M-Stat: How School Systems Should Be Managed
by
deanmillot@mac.com
on Tue 01 May 2007 03:41 PM EDT |
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Cosmos
You
are entitled to your own opinions about policy, but not your own facts.
M-Stat is an "indications and warning" system based on Baltimore's
CitiStat program - itself inspired by the tool used by NYC police to
help decisionmakers target resources and reduce crime. It tilts the
basis of local decisionmaking from "my opinion" to "these facts."
Neither CitiStat nor M-Stat appear to be commerically available
programs. They should be. You are reading about a unique
"competitive advantage" that should be a widespread "best practice."
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Gov.
Martin O'Malley (D)… listened as school officials gave a PowerPoint
presentation showing three schools, one each from affluent,
middle-class and low-income neighborhoods, all with moribund math
achievement among blacks and Hispanics…. "Trying to keep the pace and
move the kids along has been very difficult," one school's principal
said….
Montgomery
school officials were showing off M-Stat, their version of a celebrated
initiative that uses statistics and computers to identify and analyze
problems…. Baltimore's school system was the first to adapt the program
to public education, in 2001, shortly after O'Malley, the city's mayor…
launched CitiStat in the city government….
Montgomery
school officials held their first M-Stat meetings in September 2005.
The full team meets for four hours once a month… Work centers on eight
"leverage points," all related to student achievement, with a
particular focus on the racial achievement gap…. "M-Stat is really
designed to focus on, 'Where do we have achievement gaps, and what are
we going to do about them?' " said Donald H. Kress, chief school
performance officer for the Montgomery schools….
Yesterday's
session… left participants with the disquieting fact that black and
Hispanic students aren't reaping the benefits of attending
high-performing schools…. One principal, representing a middle-class
neighborhood, predicted that her minority math data would "flat-line"
this year because the school is focusing on other reforms. In the often
sugarcoated world of public education, that was a bold admission.
Daniel de Vise, Washington Post, May 1.
News Channel 7 WJLA Washington Post May 1