Montgomery County schools are getting stricter — for teachers, principals and staff

Before Superintendent Thomas Taylor walked into a sixth-grade math class at John Poole Middle School, he knew exactly what he wanted to see the students learning.

It was the seventh day of classes, so ... surface area.

Just as he hoped, Taylor watched the teacher lead her students through the formulas necessary to determine the area of a parallelogram. “Yup, that’s right,” Taylor said.

Heading into his third year leading Maryland’s largest school district, Taylor is concentrating on the nitty-gritty of what students learn each day, and making sure it’s the same across classrooms.

“A student’s access to rigorous, engaging instruction should not depend on which school they attend, which classroom they enter, or which teacher they happen to have on their schedule,” he said. “That kind of consistency doesn’t happen by accident.”

This is Taylor’s drumbeat.

In a district of more than 200 schools, nearly 153,000 students and about 25,000 employees, clear — and high — expectations are necessary, he said, if Montgomery County students are going to jump from merely solid results on state assessments to No. 1 in Maryland. (The district now ranks 6th out of 24 districts in math, and 7th in English.)

The blueprint for this synchronicity campaign is bound in a 94-page booklet, called “Lead with Intention.” District leaders published it this year and sent it to leaders across the school system. On a recent visit to campuses in the Poolesville area, Taylor carried his copy from class to class, checking to see if the teaching matched the plan.

The booklet also features reminders of forthcoming tests and questions that principals should be periodically asking themselves, like whether student data indicates inequity.

“Not much of this is new,” the introduction page reads. “What is new ... WE ARE GOING TO HOLD YOU TO IT.”

Or, as Taylor put it while visiting Poolesville: “The biggest shift is not everybody gets to do whatever the hell they want to do.”

That mindset can be tough to impose in a large school district.

“It’s no secret, in a school system of our size, making sure that good ideas don’t remain isolated and they become consistent is a great challenge,” said Chief of Schools Peter Moran.

Moran said he’s been heartened to see administrators referring to “Lead with Intention.”

“Ultimately, that consistency at the adult level is what helps produce greater consistency in students’ classroom experiences,” he said.

School leaders know a campaign of this sort can trigger pushback. Moran called them growing pains.

Montgomery County Education Association President David Stein said teachers have at times felt micromanaged by the administration and the union is working with district officials to protect teachers’ autonomy.

“It’s tough when you get top-down directives when you have thousands of different classrooms with thousands of different needs,” Stein said. MCPS leaders, he added, must balance districtwide consistency and individual teachers’ judgements.

Taylor said he expects to see the district’s focus pay off in stronger standardized test scores — and not some time in the distant future.

“The kids are getting it,” he said after observing another math classroom. “We are going to destroy the state assessments this year.”

Staying focused

It’s easy to see how Taylor’s initiative could get derailed. He’s been facing crises since he arrived in Montgomery County: a multibillion-dollar maintenance backlog that’s contributed to campus flooding and pervasive mold, two campus shootings within three months and a lawsuit over storybooks in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the district.

Plus, he’s confronting a shrinking enrollment that led to his decision to eliminate hundreds of job positions.

Year three doesn’t promise to be all that much calmer, with a pending elementary school boundary study, the possibility of additional deep budget cuts and continuing scrutiny of his signature plan to create a regional program model.

Taylor said he won’t be distracted from the work in the classroom.

“This is hard work, but it is important work, and I’m just happy to see the return of our focus to instruction — finally,” he said.

District leaders said they have been laying the groundwork with careful curriculum selections in recent years. They’ve purchased revamped lesson plans for both English and math and tout their choices as research-backed, rigorous and engaging — despite some pushback from teachers.

Taylor is looking for consistency everywhere, and he’s attuned to its absence, even when it has nothing to do with reading or math.

The classroom temperature, he noted aloud during his Upcounty school tour, sometimes spikes. One of the campus chillers was operating at 30% capacity, the principal explained.

“Microclimates,” Taylor joked. “You experience all four seasons at John Poole Middle School.”