Superintendent Weast looks on over some of his “Jerry’s Kids.”

There’s an old story about some kids who were floating down a river. People rushed into the water to pull the children to safety—but more kids kept coming. Finally somebody said, “Maybe we better send somebody upriver and figure out what’s going on.”

Dr. Jerry Weast, Superintendent of the Montgomery County, MD Public School District uses the tale to explain the district’s focus on the earliest years of schooling. Faced with a study that found students who were struggling in 3rd grade had very little hope of catching up in time for high school, the district started to look for solutions “upriver”— in kindergarten through 2nd grade classrooms.

Now, three years after launching a program to enhance early education in 17 “focus schools”, the county has been encouraged enough by the results to expand the program to 56 schools, and to increase spending on the program to $18.5 million a year. Results from the TerraNova Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills showed that students in the 17 focus schools made greater gains than students in wealthier communities with half-day kindergarten. The results were particularly strong in math but improvements were also seen in reading and language.

“We looked at all of our statistics and said maybe we ought to [explore this now] because the complexity of getting everybody involved as the child grows older is more difficult and more expensive,” says Weast.

The Montgomery County district is the 18th largest in the U.S. and also one of the fastest growing, fueled by the growth of suburban communities close to Washington, DC. The early-years focus of Weast’s campaign and Montgomery County’s commitment to tracking the results have drawn the attention of researchers and policy makers from around the country.

Many well-known longitudinal studies have illustrated that students who attend high-quality early education programs experience greater academic success and educational attainment. Weast hopes that by designing a reform plan that is based on solid research and by carefully documenting the results, the district can lead the way in early education and reduce the need for costly and often unsuccessful remediation in later grades.

The 17 pilot elementary schools were selected because their student populations included a high percentage of children who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch (over 60 percent) as well as substantial numbers of children for whom English was not the primary language (23 percent). Research indicates that strong early-education programs are particularly beneficial for low-income children and those who are learning English.

The key elements of the program—called the Early Success Performance Plan—are full-day kindergarten (many Montgomery County elementary schools offer only half-day kindergarten) with a 90-minute block of time set aside for literacy activities and a 60-minute block devoted to math skills. The kindergarten classrooms follow a curriculum based on reading, writing and arithmetic, and have a class size limit of 15. First and second grade classrooms have a class size limit of 17.

In addition, more than 400 teachers have received nearly 100 hours each of training in how to implement the curriculum and check student progress. Diagnostic tests—not standardized tests, which don’t yield reliable results with very young students—are carried out three times a year to check student progress.

A Winding River
The journey upriver has been complicated by the cost of implementing the plan and objections to the decision to focus funds and resources on a relative handful of schools.

In order to combat these challenges, Weast has had to play the role of a salesman. He skillfully ties questions about the specifics of the plan to the volumes of past research that have been conducted supporting the importance of early education. In June 2003, his promotion of Montgomery County’s efforts began in full force with an educational policy briefing at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. And in early 2004, Weast will speak at the American Association of School Administrators annual conference to further promote what he calls the “Montgomery County Public Schools success story.”

“You need support and commitment of boards of education and, if they aren’t the funding agency, then your funding agency,” Weast advises superintendents who wish to pursue a similar path. “You’re going to be redistributing what meager funds you have to targeted [students based on need]—this is a difficult balance.”

Duchy Trachtenberg, who sat on the Montgomery County School Board Guidance and Counseling Committee when the plan was enacted, recalls some opponents who argued that the effort was not a balanced one. She believes that their concerns can be addressed in the future by expanding the plan and by using the results to improve early education practices throughout the system.

Weast says that implementing the plan in more schools requires overall agreement in the community that it is important to level the playing field for children, rather than equalize funding. “You have to have collaboration of your district employee associations or unions and the parents in the greater community and you have to think about the egalitarian spirit that is alive in our country about helping the most needy...”

Early Years Matter
When President Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act into law on January 8, 2002, he left a lot of educators wondering where the earliest years of education came into the mix. The Act calls for stronger accountability for results in schools, increased flexibility and local control, and expanded options for parental school choice—all regulations that play an important role once kids are knee-deep inside the school system.

“The Act does not address pre-kindergarten or even kindergarten and doesn’t start any kind of organized testing program [until] grade 3,” explains Weast. “I think the Act is a fine symbolism of a country that wants everyone to succeed, and I think it has some really good, catchy language, but I don’t think it will be fully realized without an early childhood part.”

The legislation also strongly promotes standardized testing, but many researchers note that standardized testing provides less meaningful data for younger children. This is one reason why Weast says Montgomery County has focused on diagnostic testing—complex measures of students’ learning—rather than standardized testing in early education.

Weast believes that the results of Montgomery County’s efforts can help shape future national education legislation. “Research and data are very significant with regard to when is the best time—that is, the most cost-effective time—to [help kids],” he explains. “That would be in the pre-kindergarten, early childhood years, up to grade 2.”

Weast believes that reform is a one-child-at-a-time process. (:56)

Replicating Success
Whether or not the No Child Left Behind Act has covered all the bases, most people realize that children have a lot of learning to do before 3rd grade in order to ensure success.

“This is the beginning of an effort that will have huge consequences in the future,” says Harold Hodgkinson, Director of the Center for Demographic Study with the Institute for Educational Leadership. He feels that the Montgomery County findings and their implications for reform are of utmost importance in helping students who may be left behind by current national legislation.

Weast says that his own experience tells him that the Montgomery County model can be done elsewhere: “I’ve had the opportunity to serve in 5 states as superintendent and I’ve had an opportunity to serve in small school systems all the way up to now one of the largest in the country. This particular concept is very replicable at every location. It is very desirable to the parents and community.”

The final selling point of the superintendent-turned-salesman is simple, yet has big implications: helping the youngest learners, especially those in most need, is crucial to the future success of public education in America. He argues that much of the language component of a child’s education occurs prior to and in the first years of schooling. If that component fails, the child’s attitude toward learning and future performance in school can be permanently damaged. “Remedial [courses], alternative education and the movement to vouchers and charters is driven by that failure,” says Weast.

Many educators have turned to the Montgomery County Public Schools Web site for more information about the studies and the experiences of the first batch of “Jerry’s Kid’s” (a reference to Weast’s first name). The school system has also made specific plan information available to educators and the public at large.

“The legacy is that we will see [our students] have more opportunities and options with their lives, and we hope to see them in the more rigorous courses that we’ve developed for middle and high school kids,” says Weast. That would be proof that to leave no child behind, it’s important to get an early start.

Resources:

• Montgomery County Public Schools Web site
• The Institute for Educational Leadership offers a report by Harold Hodgkinson called “Leaving Too Many Children Behind: A Demographer’s View on the Neglect of America’s Youngest Children.”
• Explore Connect for Kids’ “Early Years” resources and our “Ready to Learn” topics pages

Rob Capriccioso is a staff writer for Connect for Kids.