I really appreciate the opportunity to speak to you today and would like to thank Brian Hinchcliff for inviting me here.

I would like to thank the Tyson Rotary Club for all of its great work in the community.  As you can imagine, your efforts with youth and education are the ones that I appreciate the most.  Bringing weekly dinners and helping with maintenance at the Alternative House and the support to Fairfax CASA, shows those children that there are adults that truly care about them.  Encouraging students at Marshall High School to get involved in their community is directly inline with one of the School Board’s new goals for the school system.  It is always great to see organizations rewarding students for their efforts through scholarships that encourage them to continue in their academic achievements.  I also appreciate you being a part of the team that is combating illiteracy through the Literacy Council of Northern Virginia considering that is a primary task of the public schools.

Not surprising that ties into the subject of my talk today – the Fairfax County Public Schools.  First let me qualify that I am often a minority voice on the Board.  What you will hear today is my perception and opinion and not an official position of the board. 

The Fairfax County Public Schools system is an impressive and overwhelming system.  There are 189 schools, 163,000 students, one of the largest bus fleets in the country – not just school bus fleets, but all bus fleets and a $2.2B budget.  There is a wealth of hard working caring people that take care of our students every day.  The accolades, especially from the schools in the area around the Tysons Corner area in McLean, Vienna and Oakton, are too numerous to recount in the time that I have.  There are many parts of Fairfax County that may be much like the fictional Lake Woebegone where every student is above average.  Many people come to Fairfax County because of the schools.  I believe that the reputation of the schools is an important element in the economic well being of the area.

The Fairfax County School Board has for the past year and an half been focused on strategic planning and have introduces a significant change in the way the Board interfaces and guides the policy of the school system.  We developed a new vision and mission statement and a new set of goals for the school system.  In an intent to address the whole child, our goals are in three major categories; academic which includes the desire for all children to be introduced to a second language, life skills and their responsibility to the community.  We also set goals for the operations, administration and facilities.  The staff provides the method by which we will measure how well the school system is meeting those goals and will report periodically on the status.  This is to drive our budget and policy.  Our desire is to establish Fairfax County Public Schools as a world class school system.

There are many things already in place that would put us on that path.  The opportunity for upper level classes in advanced placement or International Baccalaureate is probably one of the best in the county.  When Newsweek ranked schools a few years ago, many of Fairfax High Schools ranked in the top 100 because their measure was the number of students that take the AP and IB tests at the end of the year.  Fairfax was out in front on that since we mandate taking the test if you took the class and also pay for the tests.  Thomas Jefferson stands out on it own as one of the premier magnate schools in the country.  Additionally the special education programs provided by Fairfax County are some of the most extensive in the country.  So much that we have a disproportionate number of students with special needs because their parents moved here because of the availability of services.

Funny thing about a reputation, just because you have one does not reduce the amount of work required to maintain it.  If you begin to rest on your reputation, as opposed to your reputation resting on your accomplishments, two things begin to happen.  First, your reputation begins to take on an overly significant importance and must be protected at all costs.  Secondly, the responsiveness to new demands is hindered by the difficulty in admitting that there are any shortcomings which can result in reduced performance. 

Fairfax County has a wonderful advantage in the typical family that sends their children to the schools.  This is a highly educated community that puts a strong focus in education.  Many of the children that enter kindergarten are already reading or very close to reading.  The parents spend hours working with their young children on homework.  I was told that it was a given in the Dranesville area that parents will hire a math tutor for their children.  Parents will ensure that their children are prepared for the SATs because they know how important they are for college acceptance.  These parents are going to ensure that their children are in the advanced placement and International Baccalaureate classes.  The area around Tysons is full of these kinds of parents.  They are the parents with which I was working on the Haycock Gifted and Talented Center boundary review. 

Fairfax County does not have to focus on teaching these children the fundamentals in reading because they already have them.  However, the demographics in Fairfax County are changing.  We are seeing a larger number of children that come to the school with little or no knowledge regarding letters or sounds or vocabulary.  Many students come from homes where their parents are illiterate in their own language.  Some parents are tool busy with multiple jobs or do not believe that they are capable of helping their children because they did not do well in school.  These students are often totally dependent on the schools for learning the fundamentals in reading and math.

I believe that if a student enters a Fairfax County middle school and then high school with the core fundamentals in reading and math, that there is no better school system in the country.  However if you have not been taught the foundations in reading and math, middle school is going to be very difficult and many drop out prior to completing high school.  That is the other side of Fairfax County Public Schools. 

The City Journal recently had an article on reading in which they discussed a tale of two cities.

The first, Richmond, offers a classic profile of an inner-city school district.

25,000 students,

95 percent are black,

more than 70 percent are poor enough to be in the free-lunch program, and

44 percent change schools during the year.

Until 2001, Richmond’s student test scores were among Virginia’s worst.

Only five of the district’s 51 schools achieved the status of full state accreditation.

But 2001 is also when Richmond school officials embarked on an ambitious reform, whose centerpiece was a standardized reading program based on evidence from the National Institute on Child Health and Human Development studies. By the time Federal Reading First funds were available in 2002, Richmond was already up and running with a phonics-based reading program called Voyager Universal Literacy. The district channeled the modest $450,000 Reading First grant into a handful of its lowest-performing schools. But the principles of scientific reading instruction took hold throughout the district.

Since then, Richmond’s test scores have skyrocketed. By 2003, the number of the district’s schools achieving full state accreditation had climbed to 22. The next year, it rose to 39 and has now reached 44.

