Parents' Coalition of Montgomery County, Maryland
The Parents' Coalition of Montgomery County, Maryland is a citizen's network dedicated to improving the responsiveness and performance of the Montgomery County Public Schools. Drawing from education advocacy groups throughout Montgomery County, Maryland, the Parents' Coalition seeks to use the political process to achieve the goals of coherent, content-rich curriculum standards; high expectations combined with timely remediation and acceleration; a wider range of educational options for parents and children; greater transparency and accountability; and meaningful community input.
Contact us at: contact@parentscoalitionmc.com
Read the Parents' Coalition blog
Advocacy
What The Washington Post said about the Parents' Coalition
The coalition might be the best-known parent advocacy group in the region. Its members represent several constituencies, including parents of special education and gifted education students and fiscal watchdogs. The group's defining victory came this school year when the school system scaled back the fees charged to families for course materials.
Coalition leaders have drawn attention to the misuse of funds collected from students for activities, the broadcast of a commercial radio service on school buses and, with their "Weast Watch" blog, the travel habits of Weast and his lieutenants.
The Washington Post, June 4, 2009The Parents Coalition of Montgomery County (“PCMC”), a very active parent advocacy group and educational watchdog, was unaware for several months that BusRadio had been installed on a trial basis in fifty buses in Montgomery County. Incredibly, even Montgomery County Superintendent Dr. Jerry Weast was unaware of his district’s arrangement with BusRadio. When PCMC members and other parents learned that BusRadio was being used in Montgomery County, they flooded the school board and superintendent with calls and letters and the service was ended within days.
of Montgomery County, MD in the news!
Information
An analysis of Grade 3 reading "gap" trends. The analysis uses state data and compares the wealthiest district with one of the poorest. The question raise by the analysis is: where does the extra expenditure by the wealthy school system go?
The results are in, overall MCPS ranked 8th out of the 24 school systems state wide. In Mathematics, MCPS ranked 10th, while Reading was 5th.
Although MCPS leads the state in per pupil education spending, its educational results appear out of sync with that investment.
See the statewide rankings for each county here.
Related Parents' Coalition blog posts here.
Remember, the P in MCPS stands for PUBLIC!
High School Assessment (HSA) Pass Rates as shown in relation to FARMS, Wealth, and Education Spending in each of Maryland's 24 counties.
Click here to view scattergrams showing the correlation between High School Assessment (HSA) pass rates for 2009 Maryland Seniors against the percentage of students qualifying for Free and Reduced Meals (FARMS), Wealth, & Education Spending in each county.The scattergrams are based on publicly available data from the Maryland State Department of Education.
who have passed
the Maryland High School Assessment (HSA)
requirement
Click here to view a chart
showing the percentage
of 2009 seniors in each
Maryland county who have
taken and passed all 4 High
School Assessment (HSA)
exams. The counties have
been ranked starting with
the county that has the
highest percentage of
seniors who have been
cleared to graduate based
on the HSA requirement,
down to the county with
the lowest percentage.
Based on this information,
MCPS ranks 19th out of
24 Maryland counties.
This chart is based on
information released by
MSDE on October 28, 2008.
MCPS Change in Enrollment by grade level from 2003-2007
Click here to view graphs showing the change in enrollment at each grade level in MCPS from 2003-2007. The graphs show the overall change in enrollment by race designation as students moved from one grade to the next. For example, one graph shows the percentage of students that enter MCPS at 9th grade. The graphs were prepared by Bob Astrove using MCPS data.
For questions or information on this data please use the "contact us" e-mail at the top of this page.
What we don't know about the pathway to college readiness.
A Power Point Presentation using Maryland State Department of Education and
Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) testing data to track the progress of MCPS students.
This presentation has been prepared by MCPS parent Kumar Singam. For comments or questions on
this presentation please send an e-mail to contact@parentscoalitionmc.com
Click here to view the power point presentation.
- Bathrooms locked at Blair High School
- Berthiaume, Laura - Board of Education member
- Blizzard of 2010
- Board of Education Primary Election 2012
- Bus Fee to be charged to public school students
- Bullying
- Charter Schools
- Consultants
- Curriculum 2.0 - MCPS & Pearson Education, Inc.
- Cut of the Week Suggestions for trimming the MCPS budget outside of classrooms
- Edison High School of Technology
- EDmoney.org (MCPS stimulus funds received)
- Elementary Integrated Curriculum - MCPS & Pearson Education, Inc.
- Free Public Education
- Cell Phone Towers on School Sites
- Gardens (vegetable) at Montgomery County Public Schools
- Graduation fees & Senior dues
- Highland Elementary
- FY11 Operating Budget
- FY12 Operating Budget
- Gifted & Talented Education
- Illegal Fees
- Joshua Starr
- "Leading for Equity"
- Maryland State Assessments (MSA)
- MCPS Credit Cards
- Monocacy Elementary School Saved!
