October 2009

Leaving public school: One child's story

Q & A: Sue Katz Miller and Denise Jones

In my years as a PTA President, Denise Jones was the NAACP Parents Council Representative and my constant sounding board and partner in advocacy. She inspired me with her fearless demands for information and her tendency to show up in her child’s class for reality checks. We began having marathon weekly tete-a-tetes on education. And we still do, despite the fact that her daughter moved to private school for sixth grade, three years ago. I respect her decision, and recognize that we each have to make the best decision for each child. At the same time, I am disturbed by the flight of children like Denise’s daughter, high-achieving children of color, from public schools. So I sat down with Denise recently, and recorded our chat.

Denise Jones with her daughter Aimée. Photo by Julie Wiatt.

Your daughter was tagged by the public schools as GT (Gifted and Talented) early on. What services did she receive as a result?

She started in the primary grades GT program. But honestly, it just wasn’t that enriched or accelerated. I couldn’t see that they were doing anything that couldn’t have been done with the whole school. I was upset because I felt that there wasn’t anything going on in the school to meet her where she was. And right before my eyes, I saw my daughter “dumb down” her work so that she could fit in socially. So I had to double-school at home, and I was furious about it.

What do you mean by “double-school”?

We did a lot of reading. We visited a lot of museums. I started her on cello at age seven. And I also gave her workbooks and assigned extra work every day in math and English.

How did you decide to send her to private school?

I knew the Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) were very good, but I was so frustrated. I researched independent schools for years before actually applying. I’m a single parent. I felt overwhelmed. Was I really making the right decision? I was a big advocate in the public schools for my child and for all children. I pulled together a file of articles for parents on whether or not an independent school environment is better for a particular child, and at what juncture in the public school journey they might make that switch. I had to think about our relationship with our neighborhood, transportation issues, all of it. I didn’t consider cost: if I had let that stop me I wouldn’t have done it at all.

Particularly since my child is a child of color, I read the research on the psychological experiences of children of color in independent schools. And I looked at the diversity of the schools: I didn’t want her to be one of the only African-American children in her classroom. I wanted her to have a better social life than she was having in the public schools. She was already becoming ostracized, being asked to do other people’s homework, being made fun of.

And you think that was because she is a high-achieving student of color?

Yes. I experienced it personally as a child growing up, and I was floored to discover that my daughter was still running into the same thing. Specifically, the research shows that high-achieving students of color have fewer friends than high-achieving white students as they progress through high school.

Our neighborhood is so diverse—where were the high-achieving students of color to be her friends?

We have huge diversity in Takoma Park, which is why I still live here. But a large proportion of the children of color are also children of immigrants, and there was an emphasis on supporting struggling children. I am a complete and very vocal supporter of that, and have continued to be. But here in what MCPS calls the “red zone,” we put our school resources into shoring up the basics, and we can’t seem to really get beyond that.

Was your daughter prepared to compete in private school? In other words, what do you see as the strengths and weaknesses of MCPS academics?

I was glad I had not spent the time or money to move her to private school in the primary grades. There was a real lifelong benefit for her, going to school in this community. When she made the shift, the one area where she really had to struggle, was writing skills. Her writing skills were really, really terrible. I remember one of her very first papers for her new school. There were at least 25 edits on that paper: grammar, punctuation, rewrites. The only writing instruction she had at MCPS was on writing “BCRs” (“brief constructed responses”) for the state testing, and grammar and spelling don’t even count. That’s why I had always supplemented her MCPS education with workbooks, so that she’d have some passing familiarity with sentence structure.

I know other African-American parents who are opting for private schools. What message should MCPS get from this?

There are a couple things that MCPS has done right, that have benefited many students of color. They uncoupled the GT label as the ticket to accelerated math, and there are many more children who have gotten into those math classes. And I think my daughter was well-prepared in math as a result. But in addition to improving writing instruction, they need to bolster their social studies program. It’s lame. The more you provide content hooks for students, the greater the opportunity to keep them engaged to finish school.

Are you saying these improvements would keep more high-achieving students of color at MCPS?

