US GAO REPORT: DISTANCE LEARNING: Challenges Providing Services to K-12 English Learners and Students with Disabilities during COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic forced schools to rapidly shift to distance learning. This presented logistical and instructional challenges, especially for English learners and students with disabilities—both of whom have persistent achievement gaps compared to other student subgroups.

Some English learners couldn't fully participate in distance learning due to language barriers and limited access to technology (e.g., computers and the internet). Special education services for students with disabilities—including related services like occupational, physical, or speech therapy—were particularly difficult to deliver remotely...

 https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-21-43

Baltimore County School Board Members Say Divided Board Not Doing Enough For Poor Students

The COVID-19 pandemic is making clear the divide between the rich and the poor students in Baltimore County schools, according to members of the school board.

Closing that divide may be made more difficult because the board itself is divided and distracted.

School board member Cheryl Pasteur said the board has not been focused on those children most at risk, especially now while they are distance learning.

Pasteur asked, “What do we think is happening to those children while they are out of school?”

Earlier this month, the board did agree to form an equity committee. Board member Moalie Jose said the idea was first brought up more than one year ago, but at the time was dismissed.

“So what does it say about us as a board? Where is our direction?” Jose asked...

https://www.wypr.org/post/baltimore-county-school-board-members-say-divided-board-not-doing-enough-poor-students#:~:text=Baltimore%20County%20School%20Board%20Members%20Say%20Divided,Doing%20Enough%20For%20Poor%20Students&text=Board%20member%20Moalie%20Jose%20said,at%20the%20time%20was%20dismissed.

1/27/20 TODAY at 2 PM: Council to Follow Up on Report that MCPS "Largely Ineffective" in Closing Achievement Gap

The Washington Post Editorial:  Montgomery County has made little progress on its achievement gap is at the center of today's discussion at the County Council.  This Editorial has been included in the worksession briefing packet supplied to Councilmembers.

Today at 2PM the Montgomery County Council will discuss the Office of Legislative Oversight Report:  MCPS Performance and Opportunity Gaps .  The meeting will be livestreamed and archived for viewing later.

Read today's Montgomery County Council Worksession Briefing packet:
https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/council/Resources/Files/agenda/cm/2020/20200127/20200127_EC1.pdf

Report: Montgomery Co. efforts to close student achievement gaps ineffective

While more than half of Montgomery County, Maryland, students are black and Latino, many attend schools that lack in resources, according to a report released in December by the Office of Legislative Oversight.

The report also shows that many of those schools have a high percentage of students from impoverished families. The report states that the consensus among researchers is that higher-poverty schools tend to yield lower-levels of academic performance, especially among students of color and low-income students.

The findings highlight ineffective efforts to close achievement gaps since the last report was released in 2015...

https://wtop.com/montgomery-county/2019/12/montgomery-county-efforts-to-close-achievement-gaps-among-minority-students-prove-ineffective/

Report: Montgomery County’s attempt to narrow student performance gap is ‘largely ineffective’

Despite attempts by Maryland’s largest school system to close achievement gaps between black and Latino children and their white and Asian peers, those differences have barely budged in recent years, a new report finds.

Montgomery County is one of the state’s most diverse districts, with more than half of its students identifying as black or Latino and nearly 30,000 children who are learning English. But those same students are concentrated in schools with large populations of children from impoverished families, according to the report from the county’s Office of Legislative Oversight, which monitors local government-funded activities.

The school district has made scant progress since 2015 — the last time the oversight office published a study on achievement gaps — in ensuring equitable access to resources, officials say...

...However, the oversight office’s report called the county’s efforts “largely ineffective.” On several measures of academic performance, disparities between white and Asian students and black and Latino children remain unchanged. In several cases — particularly regarding SAT scores, English language arts and graduation rates — the performance gaps between Latinos and their white and Asian peers grew wider.

