Read about Shirley's Issues and Goals

High Expectations for All Students

High expectations for all students begin with an unshakable belief in every child's potential. We should never predetermine any child's limitations even when they face challenges such as limited English proficiency or learning disabilities. The measure of our schools' success must be judged as much by the support we give to the struggling student to attain mastery as by the acceleration we give to the high achiever to excel.

More School Counselors

Montgomery County high schools have an average of 300 students per counselor. With caseloads of that size, school counselors cannot develop meaningful relationships with students. They simply do not have enough time to get to know them, much less advising, supporting and encouraging them. If we truly want guidance counselors who can attend to our childrens social, emotional and academic needs, we must make increase the size of our counseling staff.

More Teaching and Less Testing

We cannot sacrifice teaching for the sake of testing. Classroom time spent "teaching to the test" diminishes opportunities for creative and innovative instruction. While testing that provides timely and useful information about students' performance enhances instruction, too much testing does nothing more than generate excess data that is often ignored. We need to find a proper balance. Tests that are not required by law and do not improve teaching and learning should be eliminated.

More Public Involvement in Public Education

A student's education extends beyond the classroom. Each child's success depends upon the involvement and support of parents, guardians and the members of the larger community who will help nurture this child's growth. Effective partnerships depend upon open and on-going communication. Our Board of Education needs to hear the voice of the community to understand the challenges our students face. We also must do more to reach out to parents and guardians for whom barriers of language and culture limit their involvement.

Meeting Each and Every Child's Educational Needs

Public education promises to treat every child as an individual whose learning needs are understood and met. While we prepare and encourage our students to strive for honors, we must also offer challenging teaching in our on-level "regular" courses to stimulate all students' growth. While we celebrate the success of our school system where 70% of students in grades K-2 can read on or above grade level, we must focus attention on the remaining 30% who need more instruction. We cannot be satisfied when a quarter of all high school students have below a 2.0 GPA, and are academically ineligible to participate in extracurricular activities or when some of our high schools have a 10% suspension rate. Success for every student must mean just that—every student.

Safe and Healthy Schools

All students should have access to healthy, safe school buildings that support learning. Healthy schools must be free of mold in the walls and lead in the water. Safe schools must be free of violence and intolerance.

Rethinking No Child Left Behind

Perhaps the single benefit of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is that it focused greater attention on groups of students — English language learners, special education students and minority students — whose limited progress had previously been masked. NCLB ensured that these students' challenges would not provide an excuse for failing to hold them to high expectations. However, by limiting the definition of "success" to scores on standardized tests, NCLB has exacerbated the pressure of high stakes testing. Many of our schools have responded by increasing the time devoted to test preparation at the expense of creative and innovative teaching. Many have also narrowed the curriculum to the "core" test subjects—reading and math—reducing the time available for science, social studies and the arts.

NCLB has also fueled a tendency to "blame" special needs students for making schools "fail." Several schools in our county miss AYP (adequate yearly progress) as a result of low test scores within their special education or ESOL populations. The resulting finger pointing creates tensions and divisions that are counterproductive.

I would support Montgomery County and the state of Maryland advocating for alternatives to high-stakes tests as a measure of success. Under NCLB, we compare the average test scores for one group of students to the average scores of the previous year's students. This comparison is not very useful. Instead, we should look at adopting a "value added" measure of student progress in which improvement is judged by measuring a student over time. This allows the student who demonstrates a year (or more) worth of progress toward standard during the school year to be deemed successful. A value added measure would account for the very diverse levels of preparedness with which students begin each school year and would support their continuous progress. In addition, I would advocate that schools which fail to make AYP should receive additional resources, training and support to assist struggling students, rather than only punitive consequences.

Importance of Art

Art plays a critical role in the curriculum. Visual and performing arts stimulate children's creativity, inspire their imaginations and allow students to demonstrate talents that might not be visible in other content areas. For some students, the ability to express themselves as individuals through their art helps them to define their place in the larger school community. In many instances schools, particularly those not meeting standard under No Child Left Behind, limit or curtail art in order to focus more time on math and reading—the core subjects on which students are tested. Narrowing the curriculum to emphasize test preparation denies students opportunities to be inspired. If we recognize that reading and math skills can be taught through the arts — that music rhythms can build reading readiness and art projects can facilitate sequential reasoning — we can avoid curriculum trade-offs. In order to ensure that our children have adequate access to art, we must ensure that every school is assigned adequate art and music teacher positions to support arts instruction.

The Real Crisis of Ineligibility

Too many of our students do not maintain a 2.0 average, putting them at risk. The eligibility policy should be strengthened to require academic support for these students. Participating in extracurricular activities may be the only "hook" that motivates struggling students to improve their records and stay in school.