Summary of September 12, 2011
Presentation of Superintendent Joshua Starr
by Frederick Stichnoth
Parents’ main concerns were support for ability grouping, red zone education inequity, and Northeast Consortium choice process dysfunction.
Dr. Starr displayed an interesting sociological outlook, skepticism of parents, true belief in heterogeneous classrooms and in-class differentiation, and willingness to understand variability among schools in a school-by-school, atomistic way (i.e, not correlated with FARMS).
With respect to gifted and talented education, Dr. Starr supports access of all students, heterogeneous grouping and magnets (an unexplained exception to heterogeneous grouping). No decision has been made with respect to the continuation of such acceleration opportunities as continue to exist, including accelerated math in the upper grades. Needs of higher-ability students, including higher-ability math students in lower grades, will be addressed through differentiation.
Dr. Starr’s overall function was to stake out positions contrary to the main concerns of parents.
Connect the dots: What Starr calls grouping by housing price is really a proxy for grouping students by race and ethnicity. It’s most visible when looking at the Red Zone – Green Zone schools map. No surprise, the poor performance of schools has had adverse affects upon the sales prices of homes in their boundaries. And, as reported on this blog, MCPS, by allowing cell towers near the homes of its red zone schools, has further diminished those (red zone) home prices.
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