Education
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OIG Proves It: MoCo Government Can be Courageous
Read more: OIG Proves It: MoCo Government Can be CourageousThe first time we critiqued the Office of Inspector General (OIG) was in June 2023 over its report about the county’s bag tax. In May 2024 we again critiqued the OIG over what appeared to be a lot of talented people spending a year doing (or forced to do) a mediocre job. Here we are,…
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Mahmoud v. Taylor: Part 2—What Happened to the Administrative Burden?
Read more: Mahmoud v. Taylor: Part 2—What Happened to the Administrative Burden?There were two motivations for the coercive LGBT curriculum. One was inclusion, the other administrative burden. MCPS’s claim about administrative burden was reported in several news outlets, and unfortunately I can’t find a source document from MCPS itself. Fortunately, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor mentioned it in her dissent. …requiring schools to provide advance notice…
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Mahmoud v. Taylor: Part 1—Basking in the SCOTUS Victory
Read more: Mahmoud v. Taylor: Part 1—Basking in the SCOTUS VictoryImmediately after the Supreme Court’s proceedings in Mahmoud v. Taylor on April 22, 2025, it became clear that victory for the opt-out crowd was a matter of time. Who gets the credit for this victory? Brazenly, shamelessly, and undeservedly I’ll claim 0.00005% of the credit because I’ve been following this story since the first rally…
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How Badly is MCPS Red-lined?
Read more: How Badly is MCPS Red-lined?I’ve mentioned several times that MCPS is redlined based on affluence: affluent families live in areas where the schools are successful, and struggling families live in areas where the schools struggle along with them. In this post I present a visualization of this claim. Step 1: Identify the schools’ rankings Niche.com provides a succinct ranking…
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David Stein, do you have one corpuscle of compassion?
Read more: David Stein, do you have one corpuscle of compassion?Within the last week over 1,000 employees were laid off from the State Department. More layoffs are coming at the Department of Education. According to “National Public” Radio (not much of either), as of June 6 this year 59,000 federal jobs disappeared since Trump entered office. There is surely more to come. For some of…
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The Few Prejudiced MCPS Teachers and Their Herd Immunity
Read more: The Few Prejudiced MCPS Teachers and Their Herd ImmunityWe, the veterans and survivors of COVID, learned quite clearly the meaning of “herd immunity.” Enough people are vaccinated against a disease, so the few who actually contract the disease do not infect everyone else. It’s a strategy that has served us well since the 1930s. After seeing a few MCPS teachers get busted, and…
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Jawando’s Seven Black Fathers: Part 3—Education Reform (or not)
Read more: Jawando’s Seven Black Fathers: Part 3—Education Reform (or not)Throughout My Seven Black Fathers, Will Jawando returns several times to his experiences (good and bad) in school, as well as the differential treatment between white and black school children. In Chapter 2, Jawando relates horrific treatment at the hands of a teacher’s assistant at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic school. Being falsely accused of…
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Call To Action: Help Jane Decolonize Montgomery County Public Schools
Read more: Call To Action: Help Jane Decolonize Montgomery County Public SchoolsTLDR; Scroll to the bottom of this post and send urgent emails to the County Council and our Annapolis delegation demanding that MCPS issue a high school diploma to Jane Doe (we don’t know her true name). Forced conversion and assimilation is a topic that comes up in most histories of conquest and colonization. Canadians…
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Attach Performance Metrics to All Future MCPS Budgets: Our Children’s Education Depends on Our Fiscal Prudence
Read more: Attach Performance Metrics to All Future MCPS Budgets: Our Children’s Education Depends on Our Fiscal PrudenceThe County Council, County Executive, and MCPS are placing its residents in a moral and financial bind. On the table, there appears to be a dialectical dilemma: our children’s future or fiscal prudence. However, an honest discussion regarding fully funding MCPS above and beyond historical trends demands that we resolve the following questions: How can…
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Turning Challenges Into Change: Why Montgomery County Needs MBLI Now More Than Ever
Read more: Turning Challenges Into Change: Why Montgomery County Needs MBLI Now More Than EverStarting something new is never easy—especially when it’s never been done before. As the first and only business-focused public charter school for middle school students in the state of Maryland, The MECCA Business Learning Institute (MBLI) Public Charter School was always destined to be more than just a school. It is a movement—a bold reimagining…