GUEST POST: Expanded Language Learning Could Enhance Integration & Narrow the Achievement Gap

Today we feature our first guest post, by Board of Education at-large candidate Jill Ortman-Fouse. Jill has been endorsed by the Washington Post and The Gazette, along with by Progressive Powerhouses Senator Jamie Raskin (D-20) and County Councilmember Marc Elrich (at-large). Read on below:

“There is no silver bullet to solve the achievement gap,” said Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) Superintendent Joshua Starr in a recent County Council meeting with the Board of Education (BOE). The officials were discussing a report that documented the widening gap among students in several performance measures and the increased segregation of students by race, income and ethnicity in county schools. Since 2010, the share of white and Asian students has grown at MCPS’s 14 low-poverty high schools, and the share of black and Latino students has increased at the 11 high-poverty high schools.

The report also showed that disadvantaged students performed better at schools with less poverty. Council members and MCPS representatives discussed using socio-economic integration as part of the strategy to attack the gap. Council members asked about using boundary changes to achieve that goal. But BOE President Phil Kaufman responded that boundary changes were a rarely used option. He explained that MCPS has used special programs including signature programs, school choice, language immersion and magnets to try to balance the schools. Obviously some of these options haven’t worked, but what about expanding the ones that have to encourage more voluntary integration?

There is clearly strong interest among families who want their children to learn a second language at a younger age in Montgomery County. The competition to get into special language programs is fierce with requests far exceeding available spaces. For example, last year over 1,000 students applied for elementary language immersion for 275 openings. So, if our schools are becoming more stratified, expanding language programs could draw families with greater resources to more high poverty schools. Schools affected by poverty are now widely dispersed throughout the county, so increasing availability could also shorten transportation time. Some students spend more than an hour by bus to get to highly desirable programs.

138 languages are spoken in the homes of our students, yet most MCPS schools don’t offer a second language class until 6th grade. And when selecting classes, students must often choose between a language and instrumental music, which is also highly valued. With the wide range of languages spoken in our homes, why are our language class options so limited? As we live in an epicenter of world politics, why are we not offering more opportunities for other languages like Arabic, Farsi and Mandarin? Language classes also develop an increased understanding of, and appreciation for, other cultures – key to both future global economic opportunities and international relations.

Studies have shown countless benefits to early language acquisition. We know it enhances cognitive development and increases critical thinking skills. It also improves understanding of one’s native language. And having more bilingual graduates could be a rich labor resource for the county. We should be encouraging our advanced language program (dual, immersion and traditional) students to become educators to meet the growing diverse challenges in our schools.

Language programs can also raise those high-stakes standardized test scores that our schools are judged by. For example, MCPS studies have shown that immersion students in all demographic groups outperform their peers on state testing from grades 4 through 8. Since these programs benefit the students enrolled in them, why don’t we open them up to more home school students? In that way, we could increase socio-economic integration and share the benefits and resources within the schools themselves—and avoid the “isolation of the school within a school” phenomenon.

County Council President Craig Rice said that “schools are a driving factor in determining where people locate.” Higher performing schools benefit the community, and their reputations matter. There is evidence that shows that our higher poverty schools with immersions and magnets have made progress narrowing the achievement gap. As the BOE is planning to review the special programs, taking a look at what is working – and what the community wants – as well as what isn’t working, should be a part of that process.

Lack of affordable housing is another factor contributing to the segregation, and we must continue to work with the County Council to make more affordable housing available. But it is not an “either/or” scenario. Certainly there are many contributing factors, and it will take a range of focused, school and community-based strategies to close the gap.

Rather than point fingers, the community and leaders must come together as a team to reverse this trend where increasing numbers of disadvantaged students of color are falling through the cracks. The County Council Educational Committee’s meeting with the BOE was a step in that direction, and Councilmember Nancy Navarro’s recently announced Ready for Tomorrow: Education and Workforce Summit promises to be an exciting opportunity for broader engagement in solutions.

Montgomery County is a talent magnet, and its extraordinary assets and commitment to public education make it uniquely suited to be a national model for closing the achievement gap. As Councilmember Navarro asked, “What will it take for all parts of our county to be excellent?” Let’s be responsive to the community and the demands of the market, continue to think creatively about what we already have that works—and take advantage of our unique resources, as well as seek to understand what needs to change. The future of our kids and our county depend on it.

