Maryland’s Montgomery County Public Schools is in a freefall. The school system, which in 2017 was the 14th largest in the nation and in fiscal year 2019 had a $2.6 billion budget, has not allowed the doors to its school buildings to open for education in more than 200 days.
Not only is enrollment plummeting, but so is academic performance. Principals are passive, and rather than act as community leaders and advocate for school opening, many simply see their role as forwarding messages from the central administration in MCPS’s headquarters in Rockville. With just a few exceptions, members of the board ignore and refuse to respond to residents who raise concerns or ask questions that run counter to their own worldview.
Teachers, their union, parents, and the broader community can continue to debate school opening, but some issues should be clear: To teach Kindergartners how to catch balls online, as my son’s MCPS elementary school did, is ridiculous. Forcing hours of screen time for children and denying them the social and emotional aspects of school is negligent and educational malpractice. School principals, social workers, and counselors have lost credibility by becoming complicit in what would amount, in normal times, to be child neglect, if not abuse.
While some teachers may worry about their own vulnerability to COVID-19, administrators can remedy such legitimate concerns on an individual basis. Talking points about letting “science” guide reopening also ring hollow given how MCPS’s policy runs counter both to CDC recommendations and those of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Still, while it is easy amid the hyperpartisanship to dismiss arguments with ad hominem broadsides or tendentious political labels rather than addressing their merits, there is now enough data to show that in-person education is safe and possible. Private schools have opened successfully with rigorous protocols. The same holds true with in-person daycares and pods, some of which rent space within MCPS buildings. Day camps, including those within Montgomery County, operated both school buses and full-day programs throughout the summer without any incident.
That MCPS has so badly floundered should not surprise. As the district has grown, its central administration has ossified and become an archetype for Parkinson’s law. The county headquarters makes bizarre, one-size-fits-all calls that end up fitting no one.
Consider the school district’s previous problem with snow days: Even when education was already strained, the central administration would sometimes call snow days when no snow fell throughout much of the county on the logic that some roads in more rural areas, or at higher elevation levels, might have snow. Likewise, MCPS has become a repository for leaders who seek to pursue political agendas and calculate that a board of education seat is easier to obtain than a county council, state Senate, or congressional seat.
Further, equality of opportunity is important, but MCPS too often errs both by conflating opportunity with result and using equity as a political dog whistle to pursue objects beyond schools’ educational mandate. It also frustrates parents by seeking to eradicate achievement gaps by punishing school success rather than rectifying school failure.
There is growing discussion, both within Montgomery County and nationwide, about the utility of school choice, letting tax money follow students to whatever school they seek. Advocates of school choice argue that it forces competition and enables schools to identify best practices. Opponents suggest it reinforces segregation based on parental education and income.
Regardless of that debate, what undercuts many equity efforts is the arbitrariness of frames of reference. Proponents of scrambling school assignments (akin to busing), such as newly elected Board of Education member Lynne Harris, seek to break down differences between neighborhood schools. The problem is that it will not break down differences of opportunity between Montgomery, Prince George’s, and Howard counties, for example. There will always be one more border or boundary to try to break down.
Perhaps the best course of action, then, would be to go the opposite direction: Break apart MCPS the way government broke apart the old telephone company and may, in coming years, seek to fracture Amazon, Google, and other online giants.
There is plenty of precedent. Consider Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in the Philadelphia suburbs. In terms of demographics, it is similar to Montgomery County but is divided into 13 separate districts, each accountable to the communities they serve. Such divisions are not the result of a desire for segregation, as some education theorists suggest, but rather the state and county seeking to find the balance between small districts unable to support rigorous programs and large districts, which refuse to understand that one size does not fit all.
Perhaps Pennsylvania found the magic formula: Between 1945 and 1975, it shrunk the number of school districts from more than 2,500 to just one-quarter that number but still avoided making the county the base administrative layer. Today, Pennsylvania’s 500 school districts range in size between 200 students and more than 140,000. Union activists, teachers, and parents should be happy: Smaller districts return autonomy to teachers and relieve them from following centrally imposed scripts. Students, meanwhile, get choice without abandoning the idea of public education.
Today, the positive tension between local schools is apparent in Bucks County. Many schools remain closed in the face of COVID-19, but others chose to open, largely without incident. Districts may make conflicting decisions, but breaking up makes for better accountability. Some bureaucracy might duplicate in a breakup, but fracturing also renders some administrative layers unnecessary while reducing other supervisory, headquarters, and nonclassroom jobs into part-time positions.
The COVID-19 crisis was a stress test for MCPS, and the district was found wanting. Partisans may target politicians, but sometimes it is the system itself that is sick. Perhaps it is time to return nuts-and-bolts education to the schools, leave politics to the county council or state Senate, and recognize that a bureaucracy’s efficiency and effectiveness does not increase with size.
Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official.
