Montgomery County is aiming new resources at closing the longstanding achievement gap between white students and minority students in its school system—though it’s not yet clear what concrete steps the new efforts will bring about.
Last week, the county announced the creation of the Children’s Opportunity Fund, an organization with a yet-to-be-developed governing board or strategy, but funded with $125,000 each from the budgets of the county’s Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS).
Shirley Brandman, the former Board of Education member who has been tasked with organizing the group as interim director, said Thursday “the idea is to say, ‘We know that closing the achievement gap is something that the schools can’t do alone.’ ”
That could mean that the group facilitates mentoring services, mental health evaluations or summer learning programs for students from low-income families through DHHS or other nonprofits that would be the direct providers. Funding will also come from private sources.
“It is the recognition that we want to wrap our arms around our children and our families,” Brandman said. “This really starts with a very clear focus about being very strategic about the kind of investments that will have an impact on those socio-economic determinants that hold kids back.”
Brandman said she won’t know what specific programs or policies might come out of the group for a couple of months. She hopes to convene the Children’s Opportunity Fund’s founding governing board some time in October. It’ll include county government officials, interim MCPS Superintendent Larry Bowers, Board of Education members and community members.
MCPS, like other school systems around the country, has for decades tried to narrow the gap in student performance based on race and socio-economic factors.
A 2014 report from the County Council’s Office of Legislative Oversight found that student performance at 11 county “high-poverty” high schools lagged behind student performance at 14 “low-poverty” high schools, a list that included Bethesda-Chevy Chase, Walter Johnson and Walt Whitman in Bethesda and Winston Churchill in Potomac.
While graduation rates have increased among minority student populations and suspension rates have decreased, the report found that the majority of MCPS’ low-income, black and Hispanic students attended one of the 11 “high-poverty” schools located on the east side of the county and in the Gaithersburg and Germantown areas.
Brandman said the group will have built-in evaluation systems to gauge how all of its programs are working.
While Brandman works on establishing the Children’s Opportunity Fund, others in county government are putting together an independent working group to create a blueprint of guiding principles on closing the achievement gap before MCPS picks a new superintendent.
Chuck Short, a special assistant to County Executive Ike Leggett, said last week that his office has been calling nonprofit representatives, education advocates and other community members to put together a group to come up with “an aligned vision” for closing the achievement gap.
MCPS is expected to resume its search this fall for a new superintendent to replace Bowers.
Andrew Houlihan, a Houston educator who was named as the school board’s “preferred candidate” in May, quickly withdrew from consideration for the job.
Those involved in the search process said many community and education representatives who met with Houlihan were worried about his lack of experience as a superintendent and unimpressed with his work closing the achievement gap as an administrator with the Houston Independent School District.
“In fairness to the new superintendent, we want him or her to have an opportunity to put her or his own mark on whatever this group comes up with,” Short said. “But the important thing the county executive has in mind here is that we kind of call people to action and have them aligned. That way, when the new superintendent comes to town she or he will have the benefit of some of those innovations and perhaps want to expand on those efforts.”
Short said the county government agrees that DHHS and other non-school-related county agencies must play a larger role in helping kids from low-income families succeed. He referred to the former federal Department of Health, Education and Welfare as an example of how government should view the achievement gap. That department split into the Department of Education and Department of Health and Human Services in 1979.
“As we have seen a large number of moderate- and low-income people moving into our communities, the need for integration among health, education and welfare is greater today than it has ever been,” Short said. “We want those to be together. We want our health department in the school buildings, which is a concept we have just a few examples of today.”
Short said the working group, which doesn’t have an official name, will be organized this fall.