Learn more about Jill: http://www.jill4allkids.com/

The Achievement Gap: Our Take

Montgomery County and really Maryland as a whole is facing a challenge to its public education system: the achievement gap. Minority students from households and families of color fair worse in school as an overall trend than their non-minority ("white") classmates. For years, the achievement gap has been a phenomenon at the center of the national debate about education: what do we have to do to get kids to succeed?

We do not claim to have the "magic bullet" to make the achievement gap a footnote in history, but we do think we know of at least one ailment that has plagued our school system for far too long: bullying.

The author belongs to a minority. Both his parents are college graduates, they had dinner together a sa family several nights a week, and he grew up in a multilingual family--learning several alphabets by age 7. He has never attended school outside of Maryland, and benefited greatly from both a private and public school education, ultimately graduating from a blue ribbon public high school. 

But there was a demon in the author's life that hounded him for many years. One that, in American culture attracts only shame and accusations of weakness and guilt: the author was bullied as a child, and it did affect his grades, his temperament, and his decision to enter politics. For the first time ever, the author is revealing this side of him, and doing so in a very public way. We hope in doing so, that we might highlight the need to address bullying in our schools, and begin the culture change needed to end bullying once and for all. 

American society, especially when talking about classroom culture awards the socially popular, while punishing the "weird," "strange," and "different." The role this plays in the classroom and the way it affects the lifetime academic performance of students is well documented. A student who does not feel valued often feels apathetic towards schoolwork, and moreover, falls into a cycle of hopelessness and social insularity that can severe consequences in the long run. 

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A Very Personal Aside

To speak from a very personal place: following September 11th, 2001, a classmate of the author inflamed racial and social tensions at his high school by constantly harassing and humiliating students of a particular minority background. The author (and others) complained to the school's administration and to at least one member of the guidance team at their high school. No action was taken to discipline or at least confront the classmate's behavior. Several years later, the student had an altercation with a very well-liked and respected high school teacher. The teacher was suffering from depression, and the classmate (whose behavior remained incorrigible years later) one Friday afternoon told them to go home and die. The teacher committed suicide that weekend. Indirectly, school administration was complicit in aiding and abetting bullying to the extent that lives were endangered. The author believes this strongly.

The author knows of two other students from that same high school, who committed suicide before ever graduating. In both cases, friends circles, the sense of hopelessness and the feeling of social isolation played a serious role. In simpler words: bullying does kill.

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In America, succeeding academically is not viewed in the same light as in other developed countries. In Japan, families pressure (sometimes beyond rhyme and reason) their children to succeed academically, and lives and career paths are generally decided in that very hierarchical society by the end of eighth grade. In Germany and much of the European Union, students excel because society and their families expect and encourage them to do so. In our society: good grades aren't cool, and not being cool can be a devastating weakness just when young people need a proper education most: in high school.

But bullying as an institution does not end with high school graduation. Some students are just late bloomers, who need the part-time and transient educational environment offered by community colleges. That is where societal pressure and the achievement gap's expectations gap kick in; the pressure to attend a four year college right out of high school is so high in Montgomery County, that many times we ignore the obvious (emotional, financial, social, and logistical) benefits of a young person attending Montgomery College for a semester or more. Success does not have to be a pass or fail, sink or swim sort of equation. It can and should be a gentle arc of achievement culminating in a meaningful addition and presence in human society. 

The peer pressure on students of certain minority backgrounds to not succeed academically is well-known. The author felt it too, at times, but luckily grew up in an environment that was diverse enough to not be pressured to act, talk, or behave a certain way in order to "fit in". Many other students, across the state, are not as lucky. More must be done to secure a sense of safety in the classroom for all students, regardless of their background. 

Conclusion

To conclude: there are countless systematic failures not enumerated in this post relating to why we have an achievement gap. We do not dare to belittle any of them. But one factor we encourage the Board of Education on both the county and state level to investigate more thoroughly, is just how many young people's academic careers are we losing to peer pressure in general, and bullying in particular. We speak anecdotally in saying: the problem does exist, and lives are being ruined simply because enough is not being done to end American Academia's ugliest of traditions. 