“These findings echo findings from prior [Office of Legislative Oversight] reports documenting persistent performance gaps by race and ethnicity in 2007, 2008, 2013 and 2014,” the report reads...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/report-montgomery-countys-attempt-to-narrow-student-performance-gap-is-largely-ineffective/2019/12/30/eec8729e-227e-11ea-bed5-880264cc91a9_story.html

Who’s on top? Who’s at the bottom? Who cares. Give everybody a shot in the classroom.

...Consider achievement gaps. Education researchers spend much time examining them. Big gaps between rich children and poor ones are considered bad, and small gaps are good. But there are instances when shrinking achievement gaps can be deceiving: It could mean children who were doing well have stopped doing so well.

Low-income students’ scores can drop, while high-income students’ scores drop even more. Low-income scores can remain steady, while high-income scores drop. The gap is narrowed in those cases, but to what end? The difference gets smaller, but somebody is still losing ground.

Why not focus on each student’s progress? Why these knee-jerk comparisons with other people who have different problems?...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/whos-on-top-whos-at-the-bottom-who-cares-give-everybody-a-shot-in-the-classroom/2019/12/04/9247e2a2-1540-11ea-8406-df3c54b3253e_story.html?fbclid=IwAR2nor9HhrQXH9PuLdMXpAj50D0alz-1-KaR2ew5aJ9sGX6rvB0TTWr2QMM

MCPS CLASS OF 2019 SCORED 48 POINTS LOWER ON SAT, BUT PARTICIPATION RISES

The Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) Class of 2019 scored 48 points lower on the SAT than the Class of 2018. The average combined score for 2019 was 1119. 

The average combined score for all Maryland public school graduates in 2019 was 1041, a 25-point decrease from 2018. MCPS graduates earned 78 points more compared to other public school graduates in Maryland this year.

In mean total scores, Hispanic/Latino graduates scored 74 points lower on the SAT in 2019. Special education graduates scored 95 points lower, and FARMS (Free and Reduced Price Meals) students scored 52 points lower. 

The SAT includes two sections: Evidence-based Reading and Writing (ERW), and Math. The College Board has benchmark scores in both of these sections that indicate college/career readiness. The benchmark score for ERW is 480, and for Math it is 530. 

Among Hispanic graduates, 16.2 percent fewer students reached the benchmark score in the ERW section in 2019 than in 2018. In the Math section, 13.2 percent fewer Hispanic students reached the benchmark. 

Special education graduates saw a 16.3 percent drop in benchmark scores on the ERW section, and a 13.5 percent drop in Math.  

2019 graduates who received FARMS saw a 12.9 percent drop in ERW benchmark scores...

https://www.mymcmedia.org/mcps-class-of-2019-scored-48-points-lower-on-sat-but-participation-rises/?fbclid=IwAR0v0c6f2GjX1S73UyNg5oFmcACwLezPOUXrfKZwd5WHZ2bzyVxXi5unSRE

Researcher’s fight to close achievement gap irked school board for years

Joe Hawkins learned early how much trouble he could get into as an educational researcher, particularly when he reported problems in his high-performing but self-congratulatory school district in Montgomery County, Md.

In 1981, Hawkins, as an evaluation specialist, was the first researcher to identify publicly the district’s black-white achievement gap. When he and a colleague published their results in the College Board Review, a school board member asked why school employees were putting out negative information.

It has been like that his whole career, ending this year at age 68 with his retirement from the position of senior study director for the survey research firm Westat. Few people know his name, but Hawkins has made important discoveries on many issues and been a valuable resource for education writers like me.

He grew up in the Washington area, got a bachelor’s degree in anthropology at Boston University and trained as a reading specialist at Howard University. He has an activist’s temperament. Few researchers have stuck their necks out as far as Hawkins has.

