Can MoCo School Success Be Repeated in DC?
The school was failing, but the kids had done extraordinary things. This was the paradox at Broad Acres Elementary School in Silver Spring. If test scores are awful but the children have walked through deserts, waded across rivers and learned new languages, the question becomes not so much “Why are the children failing?” as “What’s wrong with this school?” At Broad Acres eight years ago, test scores were so low that the state threatened to take the place over. Montgomery County Superintendent Jerry Weast and Principal Jody Leleck decided to remake the school. They negotiated with the teachers union to add extra hours to the workweek for extra pay. Teachers would offer no more excuses about poor kids from dysfunctional families; expectations would soar. About a third of the faculty left; Leleck hired 27 veteran teachers that first summer. “We were doing the children of Broad Acres a disservice, and that’s criminal,” says Leleck, now the system’s chief academic officer. Criminal is the w