How the MCDCC Can Help to Raise Voter Turnout

Reform #1: Rebuild the Precinct Operation

The Democratic Party has an established system of turning out voters on election day in November. Precinct officials appointed and trained (in theory, at least) by the MCDCC are in charge of calling, cajoling, and reminding voters to get to the polls. In theory, there are supposed to be 255 "precinct chairs" and another 255 "vice chairs", one of each for each electoral precinct in Montgomery County (Note: several of those precincts don't really exist, but for geographic purposes are accounted for anyway).

However, the party precinct operation is in shambles. Precinct officials are exhausted from years of being asked to shepherd voters with little thanks and few rewards. Increasingly, precinct officials are aging out--many decades older than the median age of the county. While this has not affected their work ethic or determination to serve their party, one must bare in mind our earlier blog post detailing the sharp decline in millennial voters choosing either party. To connect to and woo millennials to vote (something Democrats must do if they wish to remain in power next decade), younger, newer faces are needed across the party's precinct operation in order to galvanize with zeal and conviction Democratic voters to vote in their primary election--which for now, remains the only election that matters in MoCo. 

Reform #2: Diversify the Party 

In addition to wooing millennials, the Democratic Party must get minorities to vote. The term minority is misleading, as minorities now make up the majority of the county's population. Yet, that has not yet translated into an equal distribution of seats in Annapolis or Rockville between whites and minorities. Before jumping to conclusions: we think this speaks to the high integrity and gifted statesmanship of the vast majority of MoCo's elected officials in caring for their constituents concerns regardless of skin color, race, or creed. However, it is natural that as ethnic and minority communities feel more and more a part of American society, that they wish to see their elected officials or at the very least, their party officials look and sound more like them. 

The incredible diversity of our county has slowly begun to emerge on the central committee. However, glaring inequities still remain: Hoan Dang, the sole East Asian American central committee-member lost his seat in District 19. District 15, whose East Asian, Muslim, and South Asian populations are huge, has no Muslim member, no South Asian member since Delegate Aruna Miller moved on to higher office, and no East Asian member. Luckily, they do have Venattia Vann, former vice chair of the party, who is African American. However, the other two members, Marjorie Goldman and Tim Whitehouse are both non-minorities, and in no way or form speak to the diversity of the district's population.

While losing Muslim-American Almina Khorikawala in District 16 (where Muslims have the least presence demographically), the central committee gained Mumin Barre, a Somali-American Muslim from District 39--only the second in county history. Muslims, who largely caucus by their faith and not by ethnicity, are a growing presence in the county. Yet, after the disastrous and repeat defeats of former Delegate Saqib Ali at the polls (last year he received zero votes for a recommendation by the Democratic Party to replace Senator Brian Feldman as a District 15 Delegate, and that was on the heels of a string of other high profile defeats in years past), there have been no Muslims elected to higher office in or from Montgomery County.

Latinos are consistently underrepresented as precinct officials and board members of various party-sanctioned clubs and caucuses around the county. While District 39's Juan Cardenas has now been joined by District 16's incredibly well-rounded Loretta Jean Garcia, the precinct operation is need of Latino officials who know and understand their community's dynamics and social culture. 

(We apologize for the glaring absence of other diverse communities not spoken for above, but we move on for the sake of brevity; we mean no disrespect to the Developmental Disabilities, LGBTQ+, and other minority groups not mentioned above.)

Reform #3: Train the Leaders of Tomorrow

The author benefited not once, but several times from advanced political and advocacy training offered by constituencies to which he belongs to. There is absolutely no reason the Democratic Party cannot offer the same level of training while sharing a geographic border the world's most powerful political nerve center. The idea that the Democratic Party continues to rely on outside programs such as Emerge (which does an amazing job) to train potential candidates for office and party leaders is a strategy based on an outdated model that is destined to fail in the long run. The party must embrace all seeking to serve the people through elected office, and provide them the tools they need to run. This speaks to larger political ethic: we need our elections to be about ideas and not power politics, mailers and cold hard cash. The party can help create that vision of electoral equity by helping potential candidates learn what it takes to run through a campaign institute. Radical idea, we know. 

