Serious Answers Only—How to Fix MCPS?

[Anonymous]

Make the BoE a full time position w/ salaries staff. MCPS is too big to have part-time accountability.

Add co-teachers or paras to all K-2 classes, and classes over 24 students in ES/MS. Make ES school teachers rotate around the grades in K-2 or 3-5. Have students stay with the same teacher for K and 1 to build continuity and support.

More counselors, particularly at the HS level, so actual academic advising and followup can occur.

Add administrative/case Mgmt support for SpecEd. Clearly state what SpecEd services are available and at what amount of time (regardless of FAPE, the number of people available is real and can only do so much).

Standardize some process and tools. I’m all for meeting people where they are but there is a little bit too much catering to everyone’s whims going on.

Plan for implementation of new programs/curriculum. This includes getting all the supplies early enough for review, training, and teacher planning. If you are implementing something Fall 2024, things should start arriving late winter2023/early spring 2024.

[Anonymous]

Make the BOE a full-time position with more power and oversight focus instead of rubber stamping the superintendent's way and will

Bring back accountability and discipline to schools. Kids need it. It doesn't matter if it hurts their feelings. And don't alway listen to the noisiest, loudest complaining parent in the room. The silent majority want order and structure in schools and expect admins and teachers to bring it.

Focus on equal opportunities and not equal outcomes. Giving everyone the opportunity to do good is the moral and right thing to do. Giving everyone the same or similar outcomes, regardless of effort, ambition or initiative is not good. It creates entitled, lazy people who become piss-poor citizens and employees.

Bring back regular classes. This is tied to previous comment about equal opportunities, not outcomes, but kids who don't care about school should not be allowed to distract and corrupt kids who are interested and motivated to learn. Honors classes should be a safe haven for focused students. Everyone should have the opportunity to sign up for an honors class, but there should criteria those students are expected to meet and if they don't over time rise to meet them, be put back into the regular classes.

Either take PE seriously or remove it altogether. This idea that kids shouldn't change for PE or be forced to do physical activity is nuts. Childhood obesity is an epidemic and the gutting of any kind of mandate or requirement with regard to physical activity is a major contributor to this. Kids, especially those who've been babysat by screens, will be lazy, unmotivated and whine. Push them anyways. Either that, or just drop PE as a requirement altogether and stop wasting everyone's time.

Fix the cafeteria food. School lunches have never been gourmet, but the amount of kids who reject the food the school serves is alarming. That's a lot of money going down the drain. If MCPS is not capable of making food the students will eat, then we should stop having MCPS make lunch and just invite outside entities to serve lunch instead. But the waste that goes on right now is unsustainable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Reprioritize the budget to focus more resources on the students and not on overpaid central office administrators

Yes, as a central office employee, get rid of most central office jobs. They aren't needed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kids have been in MCPS for 15 years and I’m just disgusted by the decline. Wondering if anyone has ideas to fix the many problems in MCPS?

Get off of DCUM. This website greatly exaggerates problems and there are a few folks with axes to grind. The vast majority of families of the 160,000+ students are more than satisfied with the education of their children. MCPS is a large organization with the typical problems of a large organization. Is there room for improvement? Yes. Is it in "decline"? No more than most school systems at this moment in our society who are struggling with problems beyond to direct control of school systems.

I very much disagree with you. I have children very spread apart in ages. The experience with my oldest and youngest was like night and day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kids have been in MCPS for 15 years and I’m just disgusted by the decline. Wondering if anyone has ideas to fix the many problems in MCPS?

Get off of DCUM. This website greatly exaggerates problems and there are a few folks with axes to grind. The vast majority of families of the 160,000+ students are more than satisfied with the education of their children. MCPS is a large organization with the typical problems of a large organization. Is there room for improvement? Yes. Is it in "decline"? No more than most school systems at this moment in our society who are struggling with problems beyond to direct control of school systems.

[Anonymous]

I don't think PE is the reason kids aren't doing physical activity. It's a cultural issue. It's because:

- Kids don't run around outside doing unstructured activities anymore, everything is structured and their parents drive them to everything (including school even when they could walk)
- Sports have become hypercompetitive at young ages, in part because the previous model of community sports with parent volunteer coaches doesn't work anymore, nobody wants to coach
-Phones

I attended MCPS in the olden days and PE was dumb. I'm glad they've changed it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Have more special Ed classes in each school, not every child should be in a main stream class all day every day.
Stop sending the “ gifted” kids to separate schools.
That would be a huge start.

This. They should implement their magnet curriculum at all schools instead of their manufactured gatekeeping of creating lottery winners and losers. How is it equitable to identify a certain number of students as qualifying for a program and then provide that program to only some of the qualifying students?

