"Starr says you can tell as early as the third marking period of first-grade which students are so disengaged that they're likely to quit school when they can."

The Times-Picayune Is that first-grader a future drop-out? and other links on the web: Jarvis DeBerry

Exclusive: Monitoring of Student Achievement Calendar

Now that the Seven Keys are out, here's a draft calendar showing what data MCPS is going to be tracking under Superintendent Joshua Starr's leadership.  This draft calendar was presented to the BOE at their off-site meeting on June 20, 2013.  

Note that one of the things replacing the Seven Keys is Hope, Wellbeing and Engagement.  Fortunately, we can pay no bid survey company Gallup almost $1 million dollars a year to rate our students' Hope, Wellbeing and Engagement.  

Lucky Gallup! They are guaranteed annual renewal of their no-bid contract for as long as Superintendent Starr is here.

  DRAFT - Strategic Plan Monitoring Calendar.pdf by Parents' Coalition of Montgomery County, Maryland

Exclusive: Starr Eliminates 7 Keys

Superintendent Joshua Starr is "re-branding" Montgomery County Public Schools.

Gone are Superintendent Jerry Weast's 7 Keys.

Here's the draft of new MCPS "Brand" as shown in a brochure that was presented to the Board of Education at yesterday's off-camera meeting.  Superintendent Starr presented this brochure to the BOE and informed them that it was important that we "re-brand now."

  Strategic Planning Framework Brochure by Parents' Coalition of Montgomery County, Maryland

MCPS

Starr to make over Weast's Seven Keys

Jerry Weast's Seven Keys have hit quite a few bumps over the years, so it is no suprise that Superintendent Joshua Starr is going to make them over.  But, what will this do to Jerry Weast's reputation as a "renowned educator?"

The Washington Post: Montgomery County’s ‘Seven Keys to College Readiness’ will get a makeover

The Broken Keys

...

The first three keys provide goals based on:

— TerraNova, an elementary reading test, which is no longer used;

— The Maryland State Assessments, which will soon be replaced by Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers assessments, or PARCC assessments, and;

— The current mathematics pathway, which will change under [PEARSON] Curriculum 2.0.

...

http://www.gazette.net/article/20121207/NEWS/712129999/1124/montgomery-schools-seven-keys-to-change&template=gazette

Video #4: Starr's Seven Keys Myth

Question #4 from November 26, 2012, MCPS Special Education Advisory Committee meeting with Superintendent Starr.

In this question, Superintendent Joshua Starr was asked about the MCPS Seven Keys in relation to special education students.  

Superintendent Starr begins his answer to the question by spinning a tall tale about how the MCPS Seven Keys were created.  Apparently, Superintendent Starr has not been told that the Seven Keys were created by Jerry Weast as his personal vision for use in his presentations at conventions.  The Seven Keys were not the result of some MCPS "study".  

In 2006 parents first learned of Superintendent Jerry Weast's "vision" of the Seven Keys.  They were discussed in a Harvard paper on MCPS.  From the Harvard paper (page 10) we learned: 

..."During subsequent administrative gatherings and MCPS Board of Education meetings, Weast continued the dialogue on institutional barriers and racism and defined what he called “The Path to Achievement,” which concisely communicated his vision of what every student should achieve before graduating from MCPS (see Exhibit 9 for “The Path to Achievement” slide). When conveying his related strategy for closing the achievement gap in simplest terms, he used the formula “Access + Equity + Rigor = Achievement.”"...

The Seven Keys went through a few changes over the years and the name was changed from "The Path to Achievement" to the "Seven Keys". 

Now, listen to Superintendent Starr's version of where he thinks the Seven Keys came from.  

Algebra in Eighth Grade for All?