Reform #4: A Stronger Platform

What does it mean to be Democrat? What do Democrats stand for? These seem like simple questions, but are not. The Democratic Party must outline its agenda and core beliefs for both everyday party members as well as elected officials. In every developed country in the world except our own, when the Party speaks, the Candidate listens. For some reason beyond the understanding of anyone at Center State Politics, that just doesn't happen here. But it did once. When George Leventhal served as Chair of the Montgomery County Democratic Party, he rammed through a stunning endorsement for a living wage for county contractors. The result was instantaneous: the county council followed suit and made it law. The party doesn't need to shackle politicians to their will, but it would be helpful for all those involved for the party to offer us a little more clarity on what it means to be a Democrat 'round these parts.

Reform #5: Take the Party Digital 

We are not calling for the trashing of the sample ballot (well, not yet), but if Democrats wish to get their voters out to the polls, they need to engage them where most of them are during the day: online. Voters should not have to depend on WAMU or the Women's League of Voters to learn about Democratic candidates. It would be incredibly helpful for the MCDCC to offer a comprehensive, online guide featuring Democratic candidates and vital information regarding their campaign. Furthermore, Democrats should be able to know where to vote, how to vote and what districts & offices they are to vote for by a simply clicking a few buttons on their local party website. We need a 21st century approach to local politics, it's just that simple. By the way: if the Democrats did trash the sample ballot, they could claim it was a carbon footprint reduction decision. Just a thought. 

Silver Lining

The good news is, under the guidance of Kevin Walling, the Young Democrat who was elected Chair of the MCDCC earlier this month, the party seems to be working towards just these reforms and more. We expect this central committee will re-vamp the party over the course of the next two years, and that there will be a respectable rise in overall turnout four year from now in the next local primary election. 

9,500 MARYLANDERS THANK MIKULSKI, CALL ON CARDIN TO FIGHT BANKING CORRUPTION

Several of us at Center State Politics are the children of bankers or other financial service executives. To anyone who has lost their home, is going through foreclosure or is in the midst of bankruptcy because of the financial meltdown and recession of 2008: our parents are sorry for their role in enabling the one percenters of the banking world to make money off of your misery. We are sorry, too.

Corruption by banks, especially after the rise of the speculative trade of ownership of home loans or parts of home loans made by banks led to the financial meltdown of 2008. Since 2008, families are routinely refused the right refinance their home mortgages for being a few payments behind, and large corporate banks refuse to re-negotiate mortgages because foreign investors who have bought the right to collect portions of the loan payment refused to allow such re-negotiations. Globalization might be a good thing, but not when a wealthy investor in Sweden can laugh and say no to a poor first generation-home owning immigrant family trying to save their home.

We feel strongly that Senator Cardin needs to get on board with sponsoring the 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act. Please contact Senator Cardin via phone at: 202-224-4524. Maryland Families are at risk of becoming homeless because of predatory lending and speculative trading of their home loans. Take action now.

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NEWS RELEASE FROM 
PROGRESSIVE MARYLAND
For Immediate Release

Contact
Marvin Silver, 301-452-6936; marvin@ourfinancialsecurity.org
Outreach Director, Americans for Financial Reform
Marylanders Ask Their Senators to Support 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act
Legislation seeks to reinstate and modernize core banking protections.

Silver Spring, MD – That was the message of petitions delivered to Senators Barbara Mikulski and Ben Cardin today by Progressive Maryland. The petitions, which called for action on the 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act, were part of a national delivery bearing more than 600,000 signatures, including 9,580 citizens of Maryland.

This bipartisan bill, introduced by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) along with Senators John McCain (R-Ariz.), Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), and Angus King (I-Maine) would address the problem of Wall Street banks that have become too complicated, conflicted, and powerful, as well as simply too big. Their legislation restores the traditional principle of the original 1930s Glass-Steagall law while adding new protections to update it for 21st century financial markets and minimize the risk of future bailouts.

