Montgomery County Public Schools has sunk to a new low. It’s using a nine-year-old child as a political football.
Orientation at Cabin John Middle School in Bethesda was held this morning, but Caitlyn Singam wasn’t there. MCPS educrats are still refusing to enroll this academically gifted little girl. They insist that Doctors Kumar and Aki Singam place their daughter at Seven Locks Elementary School, even though Caitlyn’s reading and math test results clearly prove she is capable of accelerated work.
In an August 26 letter to the Singams, community superintendent Sherry Liebes wrote: “Let me be clear, Caitlyn will not be enrolled at Cabin John Middle School for this school year.” This despite the fact that Caitlyn had already been welcomed to the school this summer and her parents were told she was eligible for 8th grade math.
But at MCPS, a child’s academic needs take a back seat when the system has a political axe to grind with her parents.
In an email sent to Dr. Singam the same day, Marty Creel, director of MCPS’ Enriched and Innovative Programs – who is supposed to be the head cheerleader for this precocious child – said: “ No determination of placement can be made until she is registered [at Seven Locks]. Once she is registered, the school can go through the process of collecting the relevant information and making a recommendation to you for placement.”
Seven Locks is the same school that agreed to place the then-third grader in fifth grade, then suddenly reversed itself days before classes were scheduled to start, claiming they wanted to “test” her. The Singams agreed – until they found out that instead of a formal standardized test, school officials planned to create a special test just for Caitlyn. What parent in his/her right mind would agree to that?
Cabin John pulled a similar stunt this summer. During a meeting with school officials in July, Dr. Singam told me, registrar Tamara Bishop “met with us and pulled up Caitlyn’s name on her computer screen. ‘She’s in the system already,’ [Bishop] told us. ‘We have all her scores.’” In fact, Caitlyn had scored in the top percentile on a Measure of Academic Progress/Reading test last year, and a math test administered by Cabin John this summer found her eligible for math IM, an advanced eighth grade course.
I called Creel to ask him what more “relevant information” MCPS needed, and why Cabin John principal Paulette Smith didn’t send the Singams back to Seven Locks earlier if that’s the policy. But he didn’t return my call.
A meeting scheduled for last Friday between Smith and the Singams never happened, with both sides blaming the other for the cancellation.
However, Dr. Aki Singam, Caitlyn’s mother, complained in an email to Smith that “despite your claims that an outcome had not been predetermined, the sole purpose of the meeting was to justify the ongoing harassment of my child by Marty Creel and, at his behest, to discuss a SINGLE predetermined option of placing my child at Seven Locks.
“Both you and Dr. Weast are acutely aware that Mr. Creel has engaged in this harassment in retaliation for my husband’s successful showing that the GT program implemented by him violates the requirements of Brown v. Board of Ed., etc.”
Creel told a Gazette reporter that MCPS offered to bus Caitlyn to nearby middle schools for advanced courses, but this was news to her parents. An if so, Dr. Singam told me, his daughter would literally have to spend hours on a bus each week for having the audacity to test beyond her chronological age.
It says a lot about MCPS officials that they would rather punish a little girl than admit they made a mistake. By law, they are required to provide Caitlyn with an academically appropriate education. Sticking her back in elementary school is hardly doing that.
If there’s a silver lining in this tale of educational malfeasance, it’s the reaction of other Montgomery County parents. Dr. Singam says he’s been “bombarded” with emails. “They have been 100 percent supportive, even those I would not have expected to be on our side. It has changed by opinion of humanity,” he told me.
But as it stands now, when classes begin at Cabin John Middle School next week, Caitlyn won’t be there. The decision to lock her out – after she had already completed the summer math packet they gave her – doesn’t make sense, unless you consider her parents’ vocal dissent regarding the stealth dismantling of Montgomery County’s GT program. The message to other parents is as clear as it is chilling: Speak out and your child will be punished.
By coincidence, the same week this academically gifted child was locked out of Cabin John Middle School, Montgomery County’s SAT scores were released. They’re down an embarrassing 19 points since 2006. I
And if MCPS keeps turning academic whiz kids away, there’s no telling how low they will go.
