Superintendent Joshua Starr
at the Silver Spring Citizens Advisory Board
September 9, 2013
Summary by Frederick
Stichnoth
Red zone. As I
entered (late), Dr. Starr was saying that he does not use the “red
zone/green zone” terminology; it is unnecessary and sometimes
counterproductive. I think that the conditions Dr. Weast saw in 1999
persist: correlation of low academic performance with concentrations
of minority and FARMS students in the east County. No terminology has
replaced “red zone.” So to stop using “red zone” is to erase
or ignore an important educational, social and community phenomenon.
Concentration of poverty explains a lot, when it is allowed to.
Dr.
Starr’s ban on this terminology is a political act disfavoring
populations who benefit from focus on the concentration of poverty
phenomenon.
Education debt. Dr.
Starr prefers Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings notion of “education debt
(
http://centerx.gseis.ucla.edu/principal-leadership/documents/Ladson-BillingsDebt.pdf)”
to the standard notion of “achievement gap.” Education debt
changes the focus from a current snapshot of the performance gap to
the historical factors that have cumulated into the current snapshot.
Dr. Starr then said
that there are “two sides” in the debate as to how to address the
debt/gap: Joel Klein/Michelle Rhee permit “no excuses” in
committing the schools to address the gap through teaching alone; and
Richard Rothstein believes that significant progress cannot be made
without ameliorating poverty
(
http://www.epi.org/files/2013/Unfinished-March-School-Segregation.pdf).
In this debate, Dr.
Starr says he comes down “somewhere in the middle.” Where?
Dr. Starr emphasized
that “teaching and learning” (Klein/Rhee) is the “number one”
in-school factor determining education outcomes. This contrasts with
the well-tested foundation finding of sociologist James Coleman that
school composition/peer group is the number one factor.
Dr. Starr should
consider how MCPS’ linking of school assignments to
socio-economically segregated neighborhoods causes the education debt
to compound.
How did “tracking”
get into the conversation? Gifted and talented education was not
addressed by the audience or Dr. Starr as a topic, but nevertheless
Dr. Starr, on his own, referred to “tracking” twice. First,
apparently countering Dan Reed’s suggestion that MCPS needs to
integrate its schools, Dr. Starr said that in Stamford, where schools
were integrated, classrooms had been segregated by tracking.
Second,
Dr. Starr is wrestling with how MCPS can support career and technical
education (vocational ed) without falling into tracking. I understand
the risks, but believe we must serve every child.
I also suggest to
gifted and talented education advocates that GT/ability grouping is
not the stand-alone topic they would make it. If, when “red zone”
is the topic, the leader skips to ability grouping; and when CTE is
the topic the leader skips to ability grouping, then those with an
interest in ability grouping must either address a much wider set of
topics or be self-relegated to the sidelines.
Bona fide experts
only. Before I arrived, Dan Reed’s very widely discussed
Post
on-line piece (MCPS schools,
segregation--
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-great-montgomery-county-schools-they-were-once-maybe-they-can-be-again/2013/09/06/e5bb70c0-15ab-11e3-be6e-dc6ae8a5b3a8_story.html)
was raised by the audience.
Dr. Starr rejoined: "There's no
dearth of self-professed experts on education because they went to
school."
Dr. Starr’s remark
doesn’t really grapple with the substance of Dan’s piece, but is
more an
ad hominem put down.
To extract some
substance from Dr. Starr’s slam, I wonder if the achievement gap,
school composition, school results and schooling in general are
matters best kept in the exclusive purview of professionals with Ed.D
degrees, protected from community input. In an earlier era, should
school desegregation have been left to the schoolmen, and Dr. King
relegated to reading Rheinhold Niebuhr? Isn’t the education of the
community’s children a matter for community, political, discussion?
That raises the odd
appearance of Raymond E. Callahan. Dr. Starr often refers to his book
Education and the Cult of Efficiency
(
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_sabc?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&pageMinusResults=1&suo=1378814409484#/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_23?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=education%20and%20the%20cult%20of%20efficiency&sprefix=Education+and+the+cult+%2Cstripbooks%2C240&rh=i%3Astripbooks%2Ck%3Aeducation%20and%20the%20cult%20of%20efficiency),
even when it’s not quite obvious how Callahan should apply. He did
so again last night, in connection with the CTE quandary. Callahan
was interested in the intrusion of business values and procedures
into education during the Progressive era. Callahan’s thesis (which
Dr. Starr did not refer to) involves “the extreme vulnerability of
our schoolmen to public criticism and pressure and that this
vulnerability is built into our pattern of local support and
control.” So maybe Callahan’s thesis supports Dr. Starr’s quest
to be elevated above community comment.
On the other side of
the “expert schoolmen” debate, noted University of Maryland
political scientist Clarence Stone argues:
“During the
Progressive Era, a consensus emerged, among elites if not necessarily
more broadly, that education was a specialized arena in which
decision making was best left to those with deep knowledge and
expertise.”
“Subsystem elites
and their privileges are protected less by the direct assertion of
political power than by the broad acceptance of certain ways of
understanding what items are legitimate issues for the exercise of
public power.”
“Exaltation of
technique and organizational form constitutes the second intellectual
wellspring that feeds the misguided mission to create an educational
system outside politics.”
“Civic capacity
involves mobilization by a broader array of community interests to
remove policy-making authority from subperforming policy subsystems.”
“America spent most
of the twentieth century trying to take politics out of education.
That was a mistake.”
Building Civic Capacity: The Politics of
Reforming Urban Schools.
http://www.amazon.com/Building-Civic-Capacity-Reforming-Government/dp/0700611185/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1378815895&sr=8-1&keywords=building+civic+capacity
Dan Reed does not seem
to be a “self-professed expert,” but a politically-concerned
citizen. MCPS is “subperforming,” leaving swaths of the County
behind. That’s a matter for civic involvement—politics.
Funding. The
PTA president from Silver Spring International Middle Schools (FARMS
43.7%), argued that the high FARMS rate and other factors justify
increased MCPS funding. Dr. Starr responded that “we do fund
according to needs.” He cited the funding in the current budget of
30 middle school focus teachers to provide instruction to students
who have not been successful in math and English in the regular
classroom setting, to which was budgeted $1,499,850. He also cited
the new Core Values commitment to distribute resources to produce
equity. To the non-expert, this seems to be a good allocation of
funds.
MCPS should produce an “equity budget” to show the
interaction of all sources and uses of funds in addressing the
disparate needs of schools and neighborhoods.
