The Next Social Contract for the Primary Years of Education
Transforming America's Education System to Embrace Early Learning
Superintendent Jerry Weast's presentation starts at minute 34. Hear what Superintendent Weast tells audiences when he is on the road.
- Weast sent staff to Singpore and Italy to learn how to set up MCPS? That's what he says...Who went and what did they bring back?
- Weast explains why he likes trailers because he tells the audience, "Don't worry about the place."
- Hear Weast talk about how "rich folks send their kids to summer camp". So Weast raffled bicyles to get kids to come to summer school.
- Hear what he learned from the "Italians".
- Someone went to New Zealand?
- He was worried about "overwhelming ourselves with our own brilliance."
- Math curriculum "horribly weak".
- "Been there 11 years, I didn't get moved out."
- "Don't chase butterflies and bunnies".
- At minute 49, Weast starts talking about the success of students who graduated from 2001-2004. Those students received the majority of their education in MCPS under Superintendent Paul Vance.
AMF10 writes:
ReplyDeleteEccezionale, signore Weast! Now I know I have options after watching you talk at the New American Foundation on YouTube. I can send my children to school either in Italy or New Zealand given that the MCPS curricula in math and reading are so horrible—your words. (Let me remind you that those curricula currently cost the tax payers of MoCo ~$2.2B.) First, how dare you slam American education the way you do in your speech.
Second, how dare you take credit for instituting full day kindergarten (K) in MoCo. Full day K was a state mandate. Annapolis did that, Jerry, not you. Stop with the revisionist history!
Third, how dare you claim that you brought in trailers for all the new kindergarteners because of your vision for full day K. Trailers were a way of life in MCPS years before the state-mandated full day K because of this county’s poor growth policy. Nice try, Jerry. (BTW: trailers are nothing to be proud of.)
Fourth, how dare you claim that you had a “college ready” vision for this school system 11 years ago and you aimed at 2014. In 2008, Montgomery College, our local community college, placed 66% of its incoming freshman class in remedial classes. The vast majority of these students were MCPS graduates. Those students had 9 years’ worth of your experimenting. Look where it got them: remedial math, reading and English classes at a community college. What a legacy you have left them, Jerry.
And what is it about the year 2014? Will your college-ready plan be fully implemented by then? What about the graduated students from the classes prior to 2014? Have we lost a generation of kids?
It’s time to say: “Arrivederci.” Resign, Jerry, and join the ranks of the “endangered species” known as former superintendents and go chase butterflies and bunnies.