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Posts Tagged ‘Jay Mathews’

Milestones

Posted in education, Gifted, School, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 15, 2010 | 10 Comments »

The other day Husband Dear pointed out a blogging milestone that slipped my notice:  sometime in the past month I exceeded 200,000 page views.  Thanks to everyone who’s stopped by and who continues to read my musings.

A milestone which most certainly did NOT escape attention took place this morning:  For the very last time, I drove C. to school.  Her last day ever as an MCPS student.  Hard to believe this MCPS chapter, such a huge part of our life for the past 10 years, has drawn to a close.  Seems like just yesterday that I stood with her on the playground as she lined up with her class for her very first day of first grade.  I didn’t have to drive her, and normally I don’t, but hey, it was her last exam and she needed the extra half hour of sleep.  Besides, she’s leaving in three months–I have to spend some time with my baby while I can!

So was C. the least bit wistful?  Um, no.  Not a bit. She attended the drama picnic a week ago and will miss her drama friends, but has no interest in attending her classwide picnic tomorrow afternoon.  Didn’t want to buy the yearbook.  Laughed how all of a sudden people who never talked to her were posting to her Facebook wall about how her leaving is a “betrayal” of the ol’ alma mater.  Nope, no looking back.

It’s a nice half hour drive to her school, so I asked, what were her reflections on this, her last day in MCPS?  What would she do differently, what should have been done differently?  Because one could argue, hey, it didn’t really turn out too badly.  You’re in the best school in the county (Newsweek says so!), and you’re leaving to go to one of the best boarding schools in the country.  Can you really complain?

Her answer, unequivocally, was that she should have been allowed to grade skip.  Really?  I pressed her.  Really, she insisted.  Socially, she has always gravitated to kids a grade, and more often several, ahead of her.  The teachers she looked back on most positively were the ones who understood, and gave her more challenging material beyond what was offered to everyone else.  The second grade teacher who gave her unlimited access to the library.  The third grade teacher who let her read different books from the rest of the class. Aha!  So doesn’t that just prove that MCPS does differentiate and that it works?  Alas, those teachers were, according to her, the grand exceptions.  The counter example would be offering to “reward” a verbally gifted kid with math acceleration and sitting in heterogeneous classes where all the other kids loath you because you “know everything” (being called “The Walking Dictionary” comes to mind) and you resenting them for being so painfully slow.  So much for having bright students serve as “role models” in the class.

I told her that it had recently been suggested that we could/should have pursued a legal remedy back in her middle school days.  Part of me so wanted to, however I also knew that legally gifted isn’t like special education. And really, when you are in the midst of the crisis, stressed beyond belief, does it really make sense to launch a lawsuit?  How is going to make the immediate situation at hand better?  Which sadly means that the system continues along, unchallenged.

I’ve suggested that she document her experiences and maybe even share them with members of the school board. Heck, ask to meet with Jerry Weast and Jay Mathews.  It’s what her friend up in the Boston area is doing.  Only he’s actually been invited by a member of the school committee to speak to them about the needs of “high-end learners.”  When’s the last time AEI ever asked students what they think of gifted education in MCPS?  Oh, that would be never.

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Same As It Ever Was: Howard Co. Student Denied

Posted in Gifted, In the News, tagged , , , , , , on October 5, 2009 | 9 Comments »

This morning’s Post carried this story by Jay Mathews: School Rules Stifle Gifted Student. Be still my heart–Jay Mathews taking on the case of gifted student denied acceleration.  Echoes of the Singam case.

Anyone who wants to appreciate how strong a grip high school has on the American imagination, and how clueless some school districts are about this, should consider the story of Drew Gamblin, a 16-year-old student at Howard High School in Ellicott City, Maryland.

Drew, a child so gifted he taught himself to write at age 3, craves a high school diploma and all that comes with it–debate team, music, drama and senior prom. When a series of inexplicable decisions by Howard County school officials–such as requiring him to stay in an algebra class he had mastered—led his parents to home school him and put him in local college classes, he still insisted on his high school dream.

