The next chief of Montgomery County schools says he wants to make sure that educators look beyond data points to children’s individual needs when it comes to struggling students. “We have to think, what’s the strategy at the school level to capture them early and think of them as names, as children, and we have to use those kinds of data to ask, well, what does ‘Josh’ need?” Joshua Starr, the Connecticut superintendent who will take over from Jerry Weast when he retires in June, told The Washington Examiner. “Perhaps he needs a mentor, perhaps it’s a family situation, perhaps there’s a learning issue that was never addressed.”
Starr, 41, has presided over the 15,000-student public schools system in Stamford, Conn., for the past six years. Following an intensive interview process, the Montgomery school board voted unanimously Monday night to appoint him to the chief schools post, pending a contract negotiation and written approval from the state superintendent.
While Stamford’s school system is about a tenth the size of Montgomery’s, both districts have seen scores improve while contending with increasingly diverse student populations.
| Moving in |
| Before moving to Stamford, Conn., Joshua Starr spent most of his career in New York, but he has “not really” spent much time in the Washington area. |
| “I’ve been there a few times, and I hear wonderful things about Montgomery County and D.C.,” Starr said. “A number of people tell me it’s a great place to raise a family.” |
| His children, who are “9, almost 8, and 3,” do have one request for their introduction to the nation’s capital. “They’re hoping for a chance to meet President Obama,” Starr said. “We said we’ll try. We haven’t figured that piece out yet.” – Lisa Gartner |
About 40 percent of Stamford’s public school students and 31 percent of Montgomery’s qualify for free or reduced lunch; 15 percent of Stamford students and 13 percent of Montgomery’s are not fluent in English.
In a phone interview Wednesday, Starr said it’s “critically important that the school community owns the success of each and every child, including those in programs for English language learners, for gifted students, for any student outside of the typical spectrum.”
Depending on the child, Starr said he believes in a multitude of strategies to assist students who are not fluent in English — “I love dual-language programs, but they are expensive” — and that “the most important thing for me” is to not put those students on the fringe. “It used to be that every teacher has to be a reading teacher,” Starr said. “Now we’re getting to the point where every teacher needs to learn [English language] acquisition.”
Starr said he would “name names” to help students who struggle in the school system, such as the 10 percent who don’t graduate. The 2010 graduation rate for Montgomery County Public Schools was 90 percent, down from a decade ago, when it was 91.7 percent.
“You have to name the name, say ‘what are we going to do to get Josh to graduate,’ and not look at it as a broad group,” Starr said. “That’s what I want my focus to be.”
Starr said he doesn’t know where he will live in the county, but that his three young children will attend the public schools. Like Weast, whose 12-year tenure put him among the longest-serving superintendents in the nation, Starr said he hopes to stick around for a while.
“Professionally, this work takes time and I want to make sure there’s a long enough period to build on the successes and do innovative things.”
