Group demands update from Montgomery Co. Schools on literacy initiative

MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Md. (7News) — An advocacy group known as the Black and Brown Coalition for Educational Equity and Excellence is pushing Montgomery County Public Schools to do more to improve reading scores for minority students.

7News checked Evidence of Learning literacy scores from the 2023-2024 school year and found 85% of white students were proficient in literacy in Montgomery County, while only 62% of Black and 54% of Hispanic students were proficient...

https://wjla.com/news/crisis-in-the-classrooms/maryland-montgomery-county-public-schools-mcpa-black-and-brown-coalition-educational-equity-excellence-group-reading-launguage-arts-literacy-changes-students-teachers-help-reporting-scores-hispanic-board-of-education-policy

Schoolhouse Limbo: How Low Will Educators Go to 'Better' Grades?

Maryland’s new education chief, Carey Wright, an old-school champion of rigorous standards, is pushing back against efforts in other states to boost test scores by essentially lowering their expectations of students.

States, including Oklahoma and Wisconsin, are making it easier for students to demonstrate on annual assessments that they are proficient in math and English after a decade of declining test scores nationwide. By redesigning the assessments and lowering the so-called “cut scores” that separate achievement levels such as basic, proficient, and advanced, several states have recently posted dramatic increases in proficiency, a key indicator of school quality. 

Wright warns that lowering the bar on proficiency can create the public impression that schools are improving and students are learning more when, in fact, that’s not the case. 

“You can make yourself look better to the public by lowering your cut scores,” Wright, the Maryland state superintendent of schools, told RealClearInvestigations in an interview. “But then you are not really measuring proficiency. My position is no, no, no. Parents and teachers need to know if their children are proficient or not.”..

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2024/11/12/schoolhouse_limbo_how_low_will_educators_go_to_better_grades_1070484.html

Montgomery parents of color call for more info on students’ reading skills

Parents say they struggle to understand if their child is reading below grade level.

Montgomery County advocacy groups and afterschool service providers say they have noticed a troubling trend: Students of color were not reading on grade level, but their parents had no idea because a report card indicated the child was passing in the subject...

https://wapo.st/4hTWwez

Maryland won’t force struggling readers to repeat third grade [Maryland will not be Carey Wright's Mississippi]

After getting flooded with public comments, the Maryland State Department of Education is softening the most controversial part of its proposed literacy policy.

In July, the education department drafted a mandate for third graders to be held back if they aren’t reading at grade level. The policy mirrored one Maryland’s State Superintendent Carey Wright introduced in Mississippi, which preceded a rise in fourth grade reading scores on a national test from second-to-last to the middle of the pack.

But it seems Maryland won’t be taking that exact approach. In a revised draft of the policy, parents have gained the right to challenge a school district’s decision to make a child repeat third grade...

https://www.thebaltimorebanner.com/education/k-12-schools/maryland-literacy-policy-third-grade-3DYNYLJ3YJFW3HNHORGVCBWQEM/

Gaithersburg High School, a crowd of 500+ youth, parents and many elected officials heard from parents and faced data showing how few Black and Brown @MCPS students are reading on grade level.

Last night at Gaithersburg High School, a crowd of 500+ youth, parents and many elected officials heard from parents and faced data showing how few Black and Brown @MCPS students are reading on grade level. @BandBCoalitions pushing for both an early warning system for parents pic.twitter.com/9itPYHXAaT

— Identity (@IdentityYouthMD) November 10, 2023

Math and reading scores for American 13-year-olds plunge to lowest levels in decades

ath and reading scores among America’s 13-year-olds fell to their lowest levels in decades, with math scores plunging by the largest margin ever recorded, according to the results of a federal test known as the nation’s report card.

The results, released Wednesday, are the latest measure of the deep learning setbacks incurred during the pandemic. While earlier testing revealed the magnitude of America’s learning loss, the latest test casts light on the persistence of those setbacks, dimming hopes of swift academic recovery.

More than two years after most students returned to in-person class, there are still “worrisome signs about student achievement,” said Peggy G. Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, a branch of the federal Education Department.

“The ‘green shoots’ of academic recovery that we had hoped to see have not materialized,” Carr said in a statement.

Math and reading scores for American 13-year-olds plunge to lowest levels in decades | Maryland Daily Record (thedailyrecord.com)

Heinemann’s billion-dollar sales have nationwide reach: @mcps @mocoboe spent $1,905,023.86 on Heinemann materials over 10 years

Heinemann’s billion-dollar sales have nationwide reach

APM Reports found that the controversial educational publishing company has sold instructional materials and professional resources in almost every state, earning at least $1.6 billion over a decade. 

Teaching children to read is not just a critical piece of elementary education. It’s also big business. 

In 2019, school districts spent more on English language arts programs for elementary schools than on all instructional materials for middle and high schools combined, according to the Association of American Publishers, an industry trade group. That year, school districts spent $1.33 billion on reading programs for kids in pre-K through sixth grade. 

