Efforts were made to get better teachers and make the curriculum more engaging, Weast said, and today the Montgomery County Public Schools system has one of the highest high school graduation rates for Black and Latino males in the nation, as noted in a recent Schott Foundation report on the subject of public education and Black males.
“Listen to the Gallup Poll,” Weast said. “People are telling us they want their kids to go to college.”
McGuire said in an interview after the panel discussion that in order for K-12 educators to make improvements in the number of students who go on to college, teachers have to be given more opportunities to hone and refine their skills — much like the way lawyers and doctors get to practice with more experienced members of their professions before practicing on their own.
McGuire also said the best teachers have to be placed in the classrooms with the most challenged students. Instead, he said, “We race them through college in four years. We throw them in the classroom with little or no support at all.”
“We need to put our most competent and skillful teachers with kids who come with the greatest challenges,” McGuire said. “We do the reverse.”
