regardless of having a plan, as a new decade approached, Priority 2 failed to produce concrete results. Achievement gaps did not narrow. With a vocal African American community taking shots at the plan, in 1989, the Board of Education turned to an outside black consultant, Yale professor Edmund Gordon, to assess the status of minority-student achievement in MCPS. In November 1990, Gordon delivered to the school board his report, A Study of Minority Student Achievement in Montgomery County Public Schools. Essentially, the Gordon report concluded that Priority 2 was a failure.

Even though Priority 2 was assessed a failure, and I still agree with the assessment, the initiative clearly had race on the table. And throughout the 1980’s, a host of individuals both inside and outside MCPS continued to push race as the number one issue facing our schools. Individuals like Blair Ewing, Roscoe Nix, Jim Robinson, Odessa Shannon, Sylvia Johnson, John Diggs, Trudy Johnson, John Smith, and many others courageously kept the dialogue on race moving forward. It is a serious misread of our history to say that Weast was the first county leader to start bold and courageous conversations about race in Montgomery County.

Note: Readers interested in reading more about the history of the 1970’s and 1980’s should read “Slipping Toward Segregation: Local Control and Eroding Desegregation in Montgomery County.” This 40-page chapter in the 1996 book Dismantling Desegregation, authored by Gary Orfield and Susan Eaton of the Harvard University Project on School Desegregation, is simply an outstanding summary of how MCPS dealt with race and schools from 1975 through the early 1990’s. And I must point out that along the way a fair number of people demonstrated a whole lot of courageous leadership when it came to confronting race.

Vance leads us through the 1990’s—race stayed on the table

If nothing else, the Gordon report (I think it would be nice to do another one of these—it has been nearly 20 years since there was a serious impartial outsider kicking the MCPS tires) forced MCPS to change direction. MCPS took its medicine and used the Gordon report to begin anew, creating another special initiative—Success for Every Student (SES)—to eliminate the achievement gaps. And as our Board of Education adopted SES it also appointed its first black superintendent, Paul Vance.

Vance served for nearly 10 years. I do not recall any Weast-like miracles taking place during his tenure (although Brian Porter, the former head of the Department of Information, might want to argue about this)—many achievement gaps remained when he retired. Some gaps, however, were narrowing. Yet I do recall that under his leadership MCPS created a precursor to the Weast red zone/green zone—referred to as educational load—and that load information was used to provide schools with extra resources. Clearly, Vance and MCPS did not provide the level of extras that MCPS now provides, but the county was moving in the right direction. I believe Weast and others (Weast is not the only person making key money and revenue decisions) get credit for their commitment to schools in the poorer sections of the county; however, Weast fortunately reigned over MCPS during the height of a booming real estate market that literally poured hundreds of millions of extra dollars into our schools. Money was plentiful and we grew the education budget pie like gang busters. Money may never be that plentiful again.

Personally, I have always thought that Vance, an African American, missed a lot of opportunities to talk about race. Still, under his tenure, there were lots of conversations that focused on race. For example, under Vance and the leadership of the county NAACP there was a system-wide move to “institutionalize” local NAACP parent councils at nearly all MCPS schools. This was a significant move to insure that black voices became more formally integrated into school-based decision making. One thing is clear—you cannot have courageous conversations about race if those most invested in those conversations are not at the table. That stage or table was set before 1999.

I also believe that Vance, along with Roscoe Nix and Owen Nickels (and others), forced our schools to shift how we viewed African American students. The creation of the annual African American Achievement Awards for the first time made us realize that it was important to discuss and celebrate positive outcomes for black kids. It is perhaps impossible to measure the true impact of this initiative; however, it is clear that for the first time, it was cool for black kids to achieve. I’m not going to connect a straight line to the record numbers of black kids now enrolling in Advanced Placement courses under Weast—such a straight line is giving too much credit to Vance, Nix and Nickels; however, the county began to alter its conversations and views of black kids long before Weast arrived. I think these conversations paid dividends into the current decade.

Why does history matter?

History matters because when we do not appreciate it or get it right, we end up disrespecting and discounting the blood, sweat, and tears of those who came before us. A whole lot of people—way before Weast’s arrival—are also responsible for where this county is today. The achievements of Weast are notable—I’m willing to give him his “props”—yet it is critically important to recognize that his achievements rest of the shoulders of those who came before him. So, as we get closer to July 31, 2010, let us all turn down the rhetoric a little and reframe from crowning Weast the king of school reform and achievement gap busting.

Finally, I also think history matters because when we get it wrong we get other important things wrong. We begin to let stuff slip. We get lazy and sloppy. We let Weast go unchallenged. A great example of this appeared in the 7/28/2009 Post article on Weast. In that article, Post reporter Daniel de Vise writes,

“The share of black students who graduate with a passing score on at least one Advanced Placement test has doubled since 2000; blacks in Montgomery now outperform whites in the country as whole.”

The latter part of this sentence is flat out wrong. MCPS blacks do not outperform white kids elsewhere in the nation. This is a simple fact that can be checked/googled in a matter of seconds. Yet I believe that this level of wrongness happens—occurs far too frequently—because it lines up with all of the Weast hype.

AP scores for blacks in Montgomery are not higher than whites nationally. For black MCPS kids the average AP score is 2.6 (and falling). The national white AP score mean is 2.95. On average, white MCPS kids score 3.5 (and their performance has remained rock solid). And given everything that MCPS writes about AP exams, consumers of this information will have a hard time even finding a recent report that actually reports mean scores (the MCPS means are from a 2006 report). MCPS should never issue any of these reports without also including actual mean performance, including variance numbers— simply reporting the percentage of kids scoring 3 or more is not sufficient. In fact, it is lazy reporting. Details about MCPS mean scores and the 2008 national scores appear in the links below.

MCPS Department of Shared Accountability: AP Exam Participation and Performance from 2002 to 2006 for Students Enrolled in the Montgomery County Public Schools and Public Schools in Maryland and the Nation

College Board: The 4th Annual AP Report to the Nation

Obviously, I care a lot about the history of what has happened in this county since the mid-1970’s. I care because it is important. I care because I witnessed a lot of this history. And, it is critically important to point out that I know I have missed or left out other important events that that focused on race and schools (e.g., A. Wade Boykin and Larry Johnson’s 1988 academic examination into why MCPS suspends so many black teens or Roscoe Nix’s 1989 year-long Task Force that examined why so few black males enrolled in college). My apologies up front to any person, event or initiative that I missed or failed to mention.