Washington Post, Letter to the Editor, July 24, 2011

(...)
Pre-algebra is the shallow end of the math pool, while Algebra I is the deep end. Who would want their kid thrown in the deep end to learn to swim? Mathematics is a process that can be followed to the PhD level if the student hasn’t been left behind by an accelerated curriculum instituted by the unknowing. Part of this push to have every kid in the eighth grade take Algebra I is for the glory of education administrators (though they will never admit it). The higher you go in the educational hierarchy, the less in touch those people seem to be with the reality of teaching. Having all eighth-graders take Algebra I is a stunningly good example of this.(...)

D.M., Fairfax Station

Could schools in Maryland be a model for Palm Beach County?

Could schools in Maryland be a model for Palm Beach County?

Waiting for Jerry’s Kids or Twisted Realities

By Joseph Hawkins

Recently, a read of an August 2010 Pew report, Lessons in Early Learning, left me puzzled. You can read the entire Pew report here:

http://www.pewtrusts.org/our_work_report_detail.aspx?id=60521

From the above report, this paragraph had me scratching my head:

“What can happen when a school district integrates high-quality early learning across the system as part of a comprehensive pre-k-12 reform plan? Almost 90 percent of kindergarteners enter first grade with essential early literacy skills, nearly 88 percent of third graders read proficiently, achievement gaps between different racial and ethnic groups across all grade levels decline by double digits, about 90 percent of 12th graders graduate from high school and about 77 percent of graduating seniors enroll in college.”

The reason I’m scratching my head is because the first cohort of Jerry’s kids—this is a label Board of Education members tagged students who experienced Weast initiatives and programs— are still currently sitting in 10th grade. How is possible for us to conclude that their preschool experiences had a positive impact on their high school graduation rates and college enrollment rates?

Jerry Weast first arrived in Montgomery County in August of 1999. So, the very first cohort of Jerry’s kids were preschoolers during the 1999/2000 school year. That then means that the first cohort or group of Jerry’s kids are now sitting in the 10th grade. Here is how that works/looks:



So, if Jerry’s kids are still in the 10th grade how is possible to correlate their preschool experiences with experiences that have not happened yet? And recently, I also noticed that Weast himself is attempting to connect MCPS preschool experiences with college graduation rates. Please see this Weast 2010 presentation here:

http://www2.ed.gov/about/inits/ed/earlylearning/weast-presentation.pdf

The first cohort of Jerry’s kids become college seniors in the fall of 2016, and they begin graduating from undergraduate schools in the spring of 2017. So, if this monumental occasion is still 6 years into the future, how does Weast get away with “twisting” realities?

Doing the MCPS math at Montgomery College

Here's some information about MCPS graduates from a Gazette article (11/3/10):

...About 30 percent of Montgomery County Public Schools graduates go to Montgomery College in their first year after high school, and 60 percent enroll by the second year, said school system spokesman Dana Tofig. About 10,000 students graduate from MCPS annually, he said...

And here is another Gazette article (12/8/10) that gives some information on students entering Montgomery College:

...A little more than 30 percent of students enrolled at Montgomery College take remedial reading and writing courses, while just over 60 percent of students require remedial courses in mathematics, said DeRionne P. Pollard, the first-year president of the college who attended the summit, which was hosted by the Maryland Association of Community Colleges...

Fewer MCPS kids pass AP exams, more take tests but scores fall - Examiner

Fairfax, Montgomery students pass fewer AP exams | Washington Examiner

Washington-area high school students are failing a larger percentage of college course-level exams -- losing out on college credit and showing a shortfall in learning -- as more of them take the test... 

...Montgomery's participation increased most significantly for minorities: 16.4 percent more black and 9.2 percent more Hispanic students took at least one AP exam, compared with a 1.6 percent increase for white students.

A teacher at Sherwood High School said most Montgomery high schools have special committees to identify minority students who should take AP courses.

"Like kids who haven't taken any AP classes but have been getting Bs and Cs, or if their GPA is above 2.0, they'll try to target that student and enroll them in an AP course," said the teacher, who spoke on background. "They know the subgroups they're trying to increase [participation for]. It's not a secret."

