The Montgomery Business Journal, via a kind reader’s email:

The Grundels’ success story is exactly what Montgomery Public Schools Superintendent Barbara Thompson [bing blekko clusty google] wants to hear. She wants all the district’s nearly 32,000 students to achieve, succeed and enjoy learning.
This fall, the district will launch its International Baccalaureate program and will offer a career technical education program along with seven Career Academies; a growing magnet program for both the arts and academics; and an Advanced Placement (AP) program that continues to expand at a tremendous pace.
“It is a unique pathway for our students having all those programs,” Thompson said. “It means that your child can come into this school district and be challenged at any level. Some of those pathways are going to lead to a four-year college; some will lead to a two-year college; some will lead you right into the world of work. It’s giving students those career pathways that really fit with their strength area.”
Now, you begin to see what all those pieces mean and what the big picture is. “The master plan is to bring our traditional schools up to the level of the magnets,” Thompson said. “That really is the ultimate goal in terms of what we are doing with our rigor and expectations. That is the end game.”
“These are all steps to get us there. I think kids need deliberate steps to get from places, which is why you have the pre-AP program offered at middle school because they can’t just jump into AP in high school.
“It’s why you have the Career Exploratory at middle school because once again you want to go into the Career Academies or career tech. We are making sure that every child takes the explorer test in eighth grade and that goes over their aptitude and skills so when they reach high school they are supposedly doing a four-year plan. That’s every student.”
And the programs that the superintendent has implemented the past few years as well as expanding existing ones, support, encourage and excite targeted groups of students – all students.
The programs on the surface may appear to be disjointed – what does a pre-K program have in common with an Overage Academy – but the common thread is making sure the students succeed.
The pre-K program was expanded from six to 23 programs and turned the closed McKee Elementary School into a pre-K center. Those programs may be cut to 21 because of funding.
That’s the youngest targeted group. Here’s what the district has done for other groups of students:

  • Increased graduation rates, although with the state’s new method of computing graduation rates – those numbers are likely to fall as will graduation rates across the state.
  • Created a sixth-grade academy to help elementary school students make the transition to middle school.
  • Created a ninth-grade academy to help middle school students make the transition to high school.
  • Created an Overage Academy to help struggling ninth-graders who are two or more years older than the usual students further advance in their schooling.
  • Created a Credit and Grade Recovery program to provide more one-on-one teacher assistance so the students will be able to graduate – and hundreds have.
  • Launched an academic magnet program at Johnnie Carr Middle School.
  • Reconfigured nearly all the middle schools for grades six through eight.
  • Instituted a school-wide dress code.
  • Placed a pre-AP program in middle schools.
  • Placed a career tech program in middle schools.
  • Will launch a Mandarin Chinese program with Auburn University Montgomery that will be at the new eastside high school (in fall 2013) as well as Carr and MacMillan International Academy.
  • Consolidated the district by closing some schools and using others in a different way.
  • Will bring at least 15 highly qualified Teach for America teachers to the district in the fall – and they usually stay for two years.
  • Has begun the process for system-wide accreditation.
  • Cut $37 million from the budget over three years and turned a $2.5 million deficit into a surplus of nearly $8 million.

“It really is a puzzle and you are trying to put it together so you create this environment where learning is really exciting for students,” Thompson said. “We are trying to meet those needs of all of our students.
“When I first came here, I gave you the three Rs: relevance, rigor and relationships. All of these programs fall under that category.”
You can imagine, a system with nearly 32,000 students has a lot of needs and you can imagine that Montgomery County’s third-largest employer – about 4,500 people – has a lot of needs. Tom Salter, senior communications officer for MPS, likes to point out that if you combine the students and employees, the school district would be the 13th-largest city in the state. “With that many folks compared to a single, private school that has a hand-picked 600 or 700 in it – it’s different, but it’s not necessarily better to be in a private school.”

“relevance, rigor and relationships” – well said.
Alabama participated in the 2011 TIMSS global exam along with Minnesota and Massachusetts. Wisconsin has never benchmarked our students via the global exams. We have been stuck with the oft-criticized WKCE.
The Montgomery, Alabama schools spent $283,633,475 for 31,470 students ($9,012.82/student) while Madison spent 39% more, or $14,858 per student. The 2011-2012 budget was roughly $369,394,753 for 24,861 students.