The74million: Poor, Rural Western Maryland School District Beats MCPS in Math

Analysis: This Poor, Rural Maryland District Is Beating the Odds in Math. Here’s How They Do It, and What I Saw in Their Schools

David Wakelyn

Last year, colleagues and I tried to launch a network of schools to improve math achievement across the Mid-Atlantic states. We didn’t win the outside funding we needed, but along the way we discovered a surprising bright spot: the school district with the greatest number of high-poverty elementary schools beating the odds in Maryland (and second-highest among all the states in the PARCC testing consortium) is one you’ve probably never heard of: the small-city and rural Allegany County.

Nationally, very few schools — about 3 percent — have both high poverty rates and high student achievement. Of the 1,200 elementary and middle schools in Maryland shown below (each circle represents the size of a school, with the poorest schools on the far left), only 23 are in the upper left tier, considered to be beating the odds. Allegany has six such schools, shown in orange, and six more that are close to high-performing. For comparison, Montgomery County, the nation’s 17th-largest school district in suburban Washington, D.C., has 82 schools where more than half of all students qualify for free and reduced-price lunch, yet only three of them are beating the odds.

Entire story at: https://www.the74million.org/article/analysis-this-poor-rural-maryland-district-is-beating-the-odds-in-math-heres-how-they-do-it-and-what-i-saw-in-their-schools/