Of 19 subjects areas offered, 50 percent or more of black test-takers failed 12 subject areas. On nine of the exams, at least half of Hispanic students failed. There were no exams on which white or Asian students failed at a rate of 50 percent...

...But there were benefits to taking AP classes, even if a student didn't pass the year-end exam: "You're being exposed to challenging material. You're with a different group of kids than you would otherwise be with," the Sherwood teacher said.

Read more at the Washington Examiner here

Race to Nowhere Screening At Magruder HS

What: Screening of the film, "Race to Nowhere" (www.racetonowhere.com) and facilitated discussion following the film

Who: students, parents, teachers, administrators - anyone concerned about kids
Where: Magruder HS, 5939 Muncaster Mill Rd, Rockville, MD
When: Thursday, November 4th at 7 PM

To purchase tickets ($10 in advance, $15 at the door, with proceeds going to Magruder's PTSA): http://www.racetonowhere.com/screenings/magruder-high-school

Kensington Patch: Stressed Out About School

Kensington Patch: Parents are concerned that kids are so stressed out from school that it manifests physically, mentally and behaviorally.

I distinctly remember the day my then-second grader came home in tears over her math homework. "It's too hard, I can't do it," she cried. I happened to be at her school the next day and mentioned to her teacher that she was upset about the math homework...

...Up until now, this has been an issue that is addressed in hushed conversations outside of school walls. Teachers quietly admit it, parents struggle with how to help their kids, but officially, the subject is taboo.

But the tide may be turning. A group of parents at one local high school are organizing to bring the needs of their at-risk children to the community's attention. On Sept. 30, Walt Whitman High School is premiering the documentary Race to Nowhere, which explores the "pressures faced by American schoolchildren and their teachers in a system and culture obsessed with the illusion of achievement, competition and the pressure to perform." 

In Montgomery County, we will soon have the opportunity to make this a priority with the selection of a new school superintendent. Let's get this conversation out in the open and do something about it.

Gazette: SAT participation among Mont Co 2010 minority graduates drops

Gazette: Gap persists between whites, minorities on test's benchmark for college readiness
School News | Andrew Ujifusa

...Meanwhile, a significant racial achievement gap exists in meeting the school system's SAT benchmark for college readiness. Only 17.8 percent of blacks and 22.6 percent of Hispanics in the 2010 class achieved a 1650 or higher, indicating they are ready for college with no remedial courses, the school system said. Among Asians, 64.1 percent achieved that score, and 64.7 percent of whites reached it.

The percentages of black and Hispanic students who met the 1650 benchmark were up from 2009 by 2.2 and 3.3 percent, respectively. But the percentage of Hispanics who met that score has declined by 1.8 percent since 2006, and the percentages for blacks in 2006 and 2009 are identical...

Fostering the talents of individual students

Big Ideas in Education: More on Harvard's Ed.L.D. Program:

...In many ways, Weast's tenure (he announced his pending retirement last week) is a unique story of the triumph of political will over the status quo: Weast moved successfully to divide the high-performing, low-poverty and low-performing, high-poverty sections of his district into two zones, green and red, and funnel attention and resources from the former to the latter. Weast has identified seven keys to college readiness as his benchmarks for success in the district: they include on-time advancement to college-ready math and reading, and high performance on AP, IB, SAT and ACT exams. It is Weast's particularly political style of leadership, however, that has garnered his staunchest criticism, from parents and policymakers who argue he perpetuates inequalities in the district by low-balling accountability measures.


I spoke to one of these critics, district parent and gifted and talented education advocate Frederick Stichnoth, at length. In our conversation, Stichnoch argued the key to racial equity isn't simply ensuring all races achieve the same elementary benchmarks but to foster the talents of individual students, particularly minority students who can serve their communities best by achieving their full potential. By focusing narrowly on the seven keys, Stichnoth says, Weast has hidden broader differences in programming between green and red zone schools that prevent poorer and more diverse schools from serving individual student needs. More generally, Stichnoth views the division of the district into zones as itself hypocritical and counterproductive. By partnering with Harvard, and the rest of what he calls the "national education elite," Weast has avoided the district's particular problems by adopting the "cultural competence, courageous conversations and college-readiness buzzwords."