So Drew is back at Howard High, even though the school district is making it hard to enjoy all the school has to offer. He is being forced to take a modern world history course he already had at Howard Community College and a junior year English course he took at home, as well as other subjects he has already studied. He hopes that school district superintendent Sydney L. Cousin will exercise his authority under the Code of Maryland Regulations and develop an alternative way for him to fulfill graduation requirements, but it doesn’t look good.

Reading the comments, I just have to shake my head at some of the idiocy out there.  With a hat tip to the a contributor on the GTA listserv, I offer this quote from a wise French observer:

…In a democratic society, as well as elsewhere, there are only a certain number of great fortunes and positions; and as the paths which lead to them are indiscriminately open to all, the progress of all must necessarily be slackened.  As the candidates appear to be nearly alike, and as it is difficult to make a selection without infringing the principle of equality which is the supreme law of democratic societies, the first idea which suggests itself is to make them all advance at the same rate, and submit to the same trials.

Thus, in proportion as men become more alike, and the principle of equality is more peaceably and deeply infused into the institutions and manners of the country, the rules for advancement become more inflexible, advancement itself slower, the difficulty of arriving quickly at a certain height far greater.  From hatred of privilege and from the embarrassment of choosing, all men are at last constrained, whatever may be their standard, to pass the same ordeal; all are indiscriminately subjected to a multitude of petty preliminary exercises, in which their youth is wasted and their imagination quenched, so that they despair of ever fully attaining what is held out to them; and when, at length, they are in a condition to perform any extraordinary acts, the taste for such things has forsaken them.”

- Alexis de Toqueville, Democracy in America,  pub. 1835

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Where’s My Book?

Posted in In the News, School, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on July 21, 2009 | 2 Comments »

Yesterday the Post’s Jay Mathews had a big write up of  Harvard Business School’s Jerry Weast hagiography, Leading for Equity: The Pursuit of Excellence in Montgomery County Public Schools. And I’m gratified that he wasn’t tripping over himself to join the cheerleading bandwagon:

I, however, write about teachers, and I am not quite as thrilled with the book as the folks hanging around the business school’s soda machine might be. Let me take you through its key chapter, “Six Lessons from the Montgomery County Journey and a New Call to Action,” to show what I mean.

I pause here for a brief pep talk. Please, please read the summary titles of the six lessons below without giving up and moving over to John Kelly’s column. I realize that Kelly is always good, and these titles are almost impenetrable. But that is part of my point.

“Lesson 1. Implementing a strategy of common, rigorous standards with differentiated resources and instruction can create excellence and equity for all students.”

“Lesson 2. Adopting a ‘value chain’ approach to the K-12 continuum increases quality and provides a logical frame for strategic choices.”

“Lesson 3. Blurring the lines between governance, management, staff and community increases capacity and accountability.”

“Lesson 4. Creating systems and structures that change behaviors is a way to shift beliefs and leads to student learning gains.”

“Lesson 5. Breaking the link between race, ethnicity, and student outcomes is difficult without confronting the effect that beliefs about race and ethnicity have on student learning.”

“Lesson 6. Leading for equity matters.”

The authors’ explanations of each lesson are clearer than the lessons themselves, thank goodness. But I noticed a couple of words, “teachers” and “teaching,” missing from the prescriptions above. This is a problem with all process-oriented analyses of what goes on in schools. I have been reading hopeful reports like this for a quarter of a century and have yet to find one that inspired a school district to rise up against sloth and ignorance and bring its kids to a new understanding of the world.

Amen to that.  I loathe the business school/educationese gobbledygook that Weast has brought with him.  But I have to ask, where’s my book?  Because when I first learned about it, I contacted the publisher and asked if I could get a review copy.  I exchanged emails, even going so far as to provide my real name and address, and was told I’d be getting mine in July.  Gee, (tapping finger on chin)  somehow a copy has never darkened my doorstep.  Oh well.  But I’ll be damned if I shell out $26.95 and feed the MCPS PR machine.

One point where I really differ with Mathews:

When affluent parents were complaining about the Green Zone being shortchanged, a father asked at a tense school board meeting, “Why can’t my child have full-day kindergarten?”

Weast replied: “He can if you move to the Red Zone.”

That’s a good answer.

