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 …
After a slew of near-fatal accidents in Bethesda this year, residents are asking officials to take steps to improve pedestrian and cyclist safety.
There have been 14 pedestrian accidents in Montgomery County since the beginning of 2013, four of which took place in Bethesda, leaving residents concerned about safety. Following a Feb. 27 accident in which a car struck a stroller carrying a 3-month-old baby at the intersection of Arlington Road and Edgemoor Lane, a group of Bethesda Elementary parents launched an online petition advocating for increased pedestrian safety measures on the busy street. The petition, which has 228 supporters as of May 6, asks the Montgomery County Council for speed cameras and radar signs on Arlington Road, better and more visible markings of crosswalks and a change to “no turn on red” in areas with high pedestrian traffic near schools. “We, the parents of …
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 at 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 …
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.)
Friday, May 10, 2013
Kevin Ambrose has volunteered for 12 years with first-grade classes at Somerset Elementary School, helping students with writing and reading.
With all of the area's schools' recent awards racking up, it's time to celebrate those who help students achieve new learning goals every day in school. The Montgomery County Board of Education honored 15 people and organizations at its annual Distinguished Service Awards ceremony on Wednesday, May 8. Included in the honorees was Kevin Ambrose, who has volunteered for 12 years with first-grade classes at Somerset Elementary School, according to a county schools' statement. He started volunteering in the fall of 2001 as a writer's workshop volunteer, and now visits the school every day. "His work helping students with writing and reading has been folded into the teaching program," the statement added. The county school board established the…
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
The three students placed first, second and third in a Spanish language essay.
Three local fourth-grade students visited the Embassy of Spain in Washington, DC, on Monday to receive special recognition for essays written in Spanish. Baxter Brew of Chevy Chase Elementary School took first place in the ninth annual writing contest sponsored by the Centro Español de Washington in cooperation with the Embassy of Spain, according to a news release from Big Learning Foreign Language: FLES, a non-profit program in Montgomery County that teaches affordable, experience-learning-based foreign language, science and engineering classes at county schools, before and after the school day. Natalie DeSarbo of Wood Acres Elementary School took second place in the contest, and Annie Tang of Chevy Chase Elementary School took third …
Once again, Bethesda high schools are 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. Walt Whitman High School, Walter Johnson High School and Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School came out as the third-, fourth- and fifth-best schools, respectively, 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 national rankings in parentheses) on …
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 ›