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!
- Almanac: Crunch Time
- Almanac: Public School Fees Raise Questions
- Almanac: Push for Evergreen Playing Fields
- Baltimore Sun Inside Ed: Montgomery County parents fight school fees
- Bethesda Magazine: Whipping Posts
- Black & White Online: MCPS eliminates 70% of school fees
- Black and White: Summer reading: making lemons into lemonade
- Chicago Gazette: Turf battle at Sheridan Park: artificial or natural?
- Examiner: Audit: School Staff Misused Funds
- Examiner: How to find useful information on neighborhood schools
- Examiner: Montgomery schools audit vindicates parents’ watchdog group
- Examiner: Report: Special Ed integration fails expectations
- Examiner: School fees frustrate families
- Examiner: School officials rush to remove privacy breach from Internet
- Examiner: Superintendent under fire for comments about district
- Examiner: The 3 minute interview: Lyda Astrove
- Gazette: Audits reveal loose spending practices in high schools
- Gazette: Ali's behind-the-scene work brings refund for students
- Gazette: County approves money for artificial turf
- Gazette: Jetset Jerry
- Gazette: Parents Coalition seeks change
- Gazette: Parents, members of school board debate derogatory comment
- Gazette: Parents: School fees are illegal
- Gazette: School board approves artificial turf for school
- Gazette: School system leaves out parents, advocates complain
- Gazette: Schools' transparency bill gets mixed reaction from House
- Gazette: Special-Ed Advocates floored by phase-out of learning centers
- Gazette: Students want school system to reconsider later start times
- Naperville Sun: Knapp: People have a right to know where our money is going
- News Channel 8: Montgomery County School Fees Examined by Officials
- On the Record: Attorney, advocate, mother praises special-ed ruling
- Parents Protest Public School Fees
- Sentinel: Federation Corner
- Silver Chips: Board of Education to vote on cell phone policy
- Silver Chips: Inclusion Program to Expand
- Silver Chips: U.S. Supreme Court hears MCPS lawsuit
- The Tide Online: Allegations of ethics violations raised against RM Principal
- Wall Street Journal: Data-Driven Schools See Rising Scores
- WAMU: Kojo Nnamdi on Parent Activism in Local Schools
- Washington Post - Maryland Moment: Does Montgomery Discriminate Against PIAs?
- Washington Post- Maryland Moment: Civic Group honors Goldstein, Parent Coalition and others
- Washington Post: "Gum Game" Used for 9 Years
- Washington Post: Artificial Turf gets a Foothold at Schools Across the Region
- Washington Post: Attacks Against Parent Group in Online Posts Spark Debate
- Washington Post: Audits Obtained by Parents Show More Misspent Funds
- Washington Post: Board told to open up about closed sessions
- Washington Post: Churchill High Students Were Expected to Buy Own AP Texts
- Washington Post: Court Favors Parents in Battle over Special-Education Tuition
- Washington Post: Courts Weighs Funding for Special Education
- Washington Post: D.C. Area Schools Chief's Perk that Refreshes: Travel
- Washington Post: Homeschooling Guidelines: A Study in Confusion
- Washington Post: In Emergency, School Board Attendance Not Required
- Washington Post: In Md., Teed About Principal's Golf Cart
- Washington Post: Montgomery Notebook
- Washington Post: Montgomery Sees Middle Schools Fail Despite Aid
- Washington Post: Over 10 years, Montgomery's Weast Aced Tough Tests
- Washington Post: Parent Condemns Remarks To Summer School Grads
- Washington Post: Plan to Close Knolls School in Kensington is Opposed
- Washington Post: School Bus Radio Service
- Washington Post: Schools' Math Scores Raise New Concerns
- Washington Post: Weast Plans to Delay Closure of Special Education Centers
- Washington Post: Weast to Lose Key Political Ally on County Council
- Washington Post: Well-Connected Parents Take on School Boards
- Whitman Shorts: Illegal Curricular Fees
- WJLA: Montgomery County Superintendent Makes Crude Comments
- WJLA: School Money Spent on Staff Perks at School
- WTOP: After pressure from parents, committee looks into school fees
- WTOP: Audit of High School Shows Lots of Red Ink
- WTOP: Do school fees violate Md. state law?
- WTOP: Fight over school fees may be coming to close
- WTOP: Md house leader to call for ban on school fees
- WTOP: Parents on school fees - Show us the money
- WTOP: School system's use of federal funding questioned
- WTOP: Teen wins fight to attend school
- WTOP: Turf war brewing
- WUSA9: Montgomery County High School Graduation Rates Drop
- WUSA9: Montgomery County Reviews School Fees
- WUSA9: No Joking Matter
- WUSA9: School Leader Wants To Exclude Pain In The *#&@! Parents!
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 For Immediate Release Montgomery County Pulls Today, Montgomery County The Campaign for a The Campaign for a
(617.278.4172;
jgolin@jbcc.harvard.edu)
the Plug on BusRadio
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:
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.
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/.
Information
2010 Board
of Education Election
12 candidates have filed to
run in the upcoming Board of Education election.
All Montgomery County voters can vote in all
Board of Education races.
You have a CHOICE!
The Primary Election is Tuesday, September 14, 2010.
Primary races are
shown in BOLD.
The "at-large" or "district" designation on the Board of Education races only refers to the residence of the candidate.
At- Large: Lyda Astrove*
Lisa Lloyd
District 1: Judy Docca
District 3: Karen Smith
Patricia O'Neill
District 5: Lou August
* Designates members of the Parents' Coalition of Montgomery County, Maryland
# # #
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.
Hot Topics
Click topic to read more!
Budget
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.
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