Um, no it’s not.  Sure it sounds all Indie swagger-y, but let’s flip it around.  “Dr. Weast, why can’t my child have appropriate high level instruction with intellectual peers in the Red Zone short of being lucky enough to get into a magnet program?”  Answer:  “You can if you move to the Green Zone.”

Somehow, it’s just not the same.

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Of Mountains and Middle School

Posted in Gifted, In the News, School, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on June 18, 2009 | 17 Comments »

Ah Thursday!  Always a good day to get my education news fix from Jay Mathews’ Extra Credit column and this week doesn’t disappoint.  He runs a letter from one frustrated “parent of two in the system and a lifelong educator.”   The problem?  Math.  More specifically accelerated math.

Approximately 25 children in my son’s fourth grade have been accelerated two grade levels in math instruction. They took what’s called Math A (usually for sixth-graders) this year. They are slated to take Math B (usually for seventh-graders) next year, when they are in fifth grade.

In the past couple of years, the few students who qualified for this level of acceleration were bused to a middle school, then returned to the elementary school for the remainder of their day. This year, so many students have been found eligible that parents have requested that instead of sending them to the middle school, a Math B teacher be brought to the elementary school to teach them. This would reduce disruption and be better for their development.

Parents asked the principal what options were available to them should they choose not to have their children bused to the middle school. The principal said their children could repeat the class they have just passed.

Oy!  Where to begin?  First off, are all 25 of these kids really and truly ready to be accelerated 2 years in math?  And if you have 25 kids who are truly ready for accelerated math, why is MCPS busing them to a middle school rather than bringing a teacher to the elementary school? Then there’s the question of why MCPS is willing to do this for math but steadfastly refuses to do it for even the exceptional student in language arts or social studies.  Seriously.  After we had pulled C. from middle school and she took the SAT and got mind boggling scores, we approached MCPS…in fact some of the very folks mentioned in this parent’s letter.  We asked, if she were to return to MCPS, what would they do with her? Would they be open to C. taking an English and Social Studies class in a high school?  We never got to specifics (and I’ll try to fill in some of this history over the summer) but indications were that they didn’t want to consider it.  And I’ve already shared the story of how the suggestion to accelerate M. one year in middle school English got shot down.

Jay gets this response from MCPS:

If we were to try to offer an advanced math course in elementary school with small numbers of students, without additional teaching staff, we could have an advanced class with five or 10 students and another math class with more than 30 students. In these cases, we believe it is fiscally prudent, and in the best interest of students, to have them take the advanced course at the local middle school.

Somehow I think “the fiscally prudent” consideration is paramount.  And check out the comment that’s come in:

The most ironic thing about this exchange is that no one is asking the most important question: Is accelerating students in the fourth grade into 6th grade work wise policy? Plenty of research shows that it is far better for children at this developmental age to explore new topics and be enriched rather than vertically accelerated.

As a former math teacher and current faculty member at Harvard University I can attest that accelerating students is doing them no favors; they come to colleges like Harvard with little conceptual understanding of how math works, why it works they way it does, and only can apply memorized formulas. As a result of this fragile understanding of mathematics, students end up retaking content (usually calculus) they they supposedly already “had.”

Mathematics has so many fascinating topics where challenging and appropriate enrichment can be employed, it is terrible education policy to rush kids through content. To summarize I am not suggesting that capable students be put through boring repeat classes; rather I am suggesting that they investigate branches of mathematics not usually pursued in K-12 grades like number theory or modeling.

Katherine K. Merseth
Harvard University

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Oh Snap

Posted in School, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 8, 2009 | 1 Comment »

Yesterday’s “Extra Credit” column by Jay Mathews ran a letter from someone concerned that homeschoolers are failing “to embrace the diversity of human learning” by “seceding from public schools.”

Jay had a pithy comeback:

You are living in a country founded by people whose European ancestors had come to this continent to separate themselves from the political and religious systems of their homelands. The American value that probably distinguishes us most from other national cultures is our commitment to individualism. Your opinion is as valuable as mine, but I think the home-schoolers are closer to American ideals than you are.

Oh snap.

Jay also had a snappy comeback for a parent worried about kindergarten burnout.