And another big one, offer an honors English class in middle school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't think PE is the reason kids aren't doing physical activity. It's a cultural issue. It's because:

- Kids don't run around outside doing unstructured activities anymore, everything is structured and their parents drive them to everything (including school even when they could walk)
- Sports have become hypercompetitive at young ages, in part because the previous model of community sports with parent volunteer coaches doesn't work anymore, nobody wants to coach
-Phones

I attended MCPS in the olden days and PE was dumb. I'm glad they've changed it.

As a boy in MCPS who was admittedly a nerd and drawn to video games, the exposure I got to physical activity through middle and high school PE was essential. I learned how to play SO MANY sports, even if I wasn't good, and I was pushed outside of my comfort zone. Kids need that, especially boys.

And I was pushed because of REQUIREMENTS. I HAD to change for PE. Or my grade would drop.

I HAD TO complete the 1-mile pacer, even if I walked it.

Those things matter. Removing those requirements and mandates and letting kids sit on the bleachers in their jeans and on their phones instead of making them change into their gym clothes and participate is definitely a part of the problem. PE wasn't dumb at all for me.

[Anonymous]

Most of the academic and equity issues are due to how the county has concentrated poverty and wealth. We are more segregated now than in the 1970's.

Honestly, the logical solution is to reintegrate the schools with redistricting and busing. However, we know how that talk goes around here...

[Anonymous]

Fire starting from the top people who have been part of cover ups, not abiding by rules laws and protocol, admin bullying teachers for higher grades/data manipulation/"only taking good data", make a zero tolerance on professional bullying, don't force teachers to work unpaid overtime, dont force teachers to do uncontracted duties such as subbing and lunch duty during planning times. Finally for gosh sakes if you have a teacher that works all these overtime and has no planning times when they covered the shortage don't write them up as a bad planner and move toward getting rid of them when in reality they were stretched thin with poor management.

I don't recommend a career in education strongly because it has corrupted itself I to a system that is systematically cruel to its troops on the front line.

[Anonymous]

The reliance on tech is because it’s so much cheaper to buy cheap chrome books and ask kids to work independently than to hire humans to teach them. It’s like every other industry—automation is way cheaper than human labor.

I think —
— more specialized classes for kids with special needs, with major incentives for teachers to teach those cclasses and small class size.

— specific people to respond to disciplinary problems, like a whole task for in every scholl with at least one person who only does this. Real consequences for disciplinary issues with a progressive discipline structure and support offered for rehabilitation.

— better English curriculum for MS with either smaller classes or a second teacher in each classroom so kids can do more writing projects and get actual feedback. Having had kids go through all of McPS, middle school English is by far the weekend point.

— much higher pay for subs, especially long term subs, and probably a higher pay on cap for lateral highers and career transitioning professionals.

I think with those four fixes, it would fix 90% of what’s wrong. My fifth wish would be for physical plant upgrades so that every scholl has working HVAC in every room and fully functioning bathrooms. My fsixth with would be for daily PE in ES, or maybe just 2-3 times per week. I don’t know that the gyms would accommodate that at many ES schools though.
My seventh with would be for fewer stupid meetings for teachers but I think the teachers would need to identify which are stupid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Most of the academic and equity issues are due to how the county has concentrated poverty and wealth. We are more segregated now than in the 1970's.

Honestly, the logical solution is to reintegrate the schools with redistricting and busing. However, we know how that talk goes around here...

You say that, but moving kids to schools that are further away creates other issues. Already to get to my child's high school, I have to drive past another school. Getting my DD to and from sports practices is hard right now in the summer and throughout the school year. It feels close to inequitable that it is so much harder for my child to participate when she could be a walker (albeit a long walk or an easy bike ride) to another school- there is not even a way to get there with local bussing unless she goes on 3 different busses. I hear all the time that an extra 5 minutes on the bus is no big deal, but when dealing with after-school activities, sports practices and events, etc, those minutes are important. Sending kids all over the county creates other hassles.

What should be improved is making neighborhoods less segregated but keeping kids in neighborhood schools. However, I know it is a lot easier to just blame everything on the schools and expect them to fix all of society's issues.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Have the honors and advanced classes in late elementary and middle school. Kids who are advanced need to feel challenged instead of dumbing everything down so people don’t feel left out is a terrible move.

This already exist. Compact math, ELC, CES program, magnet programs, HIGH classes, Honors classes and different math tracks in MS.

My kids are so bored at compact math and ELC as they’re so slow.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Have the honors and advanced classes in late elementary and middle school. Kids who are advanced need to feel challenged instead of dumbing everything down so people don’t feel left out is a terrible move.

This already exist. Compact math, ELC, CES program, magnet programs, HIGH classes, Honors classes and different math tracks in MS.

What middle school has honors classes? ELC has still not been implemented in all elementary schools.

[Anonymous]

Listen to teachers. They’ll tell you what needs to be fixed.