The Images shared with the MCPS Board of Education are WRONG.

Executive Summary

Recent presentations to the Montgomery County Board of Education utilized a specific data visualization to argue that housing growth has “decoupled” from student enrollment. This chart has been cited as a primary justification for consequential infrastructure decisions, including the proposed closure of Wootton High School. As a data science professional with nearly two decades of experience in time series analysis, I have audited this visualization and found it to be methodologically invalid. The presentation relies on mismatched axes, hidden baselines, and a known statistical anomaly to manufacture a divergence that does not exist in the raw data.

The Images shared with the BOE (WRONG)...

 https://parentscoalitionmd.substack.com/p/the-images-shared-with-the-mcps-board

Community Dashboard - Daily COVID-19 Cases in MCPS

An MCPS parent has created a Dashboard of MCPS COVID-19 daily cases now that the Board of Education has stopped updating their dashboard on a daily basis and has stopped putting out daily information on cumulative cases at schools.

The information on this Community Dashboard is based on what little data the Board of Education is currently releasing.  

View the Community Dashboard at the link below.

http://mcpscommunitydashboard.s3-website.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/?fbclid=IwAR0WwOsLx3lQCGp-FouZ6NFBgScyRC96iodOgAJscoCX2iaY6cT8zq_9o48

MCEA: “The jobs were not posted, there weren’t interviews." #SuddenlyProcessMatters

...The most recent example came on Feb. 10, as Smith announced during a school board meeting that several central office departments would merge to form two new departments.

During the meeting, the school board appointed staff members to head the departments and filled vacancies in other administrative roles.

Lloyd said he learned of the changes six minutes before the meeting...

https://bethesdamagazine.com/bethesda-beat/schools/growing-tension-between-montgomery-county-teachers-superintendent/

MCPS selects another "parent portal, student portal, and gradebook into one big system"

..."We had over 900 people participate in the selection process, including parents, students, and all of our union partners," said Dr. Kara Trenkamp, Director of Technology Integration and Learning Management Systems. "Our teachers were wowed by Synergy. For the first time they had a vision of a student information system that could truly serve them by connecting the parent portal, student portal, and gradebook into one big system in which all of the parts communicate, giving users a complete profile of what they're looking for."..

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/montgomery-county-public-schools-md-120000547.html

Digitally-mediated learning is more often competitive than creative

How is digital technology – now occupying the eyes and ears, pockets and pillows of so many children – shaping children’s personal, social and learning lives? Does it bring the collaborative and creative benefits often hoped for? And how much do the use and consequences of digital media depend on the structures and practices that have the most power to shape children’s opportunities – notably, family, school and peer group?

These questions guided my recent year-long ethnography of a multi-ethnic, socio-economically diverse class of 28 students, all 13-14-years old, called ‘The Class. Living and Learning in the Digital Age’, which I conducted with Julian Sefton-Green as part of the Connected Learning Research Network. We found that parents are often unclear about the possible benefits of digitally-mediated learning opportunities on offer, so they tend to follow the lead of their child’s school; meanwhile, schools are often under pressure to use digital media (or educational technology) for measuring, standardising and ranking children’s achievement. As a result, we concluded, at neither home nor school are alternative, non-instrumental or creative forms of informal learning sufficiently supported by digital media...

http://bold.expert/digitally-mediated-learning-is-more-often-competitive-than-creative/

Gaithersburg Residents Voice Opposition to Proposed Plan for “Small” Cell Facilities

Residents in Gaithersburg turned out in force for a City Council meeting on Monday night to discuss a proposed plan to build “small” cell facilities.  The towers would be built or added to existing structures along roadsides in residential and commercial areas...

...Several residents at the meeting stated that they were not made aware of the proposed plans until four days before the public meeting. Residents also voiced opposition to the proposed placement of the towers and expressed concerns about lower property values and health risks associated with exposure to electromagnetic radiation...

http://www.mymcmedia.org/gaithersburg-residents-voice-opposition-to-proposed-plan-for-small-cell-facilities-photos/

Rales said “together, we’re going to drive a stake through the heart of the achievement gap.”

Montgomery County Wants to Address ‘Summer Slide’ With New Education Program

 

"Fantastic rises in achievement were accompanied by equally fantastic decreases in SAT participation"

How records are made
by Mike McCabe

...[MCPS] African American and Hispanic sub-groups led the decline in particpation...


