Jay Mathews reviews the new book Leading for Equity, which chronicles Montgomery County’s successes, so far, in closing the achievement gap. Straight out of the gate, Mathew’s is right about one thing —the six “lessons” are convoluted and sound more like titles for paper submissions to AERA than book chapters (Lesson 1, for example: Implementing a strategy of common, rigorous standards with differentiated resources and instruction can create excellence and equity for all students). But his critique of the book as too process-oriented is wrong. Process has tripped up many a reform and understanding what sequence of events and efforts lead to change is key to any district’s improvement strategy. Sit in on union-district negotiations, listen to testimonies at board and council meetings, dig into PTA minutes going back ten years and more, and you’ll see that Weast’s success is one of process---getting a strategic collective of people (aforementioned) to make difficult decisions for the right reasons.
Central to this success, which the book describes, was the mapping of two zones of affluence—the wealthier Green Zone and the less-affluent Red Zone—that illustrated for all the inequities of the county and its schools. As someone who was educated by MCPS (in the Red Zone before it was the Red Zone), and is now sending my son to MCPS (still Red Zone), I know the practical implications of living in the lesser of the zones. My kids will go to school with a lot of kids who don’t have as much as they do, who have parents that work two jobs and who don’t speak English and who don’t walk them to school every day or read with them every night or schedule extra conferences with their teachers. But they will also be in schools that give a little extra to these kids to even the playing field—from the initial full day kindergarten program to the extended learning opportunity summer sessions that are going on right now.
Mathews says the book misses the real story, which is how MCPS gets and keeps great teachers. I agree that human capital tops the list of public education concerns and that MCPS is successful largely because it has quality teachers, but I’m unconvinced that the story of Montgomery County rises and falls on the teacher reforms. MCPS has done a lot to improve teaching and teachers—its professional growth system, for example, is touted as one of the best in the nation. But Superintendent Weast’s struggle to close achievement gaps is not merely a teacher problem, at least not the way Rhee’s might be in DC. Getting and keeping great teachers in all MCPS schools is a product of the county’s convenient close-in spot to DC (it would be great to know, by the way, the % of MCPS teachers than are spouses to the federal government, think tank and World Bank trifecta—count my family as one) and its ability to offer a job that’s better (in pay and otherwise) than PG and DC school systems.
The real story is about how a county that was unaware of or unconcerned with school inequities, or both, bought into a differential approach to schooling that has resulted in significant gains for the poorest kids. This doesn’t always happen, is still quite contentious, and is definitely a long, involved process—one that is as important as it is difficult to capture.
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3 comments:
The real story is a county with a long history of excellence taking up a new challenge to attempt to create create a new system of excellence.
The real story is that schools during the last decade have been told to reinvent themselves, but few have been given the money to attempt it. The real story is that America had had a lot of success educating students who come to school ready to learn. Now our job is educating all students.
Our underwhelming results are partially explained by attempting to replicate best practices without considering why they work. As in Richard Feynman's "Cargo Cult" science our primitive system of accountability has encouraged "quick fixes." Montgomery County had the resources to lay a proper foundation.
I don't know enough to comment on Weast, but I'm confident enough to comment on Mathews. Notice how teachers and unions are a part of the solution, according to Mathews, but a part of the problem in D.C. Notice how he admires Weast and Rhee even when they take opposite approaches. Some of that can be explained by their different situations but mostly Mathews just fawns over his favorites, and loves to celebrate success and doesn't want to get bogged down in the toughest problems.
Schooling often is about leverage. And so is reform. When you run a system with a long history of excellence, you can tell a parent to move. If you've got tons of money, you can lay the proper foundations for reform. Similarly, if you teach in a great school and the "reformers" come in with another crackpot idea, you can tell them to get lost.
That's why NCLB did so much more harm to the schools it was supposed to help. It wasn't the letter of the law, it was the panic caused by the law. Faced with impossible goals, systems adopted one quick fix after another. It was classic Cover Your Rear end.
We rightfully talk about the "Matthew Effect" (to those who are given much ...) in terms of learning to read and reading to learn. The Matthew Effect aplies all through education. As AGAIN reported today in Gotham schools, charter schools get to dump their tougher students on neighborhood schools that are less favored. High performing schools don't get pressured to narrow their curriculum or do excessive test prep. When kids get released from jails with electronic monitors, guess which schools do not get them and which ones that do? Dollars to donuts, if a school has one student with an electronic bracelet, it has several of those students, and principals thus get another reminder of which schools get respect and which don't.
I saw firsthand what happens when a deputy super from Montgomery County took over our school system which is funded at a rate that is 1/3rd per capita as his old system. He said that the Montgomery county experience was relevant because they had more poor students than we had students. He didn't last long enough to understand why you can't replicate Montgomery County without a its long history of of affluence.
Miami had its versions of Red and Green zones and they seemed to work until they ran out of money. We've had a lot of merit pay schemes that showed promise until they ran out of money. The schools Rhee showcases have money out the wazoo and Klein has increased spending in NYC by 1/3rd if I recall correctly, and Chicago suppoedly had successes when it had its $80 million in extra money. What's going to happen with their adrenalin boost of excess money is gone? Soon they'll wish they'd built a foundation for sustainable improvements and depended less on accounting tricks.
We need a new form of hope, not funded by "more money than God" to make numbers work out. We need a reform based on faith in the exchange of ideas and the hope that America can stop the educational civil wars and build learning cultures built on democractic principles. Perhaps Weast did better because he had the confidence built on riches. But American democracy has typically had that advantage also. Let's use that leverage for an educational culture of respect.
These are both good comments, but I hope John did not mean to imply there is not much difference between the MCEA and the WTU. --jay mathews
Good process keeps good people. A system that is well understood and makes consistent and logical choices will generally keep good people. But good process takes money because it entails focusing on the long-term rather than the short-term. It entails focusing on work that will show results over time; not necessarily immediately. The idea that process is separate from the story of getting and keeping good teachers, misses this point.
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