Don't Judge Students By Neighborhood, but By Their Path to Success

Thursday, October 13, 2005

Dear Extra Credit:

I am a 1998 graduate of Richard Montgomery High School. My mother sent me your Sept. 22 column with the letter about Richard Montgomery High from Mike Duffy of Rockville ["RM's Reputation Rests Solely on Its IB Program"]. Like her, I was angered and upset, so I thought that I would share my story.

I myself am from what Mr. Duffy called "the straight out of Compton" crowd (and, Mr. Duffy, you were correct when you stated that some of your comments were not politically correct. In fact, some of them were downright offensive). I am a Caucasian female who grew up in Twinbrook -- yes, the Veirs Mill "cluster." I was a mediocre student at Richard Montgomery. I took English honors courses and even one International Baccalaureate course, which I failed miserably in. I was involved with theater and drama and I was also a cheerleader. I would not have attended college if it wasn't for the fact that my friends were all applying and it was seen as the thing to do.

I was accepted by a private liberal arts college in the South that is continuously being rated as one of the top colleges that change lives across the nation. I received my master's degree and I was recently accepted into a doctoral program.

While I was a student at Richard Montgomery, there were times that I often felt slighted because of where I was from and, more importantly, because I was not a top-level student. I often felt like we received the short end of the stick. Something even more disheartening is that those of us who "are straight out of Compton" have no choice about where we attend high school. There are no charter schools or magnet schools for kids from the wrong side of the tracks. Richard Montgomery is our home school.

I recently worked at an institution that had several students from urban areas. A lot of them had lived in neighborhoods where they had seen friends get shot and drug deals happening on their street corners. They came from school districts that could not afford upper-level courses and possibly even the right tools to teach them.

The point of my story is to illustrate the harsh inequalities in our school districts and what is happening everywhere, not just at Richard Montgomery. I would hope Mr. Duffy, who hopes to be a good role model for his two sons, will keep an open mind and realize that not all people who come from poor neighborhoods are disruptive human beings and that we, too, can go on to succeed.

Lesley Day

Assistant director

of student activities

Philadelphia University

Dear Extra Credit:

I find the uproar over the success of Richard Montgomery in the Challenge Index somewhat startling and can only assume that it's the result of some misdirected jealousy and a lot of misinformation. To understand the value of the Challenge Index, one only needs to see the movie "Stand and Deliver" about Jaime Escalante and his success in challenging average students to pursue Advanced Placement (AP) calculus and overturning a tradition of "gatekeeping," or preventing students whose success on AP exams was doubtful from taking the exams. Gatekeeping was a common practice in many Montgomery County public schools, and Jay Mathews's Challenge Index has been a big factor in getting schools to reverse the process.

Although it might be a better measure to get counts from the schools of exactly how many students are enrolled in AP and IB classes, that information is difficult to collect, whereas the number of AP and IB exams given at a certain school is easily ascertainable. . . . The IB program was brought to Richard Montgomery in 1987 in an effort to keep the school open in the face of declining enrollment. It provided a means of attracting students from out of the cluster to the school and retaining able, motivated students who were enrolling in private schools to find academic challenge.

It is very difficult to administer an IB program within a public high school; to have been able to disseminate a culture of challenge and rigor across the broader school population, as demonstrated in the number of AP courses and exams offered to non-IB students, is a huge tribute to the administration, staff, parent body and the students. Instead of repeatedly bashing Mr. Mathews's Challenge Index, parents across the county should be demanding that their local high schools offer more AP courses and encourage students to take them.

In the meantime, we should celebrate the success of Richard Montgomery, ranked No. 11 in the country for challenging its students to perform at the college level.

Judy Hines

IB-PTSA Liaison

Richard Montgomery

High School

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I appreciate these perspectives. I should note that many more regular students are being urged to take AP courses now than when Day was a student at Richard Montgomery, and that Montgomery County was already opening up AP and IB courses to more students when The Post started running the Challenge Index. I think the index has only measured, not inspired, their work.