Click here for the full report on MCPS SAT participation since 2006 as chronicled by a Montgomery County Public Schools teacher.  

What is the school system trying to hide?

http://www.gazette.net/stories/04202011/montlet183018_32537.php

Show Me the Data: Chicago, Miami-Dade, and New York City Show Their Data

by Joseph Hawkins

If you go to the Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) public website and attempt to find Excel files—real data which can be “played” with—you will find nothing. All you will find are Portable Document Format files, commonly referred to as PDFs or Adobe files.

I have always advocated for access to real data. Why not? If taxpayers are supporting a data-driven school district—and this concept comes out of MCPS Superintendent Jerry Weast’s mouth every 10 seconds—then surely we cannot be afraid of sharing data. Shouldn’t a useful document such as Schools at a Glance exists as an Excel file?  Click here to see Schools at a Glance:

http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/regulatoryaccountability/glance/

But instead of focusing on why MCPS always says no to public requests for real data or informs the requester that it will cost a zillion dollars to create data, let’s visit three large public school districts’ public websites and see what real data they offer up to the public.

The Chicago Public Schools provides users with a rich variety of downloadable Excel files. My two favorite files—the Advanced Placement (AP) results file which provides rich details for all city high schools (including race/ethnicity information) and the National Student Clearinghouse results file. Isn’t Superintendent Weast out and about bragging on the MCPS Clearinghouse data? Why not share? Click here to see why Chicago is my kind of data town:

http://research.cps.k12.il.us/cps/accountweb/Reports/allschools.html

For each school in its system, the Miami-Dade County Public Schools provide in downloadable Excel files basic enrollment data, attendance and mobility rates, and graduation and dropout rates. Most of this information is the data found in the MCPS Schools at a Glance document. Miami-Dade also provides an Excel for on performance measures from 2003 through 2010. Click here to see what Miami provides:

http://oada.dadeschools.net/DSProfiles/DSProfiles.asp

The New York City Public Schools are not as data friendly as Chicago or Miami, but they provide access to some Excel files. If nothing else, they underscore the possibilities and the spirit behind being data friendly.  Click here to see what New York City provides:

http://schools.nyc.gov/Accountability/data/default.htm

When it comes to real data, PDFs are never the starting point but rather an end point. Data people know this!

A document like the MCPS Schools at a Glance clearly resides first as data, either as one huge Excel file or multiple Excel files or in some database that can create and export data formatted as Excel files. Regardless, the data in those files can be manipulated and “played” with—one is not able to play with information in PDFs without a lot of labor devoted to reformatting and reentering information.

It seems to me that MCPS could place on its public website Schools at a Glance—as well as other data files (e.g., AP results, National Student Clearinghouse results)—in file formats that are data-friendly. And when that happens, I promise I’ll stop asking Show me your data!

"Show me the Money" - No I Mean Show me the Data

by Joseph Hawkins

Show Me the Money

Please Give Us More AP (and IB) Data

by Joseph Hawkins

I’m completely sucked in.

I want to see more Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) Advanced Placement (AP).  But given the countywide expansion of the International Baccalaureate (IB) Program into nearly every county high school, I also want to see IB facts and figures.

Here is some of what MCPS needs to make available for public consumption.

§         AP student enrollment facts and figures: Currently, MCPS shares only facts and figures about AP exam-takers. The problem is not every AP course participant sits for an exam. So, how many students actually enroll in AP course offered by MCPS? How many students never sit for an exam?

§         IB student enrollment facts and figures: The last time MCPS shared information on IB enrollees and IB test performance was January 2006 (MCPS report: An Examination of the Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate Exam Results for 2004-2005). Clearly, current facts and figures are long overdue. So, for example, how many IB exams are MCPS students taking now?  How black male students earned an IB diploma? How many MCPS students on FARMS and attending a red zone high school earned an IB diploma?

§         Grades earned by AP and IB students:  It would be outstanding for MCPS to reveal details about how AP and IB students perform. Do students who take an exam have better end-of-course grades than students who do not take an exam? What do the end-of-course grades, for example, look like for black males receiving free and reduced meals (FARMS)?

