After Years of Learning, Will Superintendent Set New Rules for MCPS?

By Whitney Teal

Taking the reins of one of America’s largest and highest-performing school systems has been pretty sweet for Joshua Starr, the Montgomery County Public Schools superintendent installed in the summer of 2011. He’s learned the behemoth-sized district of 202 schools through a series of listening events; engaged with parents around education policy through a book club and repeatedly bad-mouthed standardized tests.

Now, The Washington Post reported, members of the county’s Board of Education and education activists are looking for more from Starr in his third year.

“We’ve got to have something more concrete about how we get to these students and these parents,” board member Judy Docca told Starr during a meeting this spring, according to The Post. “You’re talking about all of these things in a very philosophical way.”

On many people’s agenda, The Post reported, is a more clear-cut way of discussing the district’s achievement gap, which became a focal point for previous superintendent, Jerry Weast. Starr has vaguely addressed system inequities (like in his “State of the Schools” address), but met resistance from County Council members when this year’s budget didn’t clearly highlight what money was being spent on the achievement gap, The Gazette reported.

“The low-income kids usually get the short end of the stick, but [Weast] was able to wrap better support for those kids into something everyone could get behind,” Andrew J. Rotherham, a co-founder and partner at Bellwether Education, told The Post.

Starr debuted a plan for underperforming schools in May, picking 10 schools to pilot a program that will provide an extra layer of central office support to those schools, Patch reported.

“The vision is that I want us to be the best public education system in the country, bar none,” Starr told The Post. “I want our kids to graduate and be academically proficient, creative thinkers and have a sense of hope that they can meet the world on their own terms and thrive in their future.”