I am willing to let parents like you and me, middle-class folk in Montgomery County, have our kids take it easy. They are already living in a world of words in our homes. The research says they will do fine no matter what kind of elementary school they attend.

But please make sure that our wishes in this matter don’t get in the way of the kids two or three years below grade level who don’t live in our world and who need the early start that we, almost unconsciously, give our kids.

The problem is, “middle class folk” live all jumbled up in large swaths of MoCo.  It’s not like you can just ignore the drumbeat of the Seven Keys.  Reports are that elementary schools are already plastered with posters touting the Keys and brochures are going home in a roll-out described on one listserv as “shock and awe.”

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Don’t Miss the Comment!

Posted in Gifted, School, tagged , , , , , , , on May 3, 2009 | 4 Comments »

Had an interesting visitor stop by the blog today and offer a comment:  none other than Jay Mathews of the Washington Post!

He was responding to my post last month about his visit to a local middle school.  Not only did he have some kind words for my reportage (thanks!) and give a little personal background about his own family’s schooling decisions, he had some very interesting words on gifted education and dare I say homeschooling.  You can read his full comment here.

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Montgomery County Imposes New 80–20 Rule?

Posted in Gifted, Homeschooling, In the News, tagged , , , , , , , , on April 23, 2009 | 4 Comments »

Since December I’ve been following the MCPS skirmishes of homeschooling mom Patricia Downey on various listservs and lately a blog.  Her son is high school age, quite gifted and taking college-level courses.

The problem?  At her homeschool review with the county she was told that only 20% of a homeschooler’s instruction could be carried out by someone other than the parent.  Too many college courses and she could be found “out of compliance.”  This ticked her off.  Enough so that she contacted Jay Mathews and is the featured letter in this morning’s Extra Credit column in the Post, which reprinted her letter to MCPS Superintendent Jerry Weast.

Dear Dr. Weast:

My husband and I have home-schooled our youngest son since kindergarten. Adrien is now in 10th grade and, for the past two years, we have opted for a county review of his educational portfolio. The three reviews I have had so far at the Spring Mill Field Office in Silver Spring have been a very pleasant experience, and my reviewer, Mrs. Karen Gross, could not be more professional and delightful.

At the end of my last review on Dec. 20, however, Mrs. Gross told me of a memo she and her fellow reviewers had received reminding them that home-schooled students could not receive more than 20 percent of their education from sources other than their parents. Mrs. Gross expressed relief that Adrien was learning so much at home with me that the two classes he was taking in college (one at Montgomery College in Takoma Park and the other at the University of Maryland in College Park) could be considered less than 20 percent of his instructional program. She said that she would hate to find us out of compliance with the state law, but would be forced to do so if we exceeded the limit stated in the memo.

When I came home after my appointment with Mrs. Gross, I called the Department of Student Services and asked to be provided with a copy of the memo. The secretary transferred my call to Ms. Kristin Leary, who confirmed that home-schooled students could not receive more than 20 percent of their instruction from individuals other than their parents. In fact, she warned me two or three times that I would be “found out of compliance” if my son took more than 20 percent of his classes from outside sources. Although I repeatedly asked for a copy of the memo, she refused to even acknowledge my request, and in spite of my repeated requests, never cited the language in Code of Maryland Regulations (COMAR) in support of her position.

After I reminded her that COMAR 13A.10.01.01(F) specifically bars local school systems from imposing “additional requirements for home instruction programs other than those in these regulations,” she said that what was presented to me as a rule was, on second thought, a mere guideline.

I take my responsibilities as a home-schooling parent very seriously, and I am familiar with the pertinent COMAR regulations (13A.10.01), the purpose of which is “to establish a procedure to be used by the superintendent of each local school system to determine if a child participating in a home instruction program is receiving regular, thorough instruction during the school year in the studies usually taught in the public schools to children of the same age.” COMAR will be my guide — not “rules” or “guidelines” from a memo that I am not even permitted to see.

As his mother, I have been my son’s primary teacher. In no way does this mean that we both sit down at the kitchen table while I “teach” him all day. I do not view myself as a purveyor of facts charged with filling his head with knowledge. Instead, I make resources available to him, based both on his personal interests and my conception of what a solid liberal arts education should be. Visits to museums, lectures at the National Geographic Society, the National Archives or other venues, field trips to wetlands sanctuaries, plays at the Folger or the Shakespeare theaters, concerts at Strathmore and operas at the Kennedy Center or (until recently) the Baltimore Lyric Opera House, and constant offerings of books, books and more books are among the activities that he and I have shared over the years.