He became particularly notorious in 2001, shortly after he moved to Westat, when the Montgomery County Board of Education — for reasons that still make no sense to me — turned down a proposal by Hawkins and several brilliant Montgomery educators for the Jaime Escalante Public Charter School...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/researchers-fight-to-close-achievement-gap-irked-school-board-for-years/2017/08/24/b66e6b74-8799-11e7-a94f-3139abce39f5_story.html?utm_term=.159f759e319e

MCPS Grad: It [Montgomery Co.] is also largely segregated and fiercely competitive. I grew up surrounded by so much privilege it was possible for many residents to ignore race and class inequality entirely."

Finding Growth at My Historically Black College

“A black school? But you’re so smart, you could go anywhere.”

That was the reaction I got when I told some high school friends that I would attend Spelman, a historically black women’s college in Atlanta. I know they thought they were complimenting me.

At first, I tried to justify my decision, pointing to the college’s notable alumnae and research opportunities. But the fact that Spelman is the nation’s top-ranked historically black college was lost on them. I couldn’t make my peers understand the experience of a black student in an overwhelmingly white school. I couldn’t convey the significance of historically black colleges and universities...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/01/opinion/sunday/finding-growth-at-my-historically-black-college.html?_r=0

 

MCPS: once nearly all-white school district has a new largest group: Hispanic students

Hispanic students for the first time outnumber their peers in other racial and ethnic groups in Montgomery County’s public schools, a milestone for diversity in a suburb long regarded as largely white and affluent.
The school district in 2016-2017 is 30 percent Hispanic, 29 percent white, 22 percent black and 14 percent Asian, according to school district data, a student body that would have been difficult to imagine five decades ago, when Montgomery’s enrollment was 94 percent white...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/a-once-nearly-all-white-district-now-has-a-new-largest-group-hispanic-students/2016/10/21/99501810-8efe-11e6-a6a3-d50061aa9fae_story.html

Montgomery Co. officials seek answers on school class size

ROCKVIILLE, Md. — Montgomery County Public Schools received millions of dollars to help cut class sizes in an effort to improve student performance and narrow the achievement gap. But not every school has seen the number of students in classrooms reduced — and officials say that’s by design.
“Some classrooms don’t need a reduction,” said Jack Smith, Montgomery County’s superintendent of schools. “Some need a reduction, but we did that with a para-educator and not with another teacher.”...

http://wtop.com/montgomery-county/2016/10/montgomery-co-officials-seek-answers-on-school-class-size/

"...he intended to show that racism in America is not dead..." Montgomery Village Middle School

Student recommended for mental health screening after drawing picture of lynching and ‘Black Lives Matter’

MCPS Disconnect: County Economic and Workforce Development, and Fair Housing

MCPS Disconnect: County Economic and Workforce Development, and Fair Housing
  

New Strategies,​ ​Ready​ ​for​ ​Tomorrow,New​ ​HUD​ ​Affirmatively Furthering​ ​Fair​ ​Housing​ ​Reg  

​ ​ Frederick Stichnoth

    September 1, 2016

http://www.fredsed.net/p/freds-papers.html

What’s the point(s)?

1. To show that the achievement gap messes up Montgomery County economic and workforce development and fair housing;

2.  To show that Montgomery County Public Schools has neither yet joined up nor even been recruited for (!!) the County teams of champions  working real-real hard on economic and workforce development strategy;

3. To suggest that the education achievement and related fair housing gaps are about to become real, real embarrassing for the County--especially for County economic development (real);

4. To call on senior public officials and highly influential people (HIP) (and even right-minded, albeit segregated, regular old folk, who can both-Whoa!-think and hit the send button to prod an SPO or HIPster) to get off your fa_...vorite anteroom couch and do your political leadership job: deliver the message to the Superintendent, the Board of Ed and all Moco segregated citizens that the achievement gap is, at long last (because it’s 2016 for gosh sake!) like totally unacceptable--so just ain’t gonna be tolerated no more (and hey--this time we really mean it, for a change; so fasten your seatbelt: no more tax-extracted wads of benjamins in your leaky bucket, no more happy hype for failure, no more election endorsements of lightweight,do-nothing, gap gabbers.