§         IB program participant cross-overs: I have heard from a few MCPS parents that their IB children not only sat for their IB exams but they also crossed over and sat for a fair number of AP exams. Given the popularity of the IB program in our public county high schools, how common is this practice? When it happens what does performance look like for the IB kids?

§         College graduation rates for AP and IB students: In May of 2010, MCPS released a report that looked at AP exam-takers and college competition (MCPS report: Advanced Placement Examination as a Key to Postsecondary Success). The problem with the report is it combined exam-takers into two groups, those with an AP exam score of 3 or higher and those with an AP exam score below 3. The group with a score of 3 or higher had better college completion rates. In 2008, the College Board performed a similar study (College Outcomes Comparisons by AP and Non-AP High School Experiences—see link below). The College Board study is absolutely full of details while the MCPS study is absent details. In fact, the College Board study underscores the value of showing college competition rates by scores and not combining them into large groups. The graduation rates, for example, are vastly different between high school graduates scoring a 1 and graduates scoring a 2, as well as between graduates scoring a 3 and those scoring a 4 or 5. So, how do MCPS students differ when the details are revealed?

Here is the link to the College Board study: 

http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/pdf/08-1574_CollegeOutcomes.pdf

Finally, I would highly recommend that readers go to the College Board website and read the above mentioned study. I’m in awe over the level of detail provided by the researchers. The College Board researchers literally throw the kitchen sink at us (sometimes that is a good thing). In the end, assuming one is patient, one understands that saying that an AP exam score of 3 or higher predicts college success comes with a fair number of qualifiers and caveats. Those qualifiers are possible, however, because the College Board researchers showed us the details. And it is the details that many of us want to see when MCPS issues public reports. 

Public information locked in file cabinets of school districts

Education Week: It's the Public's Data: Democratizing School Board Records

By J.H. Snider

Consider just a few of the questions whose answers might help a community’s leaders and citizens make better decisions about how to improve their schools:

• What has been said and written about school start times in districts with comparable demographics and financial resources, but better student test scores?

• What is the relationship between student test scores and systems for electing school board members in comparable school districts?

• How do superintendent contracts vary in comparable districts?

Parents, teachers, administrators, and taxpayers have legitimate reasons to ask questions like these. But it has been incredibly hard for them to do so. One reason is that much public information remains locked in the file cabinets of America’s more than 14,000 school districts. Another is that even if the information is posted to school websites, it may be posted in ways, such as a scanned document, that Internet search engines cannot read. Public information that should be available instantaneously and at no cost, like so much other information now available via search engines, instead takes hundreds of work-lifetimes and a fortune to gather—if it can be gathered at all...continues here.

Higher SAT scores, but fewer test takers, in MontCo | Washington Examiner

Higher SAT scores, but fewer test takers, in MontCo

By: Leah Fabel 
Examiner Staff WriterApril 25, 2010

The class of 2010 scored an average of 1,651 on the 2,400-point test, nearly 40 points above last year's average, according to a spreadsheet based on March data obtained by the Washington Examiner. Overall SAT participation fell to about 67 percent of seniors, down from nearly 74 percent in 2009.

The school system will release an official score report later this year. That report will not include the SAT scores of students who fail to graduate from MCPS, said Brian Edwards, spokesman for Superintendent Jerry Weast. Therefore, the official report likely will cite a higher average score and participation rate.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/Higher-SAT-scores_-but-fewer-test-takers_-in-MontCo-92012394.html#ixzz0m8bMApwV

IG Audits MCPS Computer Network

In 2001, the Montgomery County Inspector General engaged the services of the Forensics Explorers Division of CTX Corporation to review and evaluate the information security status of the Montgomery County Public Schools computer network.

What did that 2001 Forensic Audit of the MCPS computer network reveal?

...MCPS is not well positioned to address internal misuse of the network...

More from the report:

...We prefer to conduct the survey in person, since many of the questions are subjective and an in-person interview may provide a more complete response. In the case of MCPS, not all potential survey respondents were available while Forensics Explorers was on site...

Incoming Traffic Monitors
Finding: We found there are no procedures requiring regular review of audit logs of the monitors on each gateway into the MCPS system. It appears monitors are reviewed, but not necessarily on a systematic basis. Any monitoring and evaluation is conducted at the request of technical support personnel.


