Joshua Starr appointed new Montgomery superintendent

In Stamford, he took a scattershot curriculum and united it under a common lesson plan — mirroring an initiative undertaken in Montgomery by Weast.

“We had 150 different ways of teaching reading. He came in and made it much more uniform,” said Wendy Lecker, co-president of the Parent Teacher Council of Stamford.

Personal Post

Starr also dismantled a program in the city’s middle schools that had grouped students by academic ability, a controversial practice known as tracking. Some parents — particularly those with students derailed from the upper track — still resent the change.

Starr, like Weast, labored to narrow the gap between black and Hispanic students and Asian and white students, with mixed results. He said Monday that the gap had shrunk by 12 percentage points in math.

To replace Weast, a Chicago-based firm conducted a national search for superintendents, winnowing applicants to 30 from 15 states. Three finalists were then selected for closed-door interviews with community stakeholders — including representatives from the teachers union, the parents association and advocates for special needs students.

“He’s younger than [Weast] but equally energetic and open-minded,” said Doug Prouty, president of the Montgomery County Education Association, who sat in on the interviews. “He [was] a very promising candidate.”

Weast raised achievement and tests scores as the district became more diverse and developed higher concentrations of poverty. He carved the district into red zones and green zones to identify lower-performing pockets, then was able to invest money into the poorer, red-zone schools.

But Starr faces grimmer economic prospects. Each year, the school district has had to fight the county and the state to prevent cuts in per-pupil funding. Enrollment has continued to increase as revenue has stagnated.

School superintendents often seem to fall into two broad camps: change agents, brought in to enact reform, raise scores and ruffle feathers; and consensus-builders, hired to heal rifts and — if necessary — to repair the relationships frayed by change agents. After the hard-charging Weast, some longtime county leaders voiced hope that Starr will come in as a healer.

“The system is set up to be a good system. People know how to do the job, there’s no doubt about that. I think they need someone to come in who’s a little kinder, gentler,” said Sen. Nancy J. King (D-Montgomery), a former county school board member.