Primrose School coming to downtown Bethesda

Primrose School of Downtown Bethesda, a private preschool, is coming soon to 8101 Glenbrook Road. Founded in Georgia in 1982, Primrose School is a nationally-accredited private school system with franchises around the country.

Mike Patel, the owner of the new Bethesda location, decided to open his own Primrose School after researching school options for his own two children. Primrose is now enrolling. As Montgomery County Public Schools continue to decline, and with forced busing now on the table at the Board of Education, private schools here will likely experience a surge of growth in the coming years.

MoCo slouches away from solving MCPS achievement gap

Score another one for "the soft bigotry of low expectations" in Montgomery County. The achievement gap between white students and their African-American and Latino classmates has only gotten worse over the last five years, according to the County's own study of its public schools:

"Since 2010, the economic, racial, and ethnic stratification of students among MCPS high schools has increased."

And since 2010, the County Council and MCPS have spent much money, but have failed to take any substantive action - and most certainly have failed to achieve results.

Now we have the latest example of how the impotent Montgomery County political machine "tackles" the tough challenge of the achievement gap - it runs away from it.

Three out of four students can't pass the Algebra I Final Exam? Just get rid of the exam!

That's right. No new strategies, no hard analysis of what's going wrong. Just get rid of final exams, and replace them with those nifty "extra credit" projects, and other age-old tricks used to push struggling kids through the system for decades, cheating them out of a quality education.

Anybody can do a project. Only a student who has learned can solve the math equations on an exam at the end of the semester.

Try handing your college professor or office supervisor that nifty math-themed collage, instead of your final exam or the economic analysis project you were assigned. The results won't be quite as whimsical as they appear to be in the "leadership" realm of our racially and geographically-unequal school system.

A rudderless system prepared to identify a new superintendent "when they get around to it," MCPS is eerily similar in leadership, money-down-the-drain-spending, and results to the ever-popular WMATA (which can't find a leader, either).

The previous superintendent, Joshua Starr, started his MoCo career with a gaudy champagne toast at the Potomac estate of Mitch Rales, a pioneer of outsourcing American jobs to China; spent much of his time hosting an Oprah-style book club TV program at taxpayer and cable customer expense; and was unceremoniously run out of town as a finisher. "Heckuva job, Brownie."

So they have this idea to get rid of final exams that ensure you actually learned what was taught (assuming parents and education advocates stand by and allow the policy change to go unchallenged). What else do they have in their "toolbox"?

A paltry, pitiful $250,000 Children's Opportunity Fund, with no clear mandate or specific uses for that taxpayer money. A fund led by one of the very school board members who presided over the growing achievement gap, by the way. You can't make this stuff up, folks.

Consider that New York City is now ponying up $400,000,000 a year to provide universal Pre-K, widely-accepted to be one of the most obvious and promising ways to reduce the achievement gap, and the contrast couldn't be more clear.

And MoCo's political machine couldn't look worse.

Kids can't pass exams? Get rid of the exam.

Don't like the increasingly-ghastly traffic congestion numbers that might make it impossible to keep approving new development without finally completing the County's unfinished highway system? Just stop counting the cars accurately.

Getting killed by Northern Virginia and DC in job creation? Just use taxpayer money to buy a fake report from EMSI, with fake job numbers that magically show you ahead of NOVA and DC.

Unable to attract a single major corporate headquarters in over a decade? Just use taxpayer money to buy another fake report declaring suburban office parks dead, even while top companies like Google and Facebook are currently booming in suburban office park headquarters.

Farmer's markets and microbreweries; mixing lattes and folding jeans - these are what you imagine your child doing for the rest of his or her life, right? Well, that's what your elected officials imagine them doing, as those are the only private-sector jobs they've created over the last decade. Then they ask, "Why aren't we able to attract young professionals to Montgomery County?"

This isn't leadership. It's slouching. And continuing to deny an equal education to many children in the county isn't just bad politics; it's immoral.

It's easy to ban things. It's easy to tax things. It's easy to politically grandstand with self-promoting legislative resolutions. But leadership and solving the achievement gap are hard. They are difficult. And our current elected officials are clearly not up to the task.

Our leaders have failed their final exam. Rather than get rid of the final exam, maybe it's time the voters get rid of the "leaders".

EDUCATION

IS NOT A

"BUSINESS"

I have to disagree with Jay Mathews' argument that schools are businesses going through tough times like the newspaper industry.

