Last week, MCPS sent an email to parents wishing them well for the summer and “Celebrating the End of a Great School Year!” See screen capture below. This email came the last day of school for students, which was June 16th, 2023.
But, was it truly a “great school year”? Even by MCPS’s historical standards? Great is defined by Oxford Dictionary, generally, as “of ability, quality, or eminence considerably above the normal or average.”
I would submit that 2022-23 was not a “great” school year for MCPS. We all get it – the superintendent has to do a little “spin” to pat themselves and the brass on the back. A school district as big and diverse (as MCPS constantly reminds us) as this jurisdiction is bound to have challenges during operation. But did MCPS really “rise up” and meet these challenges head on and in a “great” way?
Let’s do a quick recap of the school year and the headlines that dominated local – and national – news this past year.
September, 2022. Headline from The Washington Post and Nicole Asbury:
From a similar article at WTOP.com in September by Luke Lukert and Matthew Delaney:
Literacy scores, for older students however, ticked up slightly. Eighth graders recorded a 3% increase, and 11th graders a 2% increase.
“We did have a very disruptive year let’s not forget. We had a lot of students out, we had attendance issues we have it was not a normal year, to say the least,” Karla Silvestre, the county’s school board vice president, said. “I’m not making excuses. I’m just reminding ourselves.”
Does this result scream “great”? Maybe middling. Great would be handily exceeding both reading comprehension / literacy and math scores. That isn’t the case here. As we shall see below, “attendance issues” persist in a big way, despite Karla Silvestre’s comment on the prior 2021-22 school year.
Let’s move forward to February, 2023. The headline is about antisemitic incidents occurring at a high clip at MCPS schools. Per Nicole Asbury again for The Washington Post:
Again, this doesn’t signal “a great school year”. Sure, MCPS isn’t solely to blame for how kids and young adults treat one another or how students perceive those of a different faith / religion. Bad taste jokes about “the Jews” aren’t unique to this era. That is complex, and much of it stems from ignorance (which school should, in theory, be solving) or learned from social media, traditional media, parents, peers, etc. But MCPS’s response to the incidents left much to be desired. Again, not CleanSlateMoCo’s “hot take” — that’s the word of Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington’s associate director:
Now let’s flash forward to about a week ago. Headline is from MoCo360.media and Em Espey:
According to this report, the truancy rate is even higher at select high schools. None of this says “great” or even “good” for MCPS. It would seem to be detrimental to further improvements in reading and math scores in the near future.
And then of course, there is the class curriculum stuff/headlines and the new “no opt out policy” for parents that made national news – both this month and in month’s prior. This issue is growing bigger and more divisive by the week — it isn’t “fading away”, even though MCPS wants it to.
So in summary, it wasn’t a “great school year” for MCPS as a whole and their internal communications to parents and staff should be truthful about that. Show some humility, some determination to get better at the basics of education and parents and students can forge ahead and the MCPS “brand” (yes, it is a brand) can start to be restored.
Simply trying to gloss over a school year like 2022-23 isn’t the way to go.
