By Adam Pagnucco.
Part One described how I reached out to my source network to get their grades on MCPS Superintendent Thomas Taylor’s first year. Part Two featured remarks from sources who gave Taylor a C+ or below. Part Three had comments from sources who gave Taylor an A- or better. Part Four had comments from folks who gave Taylor a B+, B or B-. Today we’ll wrap it up.
Here’s my take on Thomas Taylor (TT). I’ll start with a quick story.
Last August, I put in a request at MCPS for a dataset. (I ask them for a lot of stuff!) I did not get the data for more than a month despite repeated pestering. So I saw TT at a public forum, walked up to him and introduced myself. He seemed pleasantly tolerant despite my notorious reputation. I told him about my request and asked him for help. He told me to send an email to his direct address, which he gave me. I did as he asked and he followed up with, “The data is coming your way” along with a smile emoji. (He is known for using emojis.) And presto, I got it. This shouldn’t be remarkable, but it is, since I have not known superintendents to personally follow up on data requests. Someday I’m going to bug you again, TT!
So when my sources refer to his accessibility, I have personal experience with that. It’s one thing I really like about him. He is informal, plain spoken and listens attentively – even if he may not like everything he hears. He is not defensive about the system’s problems like some of his predecessors. Instead, he concedes them and discusses improvement. It’s very refreshing.
Of all the things he has done so far, my favorite is how he has rebuilt management’s relationship with labor. That was a major strength of former Superintendent Jerry Weast, MCPS’s last strong leader, and TT was able to leverage that into a huge budget victory. I once saw Taylor alongside David Stein, the president of the teachers union, and the two were acting like close colleagues. I actually told Stein, “This superintendent of yours sounds like a labor leader.” As a former labor guy myself, I don’t hand out such compliments lightly.
Taylor and his family.
Here’s where it gets tough. Taylor is still new and he comes from a much smaller school system. Now look at all the challenges he faces. His predecessors presided over the Beidleman scandal and a senseless, and ultimately completely unnecessary, threat to lay off employees. The district is conducting two huge high school and middle school boundary studies driven by capital projects that predated Taylor. There is also an equally huge academic program analysis which could dismantle the Downcounty Consortium. Some schools have serious security issues. The district has to deal with the aftermath of its loss in Mahmoud vs. Taylor, a case that dates back before TT’s tenure. There are difficult and expensive challenges in special education and facility maintenance. MCPS’s failure to do background checks is a major problem that requires much personal attention from Taylor. And on top of all that, there are existential issues such as MCPS’s perceived long-term decline and the county’s non-competitive economy which limits its ability to fund the schools. It’s a crushing list of items that would be hard to handle for even the most powerful and experienced superintendent, much less a new guy from a small district. All of this is rather worrying.
With all of that said, here’s the bottom line: I like TT personally and I want him to succeed – not just for the good of MCPS, but for the good of Montgomery County. No local jurisdiction in the region – and few in the United States – ties its whole civic identity as closely to its public schools as we do. A fresh start under Taylor offers the best chance for improvement in our most critical asset since Weast left in 2011. We can’t miss out on this opportunity. We just can’t.
Accordingly, my personal grade for Taylor’s first year is B+.
Now here is the final distribution of Taylor’s grades from my network with the number of sources who assigned each of them.
A+: 2
A: 6
A-: 6
B+: 15
B: 12
B-: 4
C+: 1
C: 4
C-: 4
D: 1
Overall Grade: B.
Finally, let’s conclude with a comment from a source who questions the value of this entire exercise. This person points out significant structural problems that go beyond the capacity of any superintendent to deal with and has real worries about the future. Whether you agree with this person or not, these comments offer much to think about.
*****
I’m not giving a grade because I think it reinforces wrong and outdated ways of thinking about public education. Many will give Taylor high grades and say he’s a breath of fresh air. Sure. I hope that perception continues past this honeymoon phase for his sake and the county’s sake, because K-12 education obviously matters a lot and so the perception of our K-12 education system matters at least on the margins. But like most places, we’ve prioritized the wrong things in public education. And now our demographic realities are further exposing this mis-prioritization in ways that go beyond any one superintendent’s ability to fix and make discussions about how a superintendent is doing seem increasingly irrelevant.
Too many kids aren’t ready to learn by the time they enter MCPS because we invest peanuts in pre-K compared to what we invest in K-12. And a lot of those kids will never be able to excel no matter how much we pay MCPS teachers, how large or small MCPS class sizes are, how many tax dollars a superintendent and Board of Education can exact from a county executive and council, and what trendy educational model we’re putting out that gets MCPS administrators featured in Education Week. This is all exacerbated by the county getting poorer because on a macro level, poorer kids have no or fewer pre-K options in addition to not having the outside-the-building support needed to catch up once in K-12.
If you want an example of how this plays out in our current reality, look at what happens every fall when lackluster or worsening MCPS reading and math scores come out. It’s been the same cycle every year now leading up to the pandemic and now we’re well past the pandemic. So it’s not just about extended virtual learning (which was also objectively a mistake). When the scores come out, MCPS (rightfully) implies that these results aren’t their fault because too many of our kids don’t have the outside-the-building support any kid needs to be successful. Then, come spring and budget time, voila! Forget about all that! Suddenly, MCPS’s tune changes. Suddenly, if MCPS doesn’t get every cent, then the county is dooming these kids to poor educational outcomes. It’s a game that goes on everywhere and with other aspects of government that entirely misses what matters most and obscures even the discussion of where our public education priorities should be.
Sorry for the somewhat off-topic rant but that’s what comes to mind. Long story short, I hope Taylor is an A+ superintendent. My worry is that even an A+ superintendent is no match alone for the structural problems and demographic realities we and other similar jurisdictions face.