Mathews made this assertion in a Washington Post column on the situation at Baltimore's KIPP Ujima Village Academy. Ujima Village is one of the highest performing schools in Baltimore, and is a majority-black charter school. Now of course, there are all kinds of arguments about the KIPP program nationwide. Some believe that those scores are inflated by keeping the school's population limited to the best students.

But right now, I'm just talking about his offhand comment regarding schools as businesses. Especially when we have an education crisis, and a minority achievement gap nationwide.

In education, a product is not being produced for profit. Instead, human beings are being given the tools and opportunities to advance themselves in life. We all know that success in America also involves luck, who you know, etc. But a good education gives everyone a chance if they have the determination and are willing to work. We have to control costs and have a fiscally responsible budget. But we can't take the position that schools are a place to cut big when our politicians have mismanaged the county budget. There is plenty of other wasteful spending to eliminate elsewhere. Yet our county council took $80 million away from schools this year, in defiance of state law.

Often today, the scope of education goes beyond the classroom. The Montgomery County Public Schools program to provide free meals to disadvantaged children this summer is an example. Many students in the county are not even receiving the nutrition they need to be successful in school. This and other early childhood education programs will reduce the number of those living in poverty, the number of juveniles in our criminal justice system, and increase the number of Americans attending college.

Proper nutrition, free access to internet resources from home, more assistance to parents who wish to home school their children and other initiatives will help to close the gap. Searching for profits, or charging kids for the budgetary failures of the county council, will not.

COUNTY COUNCIL,

NON-PROFIT

STILL CANNOT

ACCOUNT

FOR

MISSING

TAXPAYER FUNDS

$900,000+ of Taxpayer Funds Missing in Weird

Web of Conflicts of Interest & Mismanagement (or Worse)

Capital Properties' Westbard Lobbying Firm COO

Embroiled in Centro Familia Investigation

The Washington Post and county Inspector General are certainly taking their time investigating what happened to over $900,000 of taxpayer funds gifted to non-profit Centro Familia by your County Council.

As I said when this came up a few months back, don't you think the average citizen would be in some major trouble if they couldn't account for $900,000 in public funds? So what is taking so long to get answers in an age when senior citizens are thrown out of foreclosed homes onto the street on short notice?

According to the Post story, a whopping $450,000 of Centro Familia's $700,000 is county taxpayer funds from the council. That's more than half!

We often hear - just the other night on Channel 6, in fact - that we need to fund non-profits in order to save money in the county budget.

Now, that is absolutely true.

However, that theory is absolutely not true when a) the non-profit is a partisan political actor, and b) the non-profit is providing its services with taxpayer monies exceeding what it would cost the county to provide those same services directly.

You could argue that Centro Familia is guilty of "b."

Again, according to the Post, Centro Familia provides "an early childhood program to about 30 preschoolers." Okay. I'm all in favor of that. In fact, I was recognized by the director of a local early childhood education for my proposals in that area during the 2006 campaign. It is also of special importance to have these programs for very young citizens whose parents' first language is not English. They often have neither the environment conducive to learning, nor even the meeting of basic nutritional needs, that most county children have at home.

But would it cost $750,000 a year (or even the $450,000 per year given by the county) to provide an early childhood program for 30 (30!) children?

I daresay, no.

It also says they have trained over 300 in-home child care providers for children. But that doesn't add up either.

So why is the county council spending your money so freely on Centro Familia?

The Westbard Connection

You may remember I broke the story last year that Capital Properties (now owner of most of Westbard) had hired lobbyists from the firm of Lerch, Early & Brewer to - what else? - lobby the county council to do the bidding of Capital Properties on Westbard.

According to the Washington Post, Lerch, Early & Brewer's Chief Operating Officer is also Chairman of the Centro Familia board. And as such, is mentioned in regards to - and quoted on - this mystery of the vanishing public funds.

This County Council has Zero Fiscal Responsibility

If you run into your local councilmember, you might just want to ask him or her why he or she is giving away your tax dollars with no accountability whatsoever.

For services they could provide directly for less!

And ask them about the portion of that $900,000 that went to "activities 'outside the country.'"

What's that about? What's going on here? Councilmembers?

And where do representatives or employees of Centro Familia "travel" at taxpayer expense?

Gee whiz, I'd like to do some traveling myself! How about giving us citizens a free vacation, councilmembers?

Apparently, the council keeps funding the organization without even examining or requesting the appropriate documentation for the expenditures!

We need fiscal responsibility! And that's going to be the voter's responsibility in 2010, at the county and state levels.

Let us keep that money so we can take vacations this summer.

It is the first day of summer, after all.