Finding: We found evidence of improper traffic on the MCPS network. The improper traffic fell into three categories...
Inappropriate Traffic. This type of traffic includes activities that violate customer policy or reasonable standards of behavior. For example, frequent visits to non-work related web sites would be inappropriate traffic. We observed several thousand visits by nearly 100 computers to more than 600 adult web sites and adult chat rooms. The visits constituted 0.12 percent of the web surfing. We also observed downloads of adult materials using peer-to-peer networks; isolated visits to hate- or bias-related web sites; and visits to gambling web sites. Internal users also downloaded and copied songs, movies, and television shows. This inappropriate traffic constitutes a network security risk, an abuse of MCPS property, and a waste of resources.

Finding: We found there is insufficient systematic review of the risks posed by inappropriate use by authorized users of the MCPS network. Systematic reviews are conducted on portions of the MCPS network but not across its entirety.

Finding: We found MCPS had incomplete configuration management controls. MCPS has adequate knowledge of its central and infrastructure configurations; network diagrams were readily available and up-to-date (May 2001). There are some machines not under configuration control and MCPS is working on the remaining machines in accordance with budget constraints. Unauthorized programs present several risks, they use system capacity, and downloaded freeware can contain spyware programs hidden in their code that can allow unauthorized persons access to the MCPS network.


Finding: We found MCPS does not have a consistent, enterprise-wide policy for routinely checking for and removing dormant and inactive accounts from the system and checking for expired passwords. Removing dormant accounts and deleting expired passwords limits the avenues for access by former employees and students.

The full report, as found on the Internet, is reprinted below.
MCPS Network Security Audit Report

Advanced Placement Results Show Passing Rates Don’t Assure College-Level Success

The Dagger has obtained detailed AP data from Harford County Public Schools (Maryland) with the break out of exams and scores by high school.

AP data for MCPS for 2008-09 school year? Anyone seen it?

Harvard: Research provides no simple answer

As the Montgomery County Board of Education discusses a change to Policy IOA Gifted and Talented Education, the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard University - 2008 Conference Report comments on the ongoing discussion in Montgomery County.

MCPS administrators were panelists at the Harvard Conference last summer and quoted Superintendent Weast in their presentation. After the conference, MCPS parents watched the conference video, read the transcript and sent comments to the Achievement Gap Initiative. The 2008 Conference Report makes the following observation with regard to the ongoing discussion in Montgomery County:

The question of whether high-ability students require separate programming to
achieve their potential—as opposed to having teachers that are trained to
effectively differentiate instruction in mixed-ability classes—is an important matter
on which opinions are strong, but for which research provides no simple answer. It
was not discussed at the conference, and few studies over the past several decades
have addressed it in a rigorous manner. (Page 41)

To view video and PowerPoint presentations from the session, see http://www.agi.harvard.edu

Make April 16 a day to stand up for your children

Tired of the great sucking sound of your tax dollars being flushed down the toilet while educational outcomes decline?

Sick of what happened at Eastern Middle School?

Angry at the secretly formed Advisory Committees secretly chipping away your child's educational programs?

Outraged at Advisory Committees routinely flaunting the Open Meetings Act, the Maryland Public Information Act, etc?

Smoldering about the slash and burn of Special Education?

Not one of the one-size fits all proponents?

Unhappy about the taxation without proper representation of your views on education?

Can’t believe the way Carver shovels your money away into private pockets?

Think decision making should be a transparent, accountable process?

Angry that your voice wasn’t heard at the MCCPTA meeting?

Feel that Advisory Committee members don't listen to your voices?

Sick of the duplicity, threats, and intimidation?

Partial to non-violent, civilized protests in support of open, transparent, accountable, data-driven processes for a better educational future for OUR KIDS?

Join a protest of concerned parents.

WHEN: April 16, 2009 from 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.
WHERE: At Montgomery County Public Schools' Carver Educational Services Center, 850 Hungerford Drive, Rockville, Maryland in Conference Room 127

Spread the word: cross-post, shout from your roof tops, and bring in the crowds.

Kumar Singam

What Really Motivates Parent Activists

Today's Washington Post include Letters to the Editor on "What Really Motivates Parent Activists".