Reply to Your Thoughts on Montgomery County Schools

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]You would think this would be a good place to come for some advice but . . . you get the same angry anti-immigrant rants no matter what question you ask about MCPS, so you need to take that into consideration.  We moved from Massachusetts which was recently rated the best schools but MCPS has more to offer than most of the good suburban schools there because it is county as opposed to town based, which poses its own problems of course.  MCPS is huge, and it serves a diverse population.  The prior Superintendent made it a priority to try to improve the quality of schools serving lower-income folks with some success, this is one of the things that drives some of the posters nuts because it is not their kids.  But it is the right thing to do.  The problem the County has is trying to serve the various constituencies -- but at the HS level, there are good schools throughout the District, and I assume this is true at the elementary school level too (MS everywhere are a mixed bag).  The current Superintendent seems much less focussed than the prior -- he is young and ambitious but was recently publicly rejected for consideration for the NY School job and I think he is likely trying to figure out how to improve his public reputation, and he seems less focussed on improving the district.  There is a new Curriculum and there has been some problems with the roll out, but that is not unique to MCPS.  Long and short, these are some of the best public schools in the country, no matter how you measure them, they are not perfect and could be better but the problem is not that lower-income folks are sapping all of the resources.  The problem, if there is one, is that it is big, with a strong teachers' union that contributed to the decision not to extend the school year which likely hurt on the Algebra test scores this year, diverse and growing, with a Superintendent trying to figure out how to make his name here.  Many of the individual schools are truly outstanding.         [/quote]

The outstanding schools have little diversity. None of their resources need to go to bringing the low performers up to speed. Spend a day at a school in Potomac vs a school in Wheaton and you will see what parents are upset about. Everyone thinks they want diversity but have no idea what real diversity is and the impact it makes. The well to do latino or black child with 2 successful parents has completely different values than a child that has 2 parents that don't speak English, work low paying jobs, and/or don't see the value of a good education. You can't keep throwing valuable resources into fixing a situation that isn't fixable. i am not saying to give up on these kids, but don't expect that by mixing them in with higher performers it is going to do any good. It will bring the high performers down and marginally help maybe some of the slightly more motivated kids. You have to segregate so that each child is getting the instruction and challenges that they need.[/quote]

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