"For some sixty years the U.S. had a stable financial system - and one focused more on serving the economy and the society as a whole - thanks in part to the Glass-Steagall wall between commercial banking and the casino world of trading and speculating," says Executive Director Kate Planco Waybright. "Progressive Maryland supports this legislation which would make our financial system safer and focus banks on making sustainable loans to homeowners and businesses."

The petitions were gathered by Credo, Public Citizen, Americans for Financial Reform, Dr. Mitchell Gershten, and MoveOn.org.

"We thank Senator Mikulski for cosponsoring this measure and urge Senator Cardin to put his name on this critical legislation as well," Waybright said. "Their leadership is needed to ensure our financial system is more secure and better able to support the real economy."

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Americans for Financial Reform is a nonpartisan and nonprofit coalition of more than 200 civil rights, consumer, labor, business, investor, faith-based, and civic and community groups. Formed in the wake of the 2008 crisis, we are working to lay the foundation for a

Dispelling the Myths About Low Voter Turnout

Myths 1 & 2: The Incumbents & Slated Candidates Like Low Turnout
No matter what people say: in America few, if any, politicians like the idea of low voter turnout. One incumbent in Montgomery County, Councilmember George Leventhal, was furious at the disastrously low turn out in Montgomery County this June. Leventhal, who narrowly beat challenger and future MoCo superstar Beth Daly could be said to have benefited the most from poor turnout, as he and Daly were neck-and-neck by most accounts for the fourth at-large seat on the county council. Had turnout been a shy bit higher, Daly could have won, to the hurrahs and cheers of Millennials and Environmentalists everywhere.

Still, Leventhal was not thrilled at all that so few voters exercised their right to vote, and neither were his incumbent colleagues. MoCo's penultimate statesman Phil Andrews and the county's progressive powerhouse Marc Elrich also spoke out against the county's dismal voter turnout (read Bill Turque's WaPo article quoting all three of them here).

Slated candidates running for the first time together with incumbents do not like low turnout either. What possible advantage does a newcomer have by not building their own political base within existing voters? Absolutely none. To depend on the coattails of another candidate or elected official means to be doomed when said candidate suffers a political setback or serious public error in judgement. Just look at how quickly Barack Obama's majority in Congress withered away after the president failed to deliver on hope and change quickly enough for the voters following his 2008 slam-dunk victory over John McCain.

Myth 3: Incumbents Benefit The Most From Low Turnout
Contrary to popular belief amongst politicos, the clearest winners of low turnout are not incumbents, though  as our fellow political blog The Seventh State points out, it sure didn't hurt them, either. Instead, special interests benefit the most from low turnout years, and we will try explain just how, below.

First off, understand that not all special interest groups are evil blood-sucking satanic monsters spawned from the one percent. Many (okay, most) are, but some others include your local PTA, Boy Scout Troop, Grass-Fed Kabob Dinner Club, and many more. In local politics, both the evil one percenters and local activist groups are present. Last year, a huge grassroots movement spearheaded by several prominent special interests groups (e.g. Sierra Club, Audobon Naturalist Society, Montgomery County Muslim Youth, etc.) came together to protect our local watershed and water-drinking supply from being paved over to make room for development. That should give all pause with what is about to be written: special interests groups can control votes, not just money. 

In a low turnout election, money and votes both matter. If a special interest group can accurately claim to a candidate running for state delegate that they control 800 votes in their district, the candidate is forced to listen. The reason is because in most cases 800 votes is larger than the margin of victory in a given Delegate race. That is where special interest groups thrive in an election: at the margin. If politicians are forced to only court low-hanging fruit in terms of votes offered or shepherded by various special interest groups, then democracy suffers; we need a much higher threshold of citizens to participate in order for the public's interests to be served.

The same argument can be made when discussing the role of the all might dollar in politics. Regardless of what our rabidly gynophobic male Supreme Court Justices claim, a corporation will never be a person, and money is not free speech. Whenever politicians are forced to rely on monied interests to help them engage and contact voters who are too busy to learn about the candidates and issues themselves, they are forced to keep in mind that they owe a favor (or at least some level of influence or personal availability to discuss their political agenda) to said monied interest. Without dropping names, many a progressive leader in MoCo has made a Faustian deal with those willing to pay good money to have them elected. That was never their hope, nor their intention, but with several candidates for office all vying for the same small group of voters, politicians sometimes feel they need to make moral compromises to have a shot and shaping the bigger picture once elected. Democracy is not supposed to work that way; voters should be actively seeking to engage their elected officials on their own volition, and not  be harangued into caring about their own welfare.