Stichnoth is not alone in his criticism of Weast's technique. Washington Post education writer Jay Matthews offered a measured criticisms of Weast's strategy as described in Leading for Equity as focusing too little on quality teachers (a criticism Education Sector analyst Elena Silva thought unjustified). The Post's Daniel de Vise also outlined critiques of the proxies Weast and the book use to measure growth, noting a declining minority graduation rate during Weast's tenure. Though from arguably different angles, both critiques argue Weast gave too little focus to district particularities and spent too much time shoring up political support for his agenda, a strategy which PELP and Harvard make no bones about emphasizing...

Weast: The Tour Continues

Superintendent Jerry Weast announced his retirement from MCPS on Tuesday.  Two days later, he was back on the speaking circuit. No need to be in Montgomery County four days before the new school year starts...

Diverse:  Poll: Expectations of Sending Children to College Growing Among U.S. Parents
by Jamaal Abdul-Alim , August 26, 2010

...Dr. Jerry Weast, superintendent of the Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland, said the Gallup poll is important for educational administrators, policymakers and others concerned with bringing about school reform.

He said he used Gallup methodology over a decade ago for a systemwide survey that found students felt largely disengaged and teachers felt largely unsupported.

Efforts were made to get better teachers and make the curriculum more engaging, Weast said, and today the Montgomery County Public Schools system has one of the highest high school graduation rates for Black and Latino males in the nation, as noted in a recent Schott Foundation report on the subject of public education and Black males.

“Listen to the Gallup Poll,” Weast said. “People are telling us they want their kids to go to college.”

PARCC or Seven Keys?

PARTNERSHIP APPLIES FOR RACE TO THE TOP ASSESSMENT FUNDS

MARYLAND JOINS 25 OTHER STATES TO DEVELOP COMMON ASSESSMENT

BALTIMORE, MD (June 24, 2010)

Maryland and 25 other states have joined together to create the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC or Partnership). On behalf of the Partnership, Florida yesterday submitted an application to the U.S. Department of Education as part of the “Race to the Top” grant competition... ...The goal of PARCC is to create an assessment system that will help states dramatically increase the number of students who graduate high school ready for college and careers and provide students, parents, teachers and policymakers with the tools they need to help students – from grade three through high school – stay on track and graduate prepared. “Maryland has been consistently involved with reform programs that we believe will move our students forward,” said State Superintendent of Schools Nancy S. Grasmick. “The PARCC consortium is committed to designing assessments that will ensure our graduates are prepared for success after high school. There is no more important goal facing public education at this time.” Press Release from Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) continues here.

Deliberate Excellence: Weast's Five Stages

Read all about it! Five stages to school system maturity.

Seven Keys to College Readiness.

The North Star (that would be North Star Number ONE, here, as opposed to the North Star project, what MCPS seems to be calling the Pearson deal).

Curricula with less choice about what is being taught.

Jerry Weast Explains It All To You in a current feature article in the June 2010 issue of The School Administrator, published by AASA,(No. 6, Vol 67) HERE: and sums up Montgomery County Public Schools by saying:

"A Stage 5 organization relies on its team to interpret these next steps. In Montgomery County, our professional learning communities have suggested some of the following solutions to common concerns:

• When there is too little time to teach all topics as discrete subject areas, we can create an integrated curriculum aligned with our goals but sensitive to our time.

• When students understand our high expectations but don’t value the work to get there, we can provide engagement strategies such as real-world applications or interest-based courses, programs and projects.

• When teachers need more content training but our face-to-face model is costly and time-consuming, we cannot only use technology, but implement job-embedded professional development.