Heinemann Publishing — which puts out curricula by Lucy Calkins, and Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell — has been among the largest players in that market. What hasn’t been clear is just how much money Heinemann earns and how widespread its products are. That’s what APM Reports wanted to find out...

 ...Much of that money comes from districts across the country. APM Reports sent records requests to the largest school districts in every state — 100 districts in total — asking if they had purchased materials from Heinemann in the past decade. We obtained records for 87 districts. All but five said they’d purchased Heinemann materials...

 ...But most controversially, some of the books and curriculum have perpetuated a theory that’s commonly referred to as cueing. The theory holds that students can be taught to problem solve unknown words with multiple sources of information, like context and picture clues. It’s a strategy that cognitive scientists have refuted in repeated studies. Other publishing companies put out programs based on this theory, but Heinemann’s products are among the most popular...  

Heinemann’s billion-dollar sales have nationwide reach | APM Reports

Montgomery students are meeting literacy expectations but are behind in math

Montgomery County students met the school system’s performance target in reading but fell short of goals in math for the last school year, according to academic data shared with the school board Thursday.

Overall, 71.7 percent of students met academic standards in literacy. That was 5.8 percentage points higher than the goal for the 2021-2022 school year, which was originally set for 65.9 percent.

Math scores were lower, with 61.2 percent of students meeting expectations; lower than the 64.1 percent target...

Montgomery students are meeting literacy expectations but are behind in math - The Washington Post

Literacy: The Forgotten Social Justice Issue

...In 2017, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) found that sixty percent of children nationwide are not reading proficiently. If we look to the disaggregated data by race, it becomes even more stark. Though these levels of proficiency have not improved in the last 30 years, we’ve been made to believe that tests don’t matter. That tests are racist and cannot accurately measure what our students know. We can call tests racist (the people making them might be), and  inaccurate measures of achievement (they actually measure general knowledge), but overall, what has this amounted to? A lowering of expectations across the board. 

A school can earn a designation of *high-performing with just 60% of its students on grade level. This means that 40% of the school is not reading and comprehending texts proficiently. Which 40% of our children don’t deserve to read? 

A public school in my neighborhood has approximately 34%  of students meeting or exceeding standards in reading, yet is categorized as “changing the odds” for African-American students. 70% of Black children in this school are still struggling to read, but this is the best choice that parents have for instruction in the area. 

We cannot place our individual notions of what progress and performance looks like on a community that we do not know. Before deciding for our students that tests don’t matter, a proclamation that comes from the privilege of never having had to worry about the implications of tests on our lives, in all things, we must partner with parents and ask: Do they care that their child isn’t reading on grade level? Do they care that faulty theories are being used in their child’s classroom? ..

https://projectforeverfree.org/literacy-the-most-forgotten-social-justice-issue/

"A sense of urgency is called for because 2,010 students dropped out of MCPS in the past 2.5 years, the number of students in a medium-sized high school." That's a lot of dropping out!

• From 2017 to the present, approximately 544 Grade 9 students, 696 Grade 10 students, 390 Grade 11 students, and 380 Grade 12 students dropped out of school in MCPS

• MCPS data reveal that in the 2015‒2016 school year, 28,144 of our 152,439 students were chronically absent; 18.5 percent of the total number of students, and those numbers are rising as our enrollment increases; the 18.5 percent is greater than the national average of 10 to 15 percent. 

• [Parents were excluded from Superintendent Jack Smith's committee.]

•  READING is another major concern with thousands of students reading below grade level, some so low they are embarrassed because they cannot do the academic work, and therefore,they drop out. Thirty-one percent of this year’s Grade 9 students and 28 percent of Grade 6 students read below grade level (MCPS data).

• Insufficient attention to equity [This from the public school system that charges students illegal class fees!] seen in the high number of dropouts among students who receive Free and Reduced-Price Meals System (FARMS) services (40 percent of total MCPS dropouts) and the disproportionate numbers of Black or African American 

Full text of Superintendent Jack R. Smith's memo to the Board of Education:

https://go.boarddocs.com/mabe/mcpsmd/Board.nsf/files/BEBM2D591C6C/$file/Student%20Attendance%20Pathway%20Engagement%20190729.pdf

60 percent of Montgomery County graduates require remedial math courses

...The math relearning at Montgomery College can last as long as three semesters, depending on where a student is placed. But the problem is not just math. Nearly 30 percent of Montgomery County graduates need remedial English courses, and 26 percent need remedial reading classes, the figures show...

 http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/one-maryland-college-tests-a-new-approach-to-remedial-math-courses/2015/07/26/ea36318c-2b0f-11e5-bd33-395c05608059_story.html