- MPAC (Special education pre-school program to be cut.)
- Oakland Terrace ES overcrowding
- Open Meetings Act violations by Board
- Pearson Education, Inc. (New curriculum and assessments for MCPS)
- Perry High School site sale
- Promethean Boards (Interactive White Boards) in MCPS Classrooms
- Race to the Top - Weast and Board give up $12 million share of State Award by not supporting application
- Red zone/green zone as defined by Superintendent Jerry Weast
- Safe Healthy Playing Fields Coalition
- Salaries
- Seven Keys
- Sligo Middle School cell tower compound
- Special Education
- Starr's Treks - travels of Superintendent Joshua Starr
- Styrofoam Lunch Trays
- Superintendent selection process
- Travel - MCPS Superintendent and staff travel to conferences
- Waring Station Holding School
- Wireless Generation
Budget
Montgomery County Council - Board of Education Lunch September 21, 2010 from WSB on Vimeo.
###
MCPS Staff to grow by 200.115 positions in FY 2010 under proposed budget.
See page 10 of the County Council Education Committee's packet on the FY 10 MCPS budget here.
The proposed MCPS FY 2010 Budget hits a new all time low for the percent of the budget going to instruction at 55.4%.
This is down from 60.1% of the budget in 2002. Graphs showing the history of the percentage of each school budget category, as a percentage of the total budget for the years 1995 through the budget for FY 2010 are available here.
The BusRadio Story:
December 9, 2008:
Montgomery County Public
School parents learn that their children have been riding buses with piped in "kid radio" from the company doing business as BusRadio. BusRadio has been banned by the New York State Board of Regents, the South Carolina State Board of Education, and the product is opposed by 50 organizations including the Campaign for a
Commercial-Free Childhood
and National PTA.
Extensive information about
this product is available on
the Campaign for a
Commercial-Free Childhood
website.
December 10, 2008:
Campaign for a
Commercial-Free Childhood
letter to Superintendent Weast on MCPS use of BusRadio.
Letter from Obligations, Inc.
to Superintendent Weast,
MCPS Board of Education,
MCCPTA President,
MCCPTA Officers and MCCPTA Cluster Coordinators. The letter
was sent on November 17, 2008. Obligations, Inc did not receive any response to their letter from the MCPS Superintendent, the MCPS Board of Education or MCCPTA.
UPDATE December 11, 2008:
MCPS terminates use of
BusRadio. Read letter from
Larry Bowers, MCPS COO.
WTOP: BusRadio gets turned off for good. Didn't even know what it was? Neither did one school Superintendent.
Kate Ryan reports.
December 11, 2008
Contact: Josh Golin
(617.278.4172;
jgolin@jbcc.harvard.edu)
For Immediate Release
Montgomery County Pulls
the Plug on BusRadio
Today, Montgomery County
Public Schools (MCPS)
decided to terminate their
relationship with BusRadio,
the controversial company
created to force children
to listen to commercialized
radio broadcasts on school
buses around the country.
MCPS’s decision came
after the Campaign for a
Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) sent a letter to MCPS superintendent Dr.
Jerry Weast urging him to
end the use of BusRadio
on MCPS school buses.
Montgomery County had
been using BusRadio in a
number of school buses
on a trial basis. With 96,000 school bus riders,
Montgomery County would
have been BusRadio’s
largest school district. The
following is CCFC’s
statement on Montgomery
County’s decision:
The Campaign for a
Commercial-Free
Childhood commends
Montgomery County
Public Schools for their
decision to terminate their
relationship with BusRadio.
No school district should
turn their students over to
a company whose stated
goal is to “take student-
targeted marketing to the
next level” or force children
to listen to advertisements
on their way to and from
school.
CCFC also congratulates
the Parents Coalition of
Montgomery County for
their advocacy efforts and
for drawing attention to
BusRadio’s presence in
Montgomery County.
The events of the past
twenty-four hours
demonstrate once again
that when parents learn
the truth about BusRadio,
they want no part of it for
their children. We hope
that parents around the
country will continue to
utilize our
BusRadio resources –
and those of Obligation, Inc
– to keep their school
buses commercial-free.
The Campaign for a
Commercial-Free Childhood
is a national coalition of
health care professionals,
educators, advocacy groups
and concerned parents who
counter the harmful effects
of marketing to children
through action, advocacy,
education, research, and
collaboration among
organizations and individuals who care about children.
CCFC supports the rights of
children to grow up – and the rights of parents to raise them – without being
undermined by rampant
commercialism. For more
information, please visit:
http://www. commercialfree
childhood.org/.
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