   FredsEd MCPS Disconnect by Parents' Coalition of Montgomery County, Maryland on Scribd

More psychobabble, no specifics on MCPS achievement gap

http://eastmoco.blogspot.com/2016/07/more-psychobabble-no-specifics-on-mcps.html

New superintendent concerned about readiness

ROCKVILLE –Montgomery County Public Schools’ new superintendent told the County Council Monday he is concerned about how well students are prepared at the end of high school for college or careers. 
MCPS Superintendent Jack Smith pointed out that not every senior desires to take college courses after finishing high school, and that a number of students are graduating unprepared for either college or a career. He told the County Council and the Board of Education that MCPS should be able to prepare students across the county for either college or a career, whichever they decide. 
“We need that collaborative effort, and then we need to be able to tell students, ‘Whether you want to get a career right out of high school or (attend) Montgomery College; College Park; UVA; the University of California, Berkeley, we don’t care,’” Smith said. “‘We want to make sure you are well-prepared.’”
Council member Sidney Katz (D-3) told Smith he was concerned there are too few technical school opportunities available for students who intend to enter careers right after high school.
“The academics are obviously (something) Montgomery County is proud of, but I also get concerned about technical schools, and it’s been touched on,” said Katz.
Katz pointed out that some students who prefer to work with their hands and may want to become electricians or plumbers may not always be top students academically. Students should have access to training in skills they could put towards a job they seek, he said....

 http://thesentinel.com/mont/newsx/local/item/3868-new-superintendent-concerned-about-readiness

MCPS has to "lift their work" #achievementgap #wow

During a board of education meeting on Monday evening, the new Montgomery County Public School Superintendent, Jack Smith laid out his goals for the 2016 - 2017 school year; and one of the new strategies will include addressing a slight opportunity gap.
"There's an opportunity gap across the nation and even in MCPS where certain student groups like African American, Latino students, and students from lower economic classes aren't performing as well in schools, and what we have to do is lift our work to ensure that they can have the opportunity and resources to achieve and that they have the high levels of student learning that we should expect from them,” said Turner.


http://www.your4state.com/news/i-270/montgomery-county-public-schools-superintendent-lays-out-goals-for-new-school-year

WTOP: New Montgomery Co. school superintendent plans to close achievement gap #wow

...At a board of education meeting, Smith — who has been on the job for less than a month — referenced a 2014 report that showed disparities which he says falls most heavily on African-American and Latino students, as well as students living in poverty.
Smith said he wants to start by emphasizing cultural competency training for educators, something that is already taking place at schools in the county. Part of the school system’s task, he says, will be making sure the training is working and giving the schools the tools and assistance educators need to help students.
He also plans to use testing and assessment programs already in place along with feedback from teachers on students to get more frequent progress updates on how schools and students are performing...

http://wtop.com/montgomery-county/2016/07/new-montgomery-co-school-superintendent-plans-close-achievement-gap/

New MCPS superintendent promises to keep students safe

MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Md. (WUSA9) – The new Montgomery County superintendent promises to keep all 157,000 student safe.
Dr. Jack Smith is a former teacher, principal and superintendent of Calvert County schools.
“Education excites you,” asks WUSA9 Reporter Andrea McCarren.

“Tremendously. It’s just the best thing in the whole world,” Dr. Smith responds.
Dr. Smith’s enthusiasm is infectious.
“We expect students to learn, we expect to keep students safe and secure in our buildings. We expect to be efficient and good stewards of taxpayer money,” he said.
We asked Dr. Smith about a wide range of issues, including racial and economic inequality.
He vows to eliminate disparities.
“If a student isn’t learning, we have the capacity, we have the expertise, we have the understanding on how to help that student,” Dr. Smith said.
Underage drinking?
“In any way that we can prevent it, we should. Any way we can talk with parents, we should,” Dr. Smith said. “The goal is not punishment. The goal is to have students know and understand the very real, natural, logical consequences.”
Alleged sex offenders in the classroom?
“I take the responsibility of the safety and security for every child very seriously. I really do. I have five children and four grandchildren,” said Dr. Smith.
He promises a team effort to ensure a good reporting system is in place and strong protocols are implemented in every one of Montgomery County’s 204 schools.
“Around any sort of abuse, around any sort of inappropriate sexual activity, and around all the other things that are real risks to students,” Dr. Smith said.
It’s his third day on the job and he is wildly optimistic.
“We are a very, very fortunate community and I’m glad to be a part of it,” Dr. Smith said.
Montgomery County Public Schools offer an Extended Learning Opportunities - Summer Adventures in Learning (ELO - SAIL) program to give students in kindergarten, first and second grade a chance to practice their reading, math and language arts skills. 

