On Thursday evening I lost two hours of my life that I will never get back. What did do? Why, I attended yet another meeting of the Accelerated and Enriched Instruction (not “GT”) Advisory Committee. Yes, they have resumed (I missed the first one of the year.)
Now I shouldn’t pick on AEI. Really. But lordy. There has to be a better way to “increase communication among stakeholders and groups interested in accelerated and enriched instruction and a high level of academic rigor in Montgomery County Public Schools” than these mind-numbing, kabuki meetings. How about holding open forum/town hall meetings around the county where there is no canned MCPS presentation? How about signing onto the GTA listserv and actually engaging in dialogue with parents? Heck, how about reading my blog and that of the Parents Coalition and commenting? Twitter anyone?
The topic of Thursday’s meeting was “Perspectives on Equity and Excellence.” A potential barn burner, one would think, when the accusation often leveled at GT programs is that they aren’t equitable.
But no.
The evening kicked off with a painful presentation by a representative of the Office of Organizational Development’s Equity team. How does asking everyone to fill out a form on “Who Am I?” grab you? (See, we all have differing multiple identities….) Unfortunately I have misplaced my notes from the meeting 
, however my take aways from the OOD presentation are these:
- When speaking of equity, MCPS is *solely* focused on African-American and Hispanic student achievement.
- MCPS has embraced critical race theory and has spent five years and who only know how many hours and $$ on infusing these ideas throughout the school system.
- MCPS sees equity in terms of equal outcomes, not just equal access or opportunity.
Following the MCPS presentation, others had a chance to weigh in. A person from the MCEF spoke, as did a representative from the Asian-American Parents Association and the Chinese-American Community, and the Gifted and Talented Association. Curiously, the NAACP rep did not speak. There was no Hispanic community rep. GTA has posted an outline of its comments here and a fuller write up of the meeting should be forthcoming soon. To GTA’s credit, they actually did their homework. They offered a real, in the trenches, perspective and specifically tied “equity” to “accelerated and enriched instruction,” presenting a specific action that could be undertaken to promote both.
After those remarks, an inordinate amount of time was spent by MCPS staff going through a two presentations on professional development around equity and excellence. However rather than being particularly illuminating, they seemed more about running the clock. And jargon, jargon, jargon.
You said:
“MCPS has embraced critical race theory and has spent five years and who only know how many hours and $$ on infusing these ideas throughout the school system. ”
What exactly is “critical race theory?” Did they explain it at AEI meeting?
Lyda
Lyda, I don’t really know what to think about all this. CRT is not/was not explained. It’s not a phrase you’ll find on the MCPS website (I’ve checked). But I’ll direct you here for starters, The Summit for Courageous Conversations, which took place last month. MCPS speakers were on the agenda (Monday, October 12, session B03). http://www.summitforcourageousconversation.com/overview.html
And I *really* don’t know what to make of this session, at the same conference.
Does MCPS endorse this viewpoint?
Lyda, I dug around a little and it looks like critical race theory, at least in the context of education, holds that inequality between the quality of education that different groups receive is based on endemic institutional biases such as low expectations (and, according to the scholars who generally hold this position, tracking and remedial courses), rather than on home life or differences between racial groups’ cultures.
How garbled it is at the school district level, I don’t know, but probably very. Even the most…interesting educational theory tends to be made worse because schools apply it without understanding what it really is.
Everything *I’ve* ever heard school districts say about rigor has been pretty much *exactly* about “giv[ing] all students access to challenging material that embraces multiple perspectives and experiences.” The definition of rigor our district uses appears to be based on a quotation from _Teaching What Matters Most: Standards and Strategies for Raising Student Achievement_ by Richard W. Strong, Harvey F. Silver and Matthew J. Perini, ASCD, 2001. “Rigor is the goal of helping students develop the capacity to understand content that is complex, ambiguous, provocative, and personally or emotionally challenging.” They also say “the decision to withhold rigor from some students is one of the most important reasons why schools fail.”
I have seen institutional racism in plenty, goodness knows, but not THERE. But that’s mainly in my district, where it’s the same people spouting the jargon on both topics. There must be a back-story here that would explain what you’re seeing.
[...] as to what might go onto the chopping block: The Equity Team. You might remember them from a previous post. The Equity Training and Development Team (ETDT) in the Office of Organizational Development [...]