Myth 4: If Voters Aren't Voting, They Must Be Satisfied With Status-Quo in Government
Really? We live in a country where young people are moving across the world to Australia to find jobs (don't scoff, a former MoCo mayor's daughter has done just that!), where gas prices remain stubbornly high even after America becoming the world's largest producer of fossil fuel products earlier this year, and where large corporations and banks get financial bailouts while innocent families have their homes illegally foreclosed on everyday. We at Center State Politics refuse to believe that in any way that the people of Montgomery County-- who are a microcosm of the socio-political and socio-economic diversity of America--are satisfied with the status quo. Instead, we believe both anecdotally from speaking to countless voters and through academic evidence provided by Princeton University that MoCo's residents feel tired, weary, and outright disenfranchised from the democratic process that was designed to serve them.  Voter Apathy is therefore better termed as voter disillusionment.

In the coming weeks and months, we will compile a serious and exhaustive list of policy considerations to improve voter turnout in local elections in Maryland. Look for our upcoming series identifying the young rising leaders battling to change the county's political landscape by empowering voters and not special interests, and like us on Facebook today. 

The Plight of Party Politics: Millennials Aren't Buying In

A recent set of surveys conducted by Pew Research have uncovered some rather interesting facts about Millennials also known as America’s Most Screwed Over Generation Ever.  

For a decade now, Millennials have been asked to serve and die in two undeclared wars, work for free at stingy prestigious companies, and pay double the prime interest rate just to go to school. 

Furthermore, Millennials are at  high risk for chronic homelessness, as profit-driven property management companies drive up rents to take advantage of our nation’s desperate mass transit crisis, and cash in on a generation whose members are unlikely to own a home anytime soon.

But the author digresses; Pew has discovered that while Millennials are likely the most liberal generation in recent history, exactly half are politically unaffiliated.

There are plenty of reasons one could attribute to Millennials for bucking the trend of older generations to be a part of the dual-party system. One reason is the explosion of social media, which has made every political scandal reported in the news more easily accessible by a generation averse to traditional media.  The result is that these scandals are more easily assignable to either party’s elected members, driving up cynicism and distrust of institutional political players.

An aside: that’s why candidates like the youthful Beth Daly are so important to Maryland’s political future. Beth’s entire field operation was driven by Millennials who felt that they could connect and rely on her to look out for their interests.

Another potential reason is the Obama Hangover Effect: young people turned out in record numbers to deliver a message of hope and change at the ballot box in 2008. Six years later, unemployment, job prospects and financial hardship are bywords for the everyday existence of young people in America, and the lack of tangible progress in tackling any of these has left America’s uber-liberal Millennial generation feeling more to the left than Democrats are willing to go, or at least more creative and out of the box in how they would tackle these problems.

Whatever the case may be, for Montgomery County’s newly elected Democratic and Republican Central Committees (the local party affiliates of either national party) will have their work cut out for them: how do you get Millennials to buy back into the dual party system? 

What's in a Name?

Maryland lies precariously between the dividing line of the "old south" and original northern states. 

During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln quickly declared martial law over Maryland, whose "center" status meant the state might very well have joined the Confederacy, leaving the Federal capital of the District of Columbia surrounded and cut off from the rest of the Union. While West Berlin managed to survive that ordeal for several decades during the Cold War, many historians are doubtful Washington would have had the same luck in the 1860s. 

Ironically, today the state's geographically southern counties (Montgomery, Prince George's, and Charles) are more likely to identify as northern and urban, whereas much of the state's more physically northern jurisdictions (i.e. Eastern Shore, Western Maryland) are more likely to still identify with Maryland's southern & agrarian roots. Go figure. 

Maryland's geographic placement among the original 13 states as well as the fact that the state's official theater house (we have one of those, yes) is named Center Stage is how the name Center State came about. Welcome to Center State Politics.