Montgomery’s schools should look like its residents. Photo by the author.

Over the past week, we’ve looked at how demographic changes and flight are making Montgomery County Public Schools a segregated system. Today, let’s talk about ways to fix it.

I started working on this series last year, when my brother began looking at Northeast Consortium high schools to attend this fall. I’m a proud product of MCPS and Blake High School, but it’s clear to me that both the school system and the county need to change if they want to remain competitive regionally, nationally and globally.

The de facto segregation of MCPS has been an issue for decades. But school and county officials have often ignored it or responded with weak or ineffective solutions. We can’t keep isolating our low-income and minority students in the system’s worst-ranked schools. And we must ensure that middle- and upper-middle class families see every school, not just a privileged handful of campuses, as a valid choice for their children.

Integration is good for students and economic development

Education researcher Richard Kahlenberg has found that students of all backgrounds do better in mixed-income schools, while middle-class parents are 4 times more likely to participate in parent-teacher associations, making the school community stronger. Not surprisingly, teachers and administrators in high-poverty schools are more stressed out, making it hard to attract good faculty, which further reduces performance.

In a 2010 study of Montgomery County, policy researcher Heather Schwartz found that low-income students living in subsidized housing in high-income neighborhoods did better in school than students living elsewhere. It found that throwing more money at high-poverty schools, which is the policy of superintendent Dr. Joshua Starr and his predecessors, can only go so far.

Strong schools make strong neighborhoods, and vice versa. That’s why Prince George’s County Executive Rushern Baker took over the school system this year. He knows the county needs good schools to draw middle-class families and businesses.

A 2006 Caltech study found that the magnet program at Montgomery Blair High School helped prevent or even reverse “white flight” from surrounding neighborhoods, and may have even played a role in the revitalization of downtown Silver Spring. If Montgomery County wants to revitalize communities like Glenmont or White Oak, schools like Kennedy and Springbrook must become attractive to higher-income families again.

So, how do we get there? Here are 10 things MCPS and Montgomery County can do.

Things MCPS can do

Embrace each school’s differences. With 149,000 students and 202 campuses, no 2 MCPS schools are alike. Let’s run with it.

Some schools offer special programs, though they’re hard to tell apart, and many are limited to students in a school’s catchment. Instead, let’s make each special program the school for that subject or interest, like engineering at Wheaton or arts at Blake, and open them to students from around the county. This gives families a real reason to pick schools outside their neighborhood, while giving those programs the critical mass they need to support specialization.

Giving students more distinct school choices will encourage integration.

Empower principals and teachers. Starr says more oversight from the central office can turn around the district’s lowest-ranked schools. Let’s give principals and teachers more support and more autonomy as well.

Principals should have the power to shape their school’s programs to compete for students. They should also be able to weed out poor teachers and nurture good ones. Great principals and teachers in struggling schools should get performance bonuses, so they’re not lured away to higher-ranked schools.

Give students and families real choices. MCPS officials say they get thousands of transfer requests each year but approve very few, insisting that parents prove a “unique hardship” first.

This helps prevent middle-class flight, but it also keeps low-income students in high-poverty, low-performing schools while denying the reality that a neighborhood school may not be best for all families. Allowing students to attend public school anywhere in the system will give low-income students a way out while encouraging schools to specialize.

Change school boundaries to improve balance. Today, students living in the affluent town of Kensington attend Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, which is 4 miles away and gaining students. Why not send them to Albert Einstein High School one mile away, which has more low-income students, is expected to shrink in the coming years, and is becoming a sought-after school?

This would undoubtedly be an unpopular decision, but it would reduce the cost of transportation and improve socioeconomic balance. And there are other cases like this around the county. There’s no real reason why this shouldn’t happen.

Bring back “controlled choice.” The Northeast and Downcounty consortia were supposed to encourage integration, but when affluent families in the Sherwood and Bethesda-Chevy Chase clusters balked, MCPS took those schools out, defeating the consortia’s entire purpose. It’s time to bring them back, as well as eliminate the “base areas” that force most consortia students to attend their neighborhood school, whether or not they want to.

Know your competition. Springbrook High principal Sam Rivera once met with private school families to talk about why they chose their schools. Why? Because it helped him learn things that his school could do better or differently, while exposing parents to a public school they may not have considered otherwise. MCPS has a good reputation, but a little self-awareness wouldn’t hurt.

Things Montgomery County can do

Encourage economic development in East County. When young families move to Montgomery County, they seek areas with shopping, jobs and transit in close reach. Bringing those amenities to areas like White Oak that currently lack them may draw more middle-class families to local schools.

Projects like LifeSci Village in White Oak can draw middle-class families back.

Build more affordable housing on the county’s affluent west side. Montgomery County’s vaunted Moderately Priced Dwelling Unit program doesn’t just provide affordable housing, it gives low-income students a chance to attend the county’s best schools. We need to make it easier to build MPDUs in places like White Flint, which feeds into top-rated Walter Johnson High School and will gain thousands of new homes in the coming decades.

Build more market-rate homes. Red tape and neighborhood opposition makes it hard to build new homes in Montgomery County’s close-in neighborhoods, meaning middle-income families are often priced out too. We need to make it easier to build, whether it’s a new townhouse development in downtown Silver Spring or accessory apartments that can help cover the mortgage.

Push MCPS to make changes using power of the pocketbook. The school system takes up nearly half of Montgomery County’s $4.8 billion yearly budget. If MCPS isn’t getting the results that county leaders and residents want, the Board of Education and Superintendent Starr should hear about it, or they shouldn’t get extra funding.

None of these changes will be easy to implement, but they at least deserve serious consideration. The quality of our schools affects everything from student performance to economic development. We’ve given MCPS a free pass for being a “great school system” for too long. It’s time that parents, students and community leaders ask them to deliver.

Dan Reed (they/them) is Greater Greater Washington’s regional policy director, focused on housing and land use policy in Maryland and Northern Virginia. For a decade prior, Dan was a transportation planner working with communities all over North America to make their streets safer, enjoyable, and equitable. Their writing has appeared in publications including Washingtonian, CityLab, and Shelterforce, as well as Just Up The Pike, a neighborhood blog founded in 2006. Dan lives in Silver Spring with Drizzy, the goodest boy ever.