Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Data from 2009 reveals that students have long struggled with final exams in MCPS math courses.
Few Montgomery County Public Schools students enrolled in high school math courses made high marks on final exams last semester, data released by the school district last week showed. In one class, Bridge to Algebra 2, less than 1 percent made an "A" on the final exam. (See data, above, that details the distribution of final exam grades "A" through "E" for eight math courses last semester.) School officials were prompted to release student math grades after members of the county school board grilled Superintendent Joshua Starr about last semester's final exam grades. Media outlets reported earlier this month that the majority of students in high school math—Algebra, Algebra 2, Geometry and Precalculus—failed their final exams. Starr …
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Superintendent Joshua Starr cautioned the school board against jumping to conclusions about numbers that show most high school students flunked their math finals last semester.
The majority of high school math students failed their final exams last semester, several news outlets reported earlier this month, but at Tuesday's meeting of the Montgomery County Board of Education, Superintendent Joshua Starr cautioned against jumping to conclusions, The Washington Post reported. "Our kids do very, very well. So the idea that somehow it’s like this beautiful house that exists and you open the door and it’s termite-ridden ... the exams don’t tell us that," Starr said. "It doesn’t mean you don’t have to fix a couple of broken pipes, but I don’t want people to get the idea that all of a sudden we’ve got this massive, widespread issue that no one has acknowledged or recognized before." Math final exam passage rates were …
Advocates for free school breakfast programs say student achievement is linked to the availability of breakfast in schools.
More schools in Montgomery County are participating in free breakfast programs, a reality that may result in increased student achievement, advocates for school breakfast said. "Expanding participation in breakfast is one of the best ways to ensure that Maryland’s children are healthy and ready to learn," Cathy Demeroto, director of Maryland Hunger Solutions, said. "Efforts to expand school breakfast in Maryland are making a difference, and we’re pleased to see that the state is moving in the right direction. Still, we can build on this progress and reach even more children, especially in urban areas." During the 2011-2012 school year, 49.3 percent of low-income children attending Montgomery County Public Schools participated in the …
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
The systemwide proposal to provide more central office support to struggling schools begins with a 10-school pilot, according to county schools officials.
Ten schools were picked to help pilot a new program from Montgomery County Public Schools that will provide an extra layer of central office support to under-performing schools. Officials culled various data to determine the schools that needed help, including key measures at certain grade levels, like whether students are reading as they should by 3rd grade and whether 5th and 8th graders have the reading and math skills that prepare them for the next level. The full list of schools: "The 10 Innovation Schools have already shown a commitment to school improvement and have the staff and leadership in place to accelerate that progress," Superintendent Joshua Starr said in a statement. "These schools will serve as a model for how …
Monday, May 13, 2013
Just what does a LEED Gold building look like? Take a look.
Buildings typically consume a lot of energy, but they can be designed for reduced energy use. That doesn't mean they have to be ugly, utilitarian buildings—in fact, they can be quite stunning, as these photos of the new science building for the German School of Washington, DC, in Potomac, demonstrate. The building recently received LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold Certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, according to an announcement from the school. The LEED certification system ranks buildings of a variety of building types according to how environmentally-friendly they were built and how ecologically they function. There are four levels of LEED certification: Platinum, Gold, Silver and a basic …
A huge stump near Potomac Elementary School takes up space. Cut it down? Possibly. But that’s not what Potomac Elementary School parent Donna Petrocella has in mind. Instead of a stump, she sees art.
Sunday, May 12, 2013
The Montgomery County Board of Education meets regularly in Rockville.
The Montgomery County Board of Education will approve a bevy of school building improvements at its regularly scheduled meeting on Tuesday, May 14 at 9 a.m. in Rockville. Projects at Judith A. Resnik, Sequoyah, Summit Hall, Arcola and Rosemary Hills Elementary Schools are on the agenda. (To see the full agenda, click on the PDF above.)
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Once again, Winston Churchill High School was included in a national ranking of top high schools.
Montgomery County Public Schools have done it again—landing in top spots in a national ranking. This time, the ranking is the third annual list of America's Best High Schools, published by Newsweek and The Daily Beast. Potomac's own Winston Churchill High School came out as the second-best high school in the county. Seventeen of the county's public high schools made it on this list, which includes the nation's top 2,000 high schools—less than 10 percent of all the high schools in the country. And, the top six high schools in Maryland are all MCPS schools, according to a school system statement. The 17 county schools (with their rankings in parentheses) on the list are: "The Newsweek rankings, and other such lists, demonstrate that our high…
Monday, May 6, 2013
The first Tuesday in May is recognized as Teacher Appreciation Day.
Technology and teaching methods may change, but a new study shows that our fondness for the instructors who taught us the "Three Rs" is unwavering. The nonprofit Kids4Kars surveyed a random sampling of Americans and found that 70 percent were satisfied with their old teachers, enough to want them to teach their own kids. Another 75 percent of the survey group said that a teacher had inspired them in their career or education choices. Why was it, then, that only about a quarter of the group had formally thanked any of their teachers? Tuesday, May 7, which the United States Congress and the National Education Association (NEA) recognize as Teacher Appreciation Day, provides a remedy. The day was first celebrated in 1944 with a …
A review of test scores for algebra, geometry, algebra II and precalculus showed that a majority of students failed the final exam last year, local news outlets reported.
More than half of high school students in Montgomery County Public Schools didn't pass last semester's math finals, according to reports in The Examiner newspaper and WAMU.org. Data from MCPS, released after parents at Rockville High began anecdotally comparing test scores, according to WAMU, show that students across the system failed bedrock mathematics course finals—algebra and algebra II, geometry and precalculus. Course Algebra Algebra II Geometry Precalculus Final Exam Failure (%) 61 57 62 48 Those percentages add up to about 11,000 students not passing final math exams out of 19,000 who took the exams, Examiner reported. Dana Tofig, spokesman for MCPS, said the system is forming a task force to investigate the high rate of failures…
michael bucci
8:29 am on Wednesday, May 22, 2013
The students taking the math final usually have just finished taking the high stress HSA that they must pass to graduate. After that, the exam only a few days later seems superfluous. more ›