• When staff is overwhelmed by too many monitoring tools, we can develop a gateway that integrates access to information through a single portal."

Read the whole article yourself HERE. And then ask yourself whether it reflects your child's experience.

Letter: Encouraging Every Student to Go To College is Not Realistic

From the Letter to the Editor in Sunday's Washington Post:

"College is fine and a worthy goal, but when your toilet or faucet is broken, you don't need a PhD. You need a plumber.
I certainly hope our political and educational leaders read that article and realize that encouraging every student to go to college is not realistic." E.M., Wheaton.

Agree? Disagree? It is time to make your viewpoint known to the Board of Education, especially in light of the new information that MCPS is considering changes to Edison, the county's well-regarded technical education center. Let's take a lesson from the past experiences with the Board of Education and find out the details more than 24 hours in advance of any proposed programmatic changes!

College Readiness Reports: A Few Concerns and A Lot of Questions

As part of its Seven Keys Initiative, MCPS is now tracking high school graduates. The tracking seems limited to determining if graduates enroll in college and persist through college to degree obtainment. The National Student Clearinghouse is being used to track graduates. Using its Clearinghouse data, MCPS recently released a number of reports which reveal college enrollment numbers for over 33,000 graduates. Reports also reveal how many or our graduates actually received a degree.

In my opinion, tracking our graduates is a worthwhile investment, but after reading the first set of public reports, I’m left with a number of concerns and questions.

· First, the number of MCPS graduates reported in these college readiness reports does not match previous MCPS reports of the number of MCPS graduates. The graduating classes in question include the classes of 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004. So focusing on just these four classes, I added up all of the Hispanic graduates from an official MCPS SAT report (http://sharedaccountability.mcpsprimetime.org/reports/list.php?selection=613). I counted 4,729 Hispanic graduates in this report. But the college readiness reports only count 4,214 Hispanic graduates. The difference of 515 is fairly large—10.8%. There also is a fairly large difference for African American graduates. By my calculations, the percentage of missing African American graduates is 8.3%. Where did the extra graduates disappear to? Are the missing graduates those who never enrolled in college at all? Or are they simply graduates no one was able to track down?

· Second, the graduation rates reported in these college readiness reports come without any benchmarks. MCPS is always telling the world how much better its students perform than others, but it may have hesitated to do so this time because our graduation rates are lower than the national averages. So, for example, MCPS reports that approximately 27% of its African American graduates earned a degree in six years. Sounds okay, right? But according to the U.S. Department of Education, the college graduation rate for black students is 42% (see the following publication: Horn, L. (2006). Placing College Graduation Rates in Context: How 4-Year College Graduation Rates Vary With Selectivity and the Size of Low-Income Enrollment (NCES 2007-161). U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics.) The national graduation rate for white kids is 62%, a figure slightly higher than 58% graduation rate for white MCPS graduates. So, how come MCPS graduates are doing worst?

· Third, given the size of the data file – following 33,000+ graduates, I actually thought MCPS would provide us with much more than what they recently released. For example, I’m really interested in seeing the college data broken out by FARMS participation. Pretty much all the research on college persistence and graduation tells us that money matters a lot when it comes to completing college. So, how do our poor students perform? How do our special education students perform? How do African American males perform? The latter is a group of students known to have poor college outcomes. How many of our graduates who entered Montgomery College transfer successfully to a 4-year college and earn a degree?

· Finally, I wish MCPS researchers would do a better job of explaining how they do what they do in terms of research methodologies, including providing us with information on the reliability of the information and data obtained from the National Student Clearinghouse. The MCPS college readiness reports are almost void of explaining methodology. My favorite book of college attendance and persistence and what it all means is The Shape of the River (Bowen & Bok). That book alone spends more than 100 pages explaining its methodology. From this book you can honestly figure out what the researchers did and how they did it. MCPS provides nothing in the way of details. For some of us, the details matter.

Joseph Hawkins