This is what home schooling is about, Dr. Weast. I am Adrien’s primary teacher because I am the one who directs his education, not necessarily because I actively “teach” him. The only exceptions are in French (my native language) and Latin (a bit rusty) For the rest, my son either teaches himself or gets his instruction from other adults with appropriate qualifications. In either case, I provide supervision to make sure that the work gets done…. (continued)

One of the problems lies with contradictions within the COMAR.  On the one hand, homeschooled students are required to take English, math, science, social studies, music, art, health and PE.  In other words, a high school homeschooler would be required to take 8 credits of health over their 4 years of high school, 8 credits of music, 8 credits of art, etc.   Ridiculous.  On the other hand, homeschoolers are supposed to study what is “usually taught to students of the same age.”  Show me a middle schooler, let alone a high schooler who takes this distribution of courses (Hello Eastern Humanities magnet!).

Clearly, when the regs were drafted folks never imagined people might be homeschooling all the way through high school.  An update to the COMAR, to reflect this new reality, is needed.  Meanwhile its seems to me that enforcement of the eight-subjects-every-year component of the regulation will make homeschooling untenable to some. Which is most likely exactly what the bureacrats at MCPS have in mind.

Meanwhile, HSLDA has weighed in: Montgomery County Imposes New 80-20 Rule?

There’s another untold wrinkle to this story as well.  Evidently around the same time as Ms. Downey was going back and forth with MCPS, another parent was told by Montgomery College that students younger than 16 were no longer eligible for early placement. When she quoted the policy on the Montgomery College website, she was told, “That was the past. This is now.”

When Ms. Downey followed up to ask about this “new policy” (her now “underage” son was slated to take another MC course), no one could point to the new policy or say where it was available, or if this was even the case.  However, she did later learn that  an MCPS employee had placed a call to the homeschooling official at the Maryland State Department of Education, asking if homeschooled students were allowed to take college-level classes.  Hmmm.  Coincidence?  Frankly, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if MCPS was exerting pressure to close off opportunities for gifted students to go outside the system in order to get an appropriate education.

Meanwhile here is the current Montgomery College Early Placement policy as it appears on their website.

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Jay Mathews…Live!

Posted in Gifted, School, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 10, 2009 | 12 Comments »

Well of course I went to hear the Jay Mathews talk… :-)

As I mentioned in a previous post, Mathews came to speak at a local school’s monthly PTSA meeting this evening.  I’m not sure how the PTSA lured him but he was quite the draw, filling the school’s media center seats and leaving some standing.  I recognized many faces, including parents from a local high school where his Challenge Index and the elimination of honors classes has been a hot topic on the listserv.  Also in the crowd:  Mr. Marty Creel, head of the MPCS Department of Enriched and Innovative Instruction.  For once he wasn’t in the hot seat, rather on an incognito “listening mission” in preparation no doubt for the next AEI Advisory Committee Meeting (this Thursday).  Poor man, he jiggled his legs violently throughout the presentation.

So what did Mr. Mathews have to say?  He began with some background, how having been the West Coast bureau chief for the Post, several years later he returned to DC and asked to be put on the Metro section desk.  Not exactly a typical career trajectory for a talented journalist.  Of course he found a way to weave in mention of his several books too, including Escalante: The Best Teacher in America, Class Struggle: What’s Wrong (and Right) with America’s Best Public High Schools, Supertest: How the International Baccalaureate Can Strengthen Our Schools, and his most recent, Work Hard. Be Nice, which is about KIPP charter schools in DC.

And then it was on to Q and A and the fun began.

A parent asked a leading question about “labels” like “low income” and “minority.”  Did these successful schools he wrote about use them?  Mathews responded that the schools were pretty homogeneous:  100% “FARMS,” about 80% Hispanic with a small GT magnet that was “GT in name only.”  He related an anecdote where a GT student came to teacher Jaime Escalante and said she was in the gifted program and was having a problem with an aspect of math.  Escalante told her one of his “non-gifted” students would show her how to do it.  And did.