It would help. But I have to say that MCPS is of two minds. They give kids the GT label early, but the focus is on the strugglers, so a lot of the time, the high-achievers are left alone. Maybe they’re grouped, but then they’re ignored. They have to figure it out for themselves. Well, they are no more equipped than the strugglers to do that! They’re no more mature. They’re still kids and they need teaching that doesn’t happen for them. If you continue to ignore that, then the families of high-achieving children of color will continue to look elsewhere, because they are not being well-served.

Why don’t the test-in Centers and Magnets in MCPS solve the problems of these students?

There aren’t enough slots in the Center and Magnet programs to accommodate them. You have a huge segment of the population that just isn’t being adequately served. The kids are trying to make do and the parents are tearing their hair out, going up to the school, and as the kids get older, the school wants to see the parents less and less. So the kids aren’t getting the kinds of services that they should be getting. African-American parents who are in the know are going to say, “That’s not good enough for my child.”

I know you’re aware that Middle Schools have been shifting away from offering “homogeneous” Honors level classes, towards heterogeneous classrooms.

And that’s going to further reduce the enrichment that parents might expert their children to have.

Did MCPS do any kind of exit interview with you when you pulled your daughter out of the school system?

No. I had been a very vocal advocate for all public school kids. In addition to serving as the NAACP representative for two schools, I continued to serve on the Deputy Superintendent’s Minority Achievement Advisory Council for years even after my daughter went to private school. But when it came to my child, I had to make the decision that was best for her. I didn’t feel like anyone in MCPS was that interested. I regularly spoke to the GT coordinators in her schools, and the impression that I got was that they didn’t want any extra work from a student or a parent. She just had to roll into the pack and I was supposed to be satisfied.

Do you hear from other parents who want to borrow your folder of research on schools?

I talk to parents all the time about the opportunities they might find in independent schools, particularly parents of African-American boys. I think African-American boys in MCPS are ill-served. I saw, volunteering in a classroom, a teacher effectively put in a corner some boys she didn’t really want to deal with. Those boys could do the work. But she wanted them to just sit quietly because they were going to require more attention. I would hate to see that happen if I had a son.

Isn’t the school system trying to address that with “putting race on the table” and diversity trainings?

Awareness of race and the lowered expectations people may have because of race, socioeconomics, gender—it’s important to have that kind of training. But is it making a difference? Not necessarily. Because I think the system is unyielding. It’s not very flexible.

And the school system’s reaction to this training seems to be to shift further away from homogeneous grouping….

I agree that all children should get the resources they need. Are all students the same? No. So I don’t agree with homogeneous grouping. I see the need for some heterogeneous grouping in elementary school, but even there, they need to have the acceleration and enrichment. All kids need enrichment but not all kids are the same. Once they get to middle school, differentiated classrooms have to be the norm. I think MCPS is making a mistake. I think they’ve been pushed into it because of the steady drumbeat in the county to treat all kids as if they are alike. I definitely don’t think that works for African-American students.

This year, MCPS Superintendent Jerry Weast said that he was trying to create more Obamas in our school system.

I have to tell you that our President is a standout. He is not your average Joe who was left to languish in heterogeneous classrooms. His mother helped to put him in a place where he could be developed to his fullest potential. Heterogeneous grouping does not necessarily do that. Taking away the Honors level science in middle school is not going to create the next President of the United States. We need intellectuals. Americans have this intense desire to flatten our intellectual hierarchy so that everyone appears to be the same. I’m sorry, these are the people who are going to bring something to the table in terms of helping our communities and our world solve its big problems. Everyone has a place at the table, and it is ridiculous that we would diminish the development of children who have intellectual gifts. It’s ridiculous.

I know your daughter has benefited from the state-funded Maryland summer camps for the gifted and talented. How did you feel when the state recently withdrew the funds to run these programs?

For several years now, my daughter has gone to camp through the Maryland Summer Centers—the statewide camps for the gifted and talented. Last summer, she auditioned on her cello and was accepted to the Maryland Center for the Arts, along with remarkable students from all over the state. Maryland has now defunded these programs, and it’s a severe loss, because there’s so little these students get throughout the year in their home schools.

What advice would you give parents in negotiating the school system?

Make sure that you connect with and get to know your child’s teachers and administrators, every year. You must articulate to them at the beginning of the year, and reiterate at several points throughout the year, what your expectations and goals are for that child, not just for that year, but for when they graduate and go to college and begin their career. They need to see that child as a child that is on the pathway you have chosen, whatever it may be.

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