As I noted, last week was a hot week for education news in MoCo, and nothing got Superintendent Jerry Weast hotter than the news that nary a Montgomery County high school made the U.S. News and World Report “America’s Best High Schools 2010″ ranking. In years past, MCPS proudly fired off press releases announcing that the perennial three top high schools had made the cut (2007 release, 2008 release). This year, it was a memo to the Board of Education explaining why no schools were on the list and why, all of a sudden, the methodology was “deeply flawed.” The memo first popped up on a high school listserv and was reposted to the GTA listserv.
My favorite line? “We certainly appreciate recognition on these types of lists when it occurs, but it is obviously not what drives our work.” (Followed by “I am sharing this information with you in case you get questions from parents and members of the public.”)
But Jay Mathews told a different story. In his Class Struggle blog on Friday he wrote:
I occasionally communicate with Montgomery County school superintendent Jerry D. Weast, but usually it is one of his people who call to set up the appointment. Yesterday he was so bothered about something he called himself. It wasn’t me who upset him, but my friends and fellow members in good standing of the School Ranking Scoundrels club, the editors of U.S. News & World Report.
They just came out with their latest list of America’s Best High Schools. Weast was astonished to see that none of the three Montgomery County schools that had been on the U.S. News top 100 list in the past were mentioned this time. In fact there were no Maryland, Virginia or D.C. schools on the list at all, except for Langley, number 47, and the Thomas Jefferson High School of Science and Technology in Fairfax County which was, as usual, number one in the country.
Weast wanted me to find out from U.S. News why this was. I told him I thought it was better if he contacted the magazine himself, and gave him the email address of the U.S. News director of data research, Robert Morse, whose work for the last several decades, beginning with the magazine’s America’s Best Colleges list, I highly admire.
Evidently part of the problem is that MCPS schools didn’t provide “provide/collect disadvantaged students’ scores.” Which confuses me. Doesn’t MCPS regularly trumpet its success in raising achievement for disadvantaged students? Why wouldn’t they submit this data? Or does that data reveal something that runs counter to the $10 million MCPS narrative as well?
I saw that too, how irked the esteemed Jerry Weast is. And my first reaction was, hey, don’t you have anything better to worry about? Like maybe a BUDGET CRISIS? You could start with trimming the fat of your bloated bureaucracy.
Please let’s remind dear Dr. Weast it’s not always about him. In fact, it’s really about the children. And their needs. Not his glory days.
In Fairfax County, there have been school board members who’ve snubbed their noses at TJ, sniffing that the local high schools are quite challenging enough, thank you. But boy are they ready to gloat and take a bow when TJ comes in #1. And again, #1 does not mean #1 for everyone. There is far more to a school and the children who populate it than some magazine ranking.