You just have to look at my posts of the last few hours (here and here) and then shake your head over the timing of the article that appeared in Washington Post today:
(Sorry for not catching that earlier in the day.)
It’s enough to make you want to cry.
For 20 years, some of the top math and science minds in the country have passed through the Science, Mathematics and Computer Science Magnet at Blair High in Silver Spring. But there’s one question even the sharpest students cannot yet answer: Will this overachieving program remain a powerhouse in a time of budget cuts, teacher turnover and emerging competition?….
“I’ve never actually met this many people who want to get the highest grade in the class all the time,” said Sneha Kannan, 16, a senior, who is researching a polymer that delivers drugs directly to cancer cells. “I like being with kids who like to learn as much as I do.”
But budget cuts last year pared the faculty from 18 to 14. The remaining teachers were asked to take an extra class. Four veteran teachers left, some in protest. A fifth died. The magnet had never had such churn.
Success hinged on a cadre of teachers who wrote courses in thermodynamics, artificial intelligence and plate tectonics from scratch and who ran the program day to day with little input from administrators. Now most are gone, and newer teachers have less time for the collaborative zeal that has defined the magnet. Former faculty and alumni formed a foundation last year with the motto “Keep a special program special.”
Look at the photos and then you’ll really want to cry. (Smiling high school kids Greek dancing with their teachers?!) For an outside-MCPS perspective on Why Magnets Matter, check out this blog co-written by two high school students in New Jersey and Connecticut.
MCPS is systematically dismantling world class programs and diminishing and diluting excellence. Increasingly the opportunity to receive a pale imitation of a magnet level education will depend on whether you live in the right zip code in the county. It’s a crime. Why when times were good didn’t Maryland wise up and create a Governor’s School in conjunction with UMD or UMBC? Or Montgomery County pair up with Howard to create schools like Thomas Jefferson for the Math/Science and the Humanities. Talk about world class!
We’re eating our seed corn.
You’re lucky to have a school like Blair to lose. Our county has one good charter school, but it is lottery entry, and for 8th-grade entry this year there were 86 entrants for 0 slots. (That is, people were entering the lottery just to get a place on the waiting list, in case something opened up.) And even this school doesn’t produce science-fair winners at a high rate (only 2 or 3 high schoolers from it bothered to enter the county science fair).
You’re right Kevin. But you’re lucky to have a charter school–MCPS has fought that idea tooth and nail.
The charter school is not chartered by the school district (who refused to have anything to do with it), but by the County Office of Education. The school district is required to provide space for the charter, but there was a big fight this year as the school district wanted to charge “market rate” for leasing a school building that they could not legally use for any purpose other than education—defining market rate by what a retail establishment would have rented for at the peak of the market a few years ago.
Believe me, the local school district is *not* trying to help this charter survive. Nor are they providing the more advanced classes (particularly at the middle school level) that so many people want. With the demand for the charter being about 5 times the supply, you’d think that the public schools would try to hang onto some of the kids by offering a competing charter, but it seems they’d rather lose them to private schools then rant about how the private school parents are evil.