Fordham Institute: Many [@mcps @mocoboe] expenditures are expensive giveaways to the unions, giveaways that are completely unrelated to serving students or improving outcomes.

A reform agenda for Montgomery County: Investing in effective teachers in the system’s high-poverty schools

...It’s true that school districts need to be careful not to steal resources from central support staff that add value to student learning. Curriculum and instruction staff in particular can be essential to making sure teachers have the professional support they need to be effective.

Still, it sure seems like there are a lot of highly-paid administrators in MCPS’s central office that may not actually be necessary, many of them former principals. Encouraging some of these folks to retire would be a good start and could save a few million dollars a year.

The real money, though, is in employee benefits—a whopping 23 percent of MCPS’s total budget , an astounding $765 million every year. Now let me be clear: Teachers, administrators, and other staff deserve fair and competitive health insurance, retirement, and other benefits. But what MCPS provides—to existing employees, but especially to retirees—goes far, far beyond that. Many expenditures are expensive giveaways to the unions, giveaways that are completely unrelated to serving students or improving outcomes.

What do I have in mind?

• The district’s supplemental pension program, which costs employees just .5 percent of their salaries but into which MCPS plows almost $80 million per year, for a generous pension on top of what the state provides.  
• The district’s retiree healthcare insurance benefit, which costs MCPS over $30 million annually, even though retirees could gain coverage via other jobs, Obamacare, and/or Medicare.  
• Its policy of paying 25-35 percent of the value of employees’ unused sick leave when they retire, which costs more than $8 million per year.

(These figures come from the district, given to me after I filed a Freedom of Information Act request. You can see the MCPS documents here and here.)

Add them up and these questionable uses of taxpayer funds sum to around $120 million every year...

https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/reform-agenda-montgomery-county-investing-effective-teachers-systems-high

MCPS Still failing special education students

Michael J. Petrilli gets partial credit for his review of Montgomery County’s “dysfunctional school board” [“Defining schools’ core mission,” Local Opinions, March 1].
Unfortunately, he ignored a key constituency in that fading school system: the thousands of students with special needs. Routinely denied the support and services they need, nearly one in three of Montgomery County Public Schools’ special-ed students do not obtain diplomas. With such a record, who dares utter the word achievement?
The board could make an important gesture by ordering all schools to end the practice of writing special-education plans — individualized education plans, in the schools’ jargon — with limited input of parents or students. No more should school officials, during mandatory annual reviews of students’ progress, keep parents waiting in the lobby while they run a “pre-meeting” behind closed doors.
Bill Myers, Washington
 http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/still-failing-special-education-students/2015/03/04/95598c30-c1c0-11e4-a188-8e4971d37a8d_story.html

Joshua Starr: "I do not care about Maryland's state assessment results, do not focus attention on it."

WSIU* NPR:  As Testing Season Opens In Schools, Some Ask: How Much Is Too Much?

...STARR: The current standardized tests that every child has to take every year, those are worthless in helping teachers actually plan instruction. And the teachers see that and they're caught betwixt and between. And I've said to them, I do not care about Maryland's state assessment results, do not focus attention on it...

*Southern Illinois University