“Tremendously. It’s just the best thing in the whole world,” Dr. Smith responds.
Dr. Smith’s enthusiasm is infectious.
“We expect students to learn, we expect to keep students safe and secure in our buildings. We expect to be efficient and good stewards of taxpayer money,” he said.
We asked Dr. Smith about a wide range of issues, including racial and economic inequality.
He vows to eliminate disparities.
“If a student isn’t learning, we have the capacity, we have the expertise, we have the understanding on how to help that student,” Dr. Smith said.
Underage drinking?
“In any way that we can prevent it, we should. Any way we can talk with parents, we should,” Dr. Smith said. “The goal is not punishment. The goal is to have students know and understand the very real, natural, logical consequences.”
Alleged sex offenders in the classroom?
“I take the responsibility of the safety and security for every child very seriously. I really do. I have five children and four grandchildren,” said Dr. Smith.
He promises a team effort to ensure a good reporting system is in place and strong protocols are implemented in every one of Montgomery County’s 204 schools.
“Around any sort of abuse, around any sort of inappropriate sexual activity, and around all the other things that are real risks to students,” Dr. Smith said.
It’s his third day on the job and he is wildly optimistic.
“We are a very, very fortunate community and I’m glad to be a part of it,” Dr. Smith said.
Montgomery County Public Schools offer an Extended Learning Opportunities - Summer Adventures in Learning (ELO - SAIL) program to give students in kindergarten, first and second grade a chance to practice their reading, math and language arts skills. 

http://www.wusa9.com/news/local/maryland/new-montgomery-co-superintendent-promises-to-keep-students-safe/265249899

Durso said lowering all schools by two students would be an exaggeration.

ROCKVILLE – The Montgomery County Council president said reducing the achievement gap among public school students was a major part of the council’s budget but she did not explain how the council would spend money to address it.

County Council President Nancy Floreen (D) referred to a letter she said Montgomery County Public Schools chairman Michael Durso (District 5) wrote in which he explained how the board would address the gap in academic performance between different groups of students.

“The detail is in Mr. Durso’s letter and it hasn’t been fully spelled out yet,” said Floreen...

 http://www.thesentinel.com/mont/newsx/local/item/3620-questions-rise-on-school-budget

Fuzzy Math Keeps Opposition to Tobytown Ride On Bus Alive

Last year, the Montgomery County Department of Transportation estimated that a Monday - Friday daytime Ride On bus route running every 60 - 75 minutes to Tobytown would draw 100 patrons.

http://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/council/Resources/Files/agenda/cm/2015/150424/20150424_TE1.pdf

This morning, at the County Council's Transportation Commitee meeting, Council staffer Glenn Orlin said that the Tobytown route would draw 48 patrons daily.  He said the line would draw 30 patrons during peak hours, and an additional 18 during the day.

But, Councilmember Tom Hucker apparently only heard the number 18 and said:

"I am struck by the cost per rider, if 18 is correct that's $10,000 per rider...it would be cheaper to buy them a car, right?"

No one in the room corrected Councilmember Hucker and he voted against the proposal to add all day Ride On bus service to Tobytown.

No one in the room explained why the Department of Transportation estimate of 100 patrons daily was not being used to discuss this proposal.