The questioner pressed him on what he thought about the MCPS “no-labels” pilot initiative.  Mathews waffled then said, “I don’t think public schools are equipped to give a good GT education.  If I had a gifted student I would not put my faith in the public schools.  I would get together with other parents and put something together.”

Wow.  Let me write that again:

I don’t think public schools are equipped to give a good GT education.  If I had a gifted student I would not put my faith in the public schools.  I would get together with other parents and put something together.

That breathtaking sentence alone made the meeting worth attending.  What is he saying here?  That swaths of parents should homeschool? Start a charter or private school?  That they have no claim to an appropriate public education?  That they have to provide … I don’t know what.  Is he assuming that all gifted kids come from families in a socio-economic position to do this?  (Mathews’ kids, by the way, are rumored to have attended Sidwell Friends.)

Pull outs–and he implied by extension, the label–were a way “to make parents feel good.”  That said, he backpedaled, noting that he had not been doing the reporting on the MCPS labeling issue, and that he’s “not sure that lifting the label is the answer.”

One parent chimed in “In Montgomery County everyone is GT by 3rd grade or you’re dead.”

There was a question about the International Baccalaureate’s Global Centre for the Americas (aka North American headquarters) moving to Montgomery County (about which MCPS found it necessary to <surprise!> issue a press release.)  Mr. Mathews is obviously a big fan of the IB and he described his frustration in trying to get any answer from 16 colleges in the area about why they won’t give the same credit for IB exams as they do for AP exams.

There was a question about student stress and the increasingly high expectations facing students. And then a question about acceleration:  It appears that large numbers of students are going through the AP testing regime, but they don’t do well; they’re getting failing grades.  Mathews found this “interesting” and said he’d need to see the data.  A parent piped up with an anecdote of 9th graders having to repeat classes they “passed” in middle school.  Mathews fell back on AP classes forcing teachers to “raise their game.”

Someone brought up teacher quality…someone else spoke of parents hiring tutors to go over what their children had missed in the drive to accelerate.  Another parent jumped in to say that there’s the same phenomenon in private schools, where she had always thought one went for a “better” education.  But there these families were, at the tutor’s.  So it wasn’t “better,” which “blew her away.”  (Afterwards an acquaintance said she could swear that she heard Mathews say under his breath “it is better.”)

A high school parent–and local elementary school teacher–said that he was seeing second graders taking 4th grade math, 4th graders taking 6th and seventh grade math, and not “getting it.” Mr. Mathews seemed genuinely surprised to be hearing all this, kept asking if there was data, if he had data he could share.  The audience laughed when the teacher/parent said that he as “Jay Mathews of the Washington Post” had a better chance at getting data out of MCPS than anyone else in the room.  A mom with a daughter in the same high school said her daughter and others were retaking Geometry–a class they had taken in middle school.  They “get it” on the test–but they don’t really “get it.”  The teacher/parent said he blamed the central office, which has set a target of 80% for completion of algebra by grade 8.  (Hmm, now where have we heard this before?  To meet YOUR Challenge Index, Mr. Mathews.)  Applause.  Mathews said the county could give a test…the teacher replied that they do give a test, there are unit tests…and students nail the county tests. But it’s county standards.  Proficiency is 60%.  They’d be failing elsewhere.  What’s more they learn to hate math.  Mr. Mathews seemed genuinely surprised and interested in hearing more from the teacher/parent (“I’ve learned more in 10 minutes here…”) and I hope they do connect and share data, even if just anecdotal.

A parent brought up the recent op-ed piece by the Blair math magnet teacher, Erik Walstein, how he tests the “creme de la creme” of the county– and these students don’t understand the fundamentals of math.  They’re skimming.  Mathews didn’t seem to be aware of the letter, which many found surprising.

Whew!  And then it was over.   A bunch of people walked out with Mr. Mathews and he invited people to contact him at the Post.  (I haven’t even had a chance to comment on his recent responses to letters on homeschooling.)

Overall, a very worthwhile evening.  Look for some interesting stories in the weeks ahead.

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