The new leader of Montgomery County Public Schools needs to focus on making sure all schools and students receive their fair share of resources, according to a report released Monday. Superintendent Joshua Starr’s transition team also recommended that he pare down the system’s plethora of initiatives to ensure results are achieved, reorganize professional development for teachers, and clear up administrative bureaucracy.
“The transition team was repeatedly informed that the district had so many initiatives under way that some members of the MCPS community were overwhelmed. … The district must ‘make some choices’ and improve its follow-through, or accountability,” the team wrote.
Starr took the school system’s reins in July after longtime Superintendent Jerry Weast retired from the largest school district in Maryland. Starr’s 12-person transition team was led by Robert Peterkin, professor emeritus at Harvard University Graduate School of Education, and mixed outsiders and insiders of the nationally acclaimed school system.
The report noted that while Montgomery deserves its fair share of credit — 90 percent of students graduate and most take advanced-level courses — there remains “room to grow.”
Eighth-grade Hispanic and African-American students continue to perform 40 percentage points below their white and Asian counterparts on the state reading exam. The report said “race, class, language proficiency, and geographic factors continue to affect students’ access to certain programs and parents’ abilities to participate in their children’s education.”
The team urged Starr to ensure the equitable distribution of resources to all schools in Montgomery County.
Members echoed teachers’ “particular anxiety” about their professional development, which now will be taking place online as a cost-saving measure for the cash-strapped school system.
The team also warned Starr of a “lack of consistent communication” coming to schools from the top. According to those interviewed, “community superintendents and district offices contradicted one another in providing directives to the schools, and separate district offices guided the implementation of district initiatives in contrasting ways.”
Starr said he would give the advice of his team heavy consideration.
“MCPS is a system that believes in continuous improvement, so it is no surprise to anyone that we know that we have a lot of room for growth,” Starr said. “This report confirms that and provides us with some key areas where we need to focus greater attention.”
