World traveler or Superintendent?

Published in the Iola Register on May 21, 2011.

Educator credits Kansas roots

Moran native a leader in learning

By SUSAN LYNN susan@iolaregister.com

Jerry Weast credits his Kansas roots for the success he is today.

“As a 4H-er, I learned how to set targets, maximize my crop yields, live within my means, and help my neighbor. Those traits are a ticket to success, no matter your field,” he said.

Weast, 63, is recognized as a worldwide leader in education.

After 42 years he’s retiring as a school administrator, having spent the last 12 years as superintendent of one of the largest school districts in the nation to accept a global role in promoting his educational model espoused in the book, “Leading for Equity,” which was based on the success of his district in Montgomery County, Md.

Weast worked to close gaps between incomes and race to raise school test scores.

Montgomery County has some of the wealthiest families in the country as well as some of the poorest as home to the nation’s Capitol.

It also is extremely diverse.

“We have students from 163 countries who speak 123 languages,” he said in a telephone interview Wednesday.

Those challenges made it all the more necessary to create a curriculum and team mindset that effectively reached a multitude of backgrounds, he said.

WEAST’S OWN background is humble. He grew up on a farm southeast of Moran, the son of Kenneth, a farmer, and Maude, a teacher. The Weasts had three sons, Larry, Jerry and David, and a daughter, Debra, who lives in Moran.

His graduating class in 1968 from Moran High School had 23 students including Debra Barnes, an eventual Miss America, and Larry Lust, a retired Major General with the U.S. Army, and with whom Weast keeps contact.

After high school Weast attended Iola Junior College  — “today’s ACCC all dressed up,” he said — before continuing at Pittsburg State University for his education degree and then onto Oklahoma State University where he earned a doctorate in education administration. A plaque commemorates Weast in the Oklahoma State U.  Hall of Fame in its college of education.

By 1972, Weast was promoted to principal of McCune High School. He was 24. By 28, he was named superintendent of schools in Uniontown and from there was superintendent of schools in several states, eventually landing in Maryland in 1999. The Montgomery district has 140,000 students.

His 12-year tenure at Montgomery County schools makes him one of longest serving school superintendents in the nation — a job that is subject to the whims of fickle school boards, especially in times of economic turmoil.

What has helped secure Weast’s position is his success at raising school test scores — a particularly tough challenge considering the district’s wide disparities among students where whites and Asians were on one trajectory and blacks and Hispanics on another.

Weast said he used the organizational model of government he learned in his Prairie Rose 4-H club to help shape his style of leadership. Being raised on a farm helped too, he said.

“If a storm was headed our way, all the neighbors worked together to get the crops out and the cows herded to safety,” he said. “The same goes for education. A district’s teachers and administrators should all have the same goal of success. And as far as the students, it shouldn’t make any difference what one’s race or background is.”

Weast said the funding of schools should also be equal.

“It’s so important the schools of Iola have the same access to funds of any town in the state,” he said.

“It isn’t about where you come from, but what you do with what you have. Every kid in this country should have the same opportunity to learn.”

WEAST CHALLENGED traditional educational models to get results, including rewarding teachers for good results and providing an exit plan for those who did not. Principals were also held accountable for test scores and given flexibility to implement their goals.

Weast’s goals were that students be “college ready,” by the time they left high school. To get there he set several key requirements, including:

* All-day kindergarten with the goal of seeing that every student would be able to read by “graduation;”
* Mastery of algebra in middle school;
* And by high school, students would succeed in Advanced Placement classes.

Weast has traveled to 30 countries espousing the importance of an equitable education. China and Ireland have been recent targets. In Northern Ireland, years of civil war pitting Protestants against Catholics have left the region in need of educational reforms, Weast said. For China, the massive influx of rural and immigrant populations to cities like Shanghai has created as startling a diversity of populations as anywhere in the U.S., he said.

For his own country, Weast said students in the United States are falling behind their world peers.

“We’re losing ground fast,” he said when it comes to educational goals. “We’re failing to lift up the next generation.”

As a career, “there’s none better than teaching,” Weast said. “It’s one of the most intrinsically rewarding careers there is.

“If you want to make a difference to this world — to really ‘touch’ a life — then there’s no better way than teaching.

“I’ve handed out more than 100,000 diplomas in my life,” he said. “And every one signified a personal success.”