2013 NAEP math and reading results are now available

http://nationsreportcard.gov/reading_math_2013/#/

MCPS 2013 Grade 3 MSA Reading Scores

	Grade 3 Reading 2013
Carderock Springs Elementary	100
Cashell Elementary	100
Cold Spring Elementary	100
Bradley Hills Elementary	100
Seven Locks Elementary	98.18181818
Farmland Elementary	98.05825243
Wayside Elementary	97.84946237
Thurgood Marshall Elementary	97.64705882
Wyngate Elementary	97.45762712
Kensington Parkwood Elementary	97.19626168
Bells Mill Elementary	97
Rachel Carson Elementary	96.57534247
Bannockburn Elementary	96.36363636
Westover Elementary	96.2962963
Cedar Grove Elementary	96.19047619
Westbrook Elementary	95.83333333
Chevy Chase Elementary	95.79831933
Darnestown Elementary	95.52238806
Diamond Elementary	95.28301887
College Gardens Elementary	95.13888889
Somerset Elementary	95.04950495
Spark M. Matsunaga Elementary School	95.02762431
Beall Elementary	94.82758621
Travilah Elementary	94.80519481
Potomac Elementary	94.44444444
Greenwood Elementary	94.31818182
Stone Mill Elementary	94.17475728
Stonegate Elementary	94.11764706
Lakewood Elementary	93.87755102
Garrett Park Elementary	93.57798165
Ashburton Elementary	93.38842975
Ronald A. McNair Elementary	93.38235294
Lucy V. Barnsley Elementary	93.33333333
Wood Acres Elementary	93.2885906
Forest Knolls Elementary	93.06930693
Wheaton Woods Elementary	92.95774648
Lois P. Rockwell Elementary	92.68292683
Beverly Farms Elementary	92.38095238
Washington Grove Elementary	92.30769231
North Chevy Chase Elementary	92.22222222
Poolesville Elementary	92.06349206
Fallsmead Elementary	92
Woodfield Elementary	91.52542373
Goshen Elementary	91.4893617
Rock Creek Forest Elementary	91.46341463
Luxmanor Elementary	91.42857143
William Tyler Page Elementary	91.22807018
Bethesda Elementary	91.01123596
Candlewood Elementary	90.32258065
Germantown Elementary	90.24390244
Jones Lane Elementary	90.2173913
Little Bennett Elementary	90.11627907
Oakland Terrace Elementary	90
Viers Mill Elementary	89.88764045
Cloverly Elementary	89.70588235
Sequoyah Elementary	89.47368421
Burnt Mills Elementary	89.41176471
Damascus Elementary	89.36170213
Olney Elementary	88.7755102
Woodlin Elementary	88.67924528
Rock Creek Valley Elementary	88.52459016
Monocacy Elementary	88.46153846
Laytonsville Elementary	87.80487805
Maryvale Elementary	87.65432099
Strawberry Knoll Elementary	87.34177215
Burning Tree Elementary	87.32394366
William B. Gibbs, Jr.	86.92307692
Highland View Elementary	86.76470588
Sherwood Elementary	86.66666667
Rosemont Elementary	86.30136986
Clearspring Elementary	86.07594937
Piney Branch Elementary	85.95505618
Brooke Grove Elementary	85.71428571
Flower Valley Elementary	85.52631579
East Silver Spring Elementary	85.18518519
Flora M. Singer Elementary School	84.84848485
Rock View Elementary	84.69387755
Ritchie Park Elementary	84.15841584
Fairland Elementary	83.87096774
Judith A. Resnik Elementary	83.82352941
Burtonsville Elementary	83.60655738
Clarksburg Elementary	83.33333333
Belmont Elementary	82.35294118
Fox Chapel Elementary	82.14285714
Jackson Road Elementary	81.91489362
Lake Seneca Elementary	81.63265306
S. Christa McAuliffe Elementary	80.41237113
Waters Landing Elementary	80.17241379
Sargent Shriver Elementary	80
Great Seneca Creek Elementary	79.6875
Pine Crest Elementary	79.66101695
DuFief Elementary	78.57142857
Fields Road Elementary	78.46153846
Highland Elementary	78.37837838
Sligo Creek Elementary	78.02197802
Brookhaven Elementary	77.77777778
Meadow Hall Elementary	76.5625
Rolling Terrace Elementary	76.36363636
Glen Haven Elementary	76.31578947
Cannon Road Elementary	76.27118644
Georgian Forest Elementary	75.90361446
Dr. Charles R. Drew Elementary	75.6097561
Summit Hall Elementary	75.55555556
Brown Station Elementary	74.66666667
Stedwick Elementary	74.41860465
South Lake Elementary	73.27586207
Greencastle Elementary	73.1092437
Glenallan Elementary	72.36842105
Dr. Sally K. Ride Elementary	71.11111111
Cresthaven Elementary	71.08433735
Gaithersburg Elementary	70.79646018
Strathmore Elementary	70.42253521
Watkins Mill Elementary	70.09345794
Whetstone Elementary	69.23076923
Captain James E. Daly Elementary	68.96551724
Oak View Elementary	68.80733945
Kemp Mill Elementary	68.75
Harmony Hills Elementary	68.04123711
Flower Hill Elementary	68
Twinbrook Elementary	67.94871795
Galway Elementary	67.15328467
Mill Creek Towne Elementary	66.66666667
Broad Acres Elementary	66.66666667
Arcola Elementary	66.03773585
Weller Road Elementary	60.46511628