Then there is Fairfax. SAT scores for Fairfax’s high school graduates stand well above the national average, and 90 percent of those grads go on to some form of higher education. But 17,000 of Fairfax’s 164,000 students are African-American, and they’re performing far worse than Richmond’s black students. In 2004, only 52 percent of black Fairfax kids passed the state’s third-grade reading test, compared with 62 percent for Richmond’s black students. In 2005, the gap widened to 15 percentage points, with 59 percent of the Fairfax black students passing compared with 74 percent of their Richmond counterparts.

Even more remarkable, Richmond’s third-grade reading scores are closing in on wealthy Fairfax’s scores for all its students, 79 percent of whom passed the third-grade reading test in 2005. Since enacting its reforms, Richmond has moved from 114th in the state in reading (out of 132 districts) to 50th, compared with Fairfax’s 36th. 

According to the article Fairfax officials have said publicly that they’re mystified by the low performance of the district’s black students. It certainly has nothing to do with money. Millions of extra dollars for remediation programs have poured into the district’s schools with higher proportions of blacks. 

We sent staff down to investigate and observe the classrooms in Richmond.  The response from the staff was that the teachers in Richmond were very dedicated.  They reported that the same day that an article was published in the Richmond Times Dispatch in which the Richmond school system superintendent attributed their success to implementing a phonics based reading program.

The article concludes this section stating “Richmond scores rose dramatically after schools adopted science-based reading programs four years ago,” whereas Fairfax “was eligible for federal and state Reading First funding but objected to the science-based reading component.”

Thanks to the No Child Left Behind legislation school districts like Richmond City Schools have addressed the needs of students that have been overlooked for a long time.  Richmond recognized that they were going to have to change the way they did business.  Member of the Fairfax School Board’s Minority Student Achievement Oversight Committee went to Richmond as well and when I asked them what was the difference that they saw, they said there was a sense of urgency in Richmond that they do not see in Fairfax County. 

Fairfax County Public Schools is at a crossroads.  Before us lies a world class school system or “the Late Great Fairfax County Public Schools.”  I believe that the key is the extent to which the staff is honest with itself as to just how well the county is teaching the children and whether they respond by adapting processes that work whether they were developed here or not – even if it means admitting that the county has been using techniques for years that are ineffective.

The Virginia Standards of Learning were put in place to establish a real form of accountability to move school systems in this direction by setting a minimum standard.  The No Child Left Behind legislation put some serious teeth in that accountability for schools with large low income populations in the areas of basic reading and math.  Our new strategic governance is an attempt to go the next step and hold ourselves accountable at a level above minimum proficiency.  Despite all of the foretelling of doom when the Virginia Standards of Learning were first implemented, all of our schools have achieved the Virginia standards, very few students fail to graduate because they could not pass the high school SOL tests. In fact the focus of the schools to ensure the students passed the tests has probably helped more to actually finish high school.  We want to go beyond the minimum standards, but we cannot do it if we are not providing the foundational skills in the early grades.  The three schools in Fairfax County that have had to provide school choice in accordance with NCLB and the others that have failed to achieve the NCLB minimums reveal that Fairfax County is falling short with its African-American and Hispanic sub-groups in reading and math.  In my day job I am an analyst.  In analyzing the success of students in Fairfax County, it is difficult to determine the extent to which the schools or the parents are contributing to the success of the students.  However, when the student is totally dependent on the schools; that gives a pretty good indication of the effectiveness of the curriculum.  Unfortunately it supports my concern that even students who are learning to read enough to get by are not developing the reading and comprehension skills that lead to reading as something they love to do.  They read if they have to, but would never look to a book as a means of entertainment or enjoyment.  They are less likely to go to a medium that requires extensive reading as a source of information upon which they will make their decisions.  Consequently they will be less informed in the decisions that they make whether it is in getting a loan or voting for a candidate.  I believe that Fairfax County can do better than that.

Fairfax County Public Schools is at the crossroads.  The question is do they realize it.  Richmond realized it and with a sense of urgency made a dramatic change that is benefiting their students.

I had a pretty good football coach when I was in junior high.  In fact we still keep in touch – which is a good thing considering he is my dad.  He taught me that the key to sports is mastering and sticking with the fundamentals.  I see no reason why that would not work in academics.  Fairfax County is nibbling around the edges with improved assessments and teaching coaches in the elementary schools, but I am concerned that they have not recognized the need to return to fundamentals in explicit phonics-based reading instruction, grammar, spelling and basic math algorithms. 

When writing this speech, I came to a writers block at this point.  I believed that I needed to give the listening audience something.  Something to do, something to think about, or some kind of hope.  But I was just blank.  It occurred to me that I was having a difficult time relating what you could do because  it really is up to the school system to realize their situation.  Richmond realized that they needed to make major changes.  Fairfax County Public Schools still believes that it can tweak around the edges and proceed on its present course.

Perhaps at this time in its history the Fairfax County Public Schools’ reputation is actually a stumbling block.  Everyone assumes that the Fairfax County Schools are the best, so no one is paying attention to the actual products it is producing.  But prior to the school system changing, it will require the community to ensure that the schools know exactly the product that they are generating.  That is where the Rotary Club comes in.  You are the direct recipients of our product as your children attend the local schools and as you hire Fairfax County grads.  You also see it in the teens at Alternative House and those you may work with through the Literacy Council.  Keep a mental note of how many teens you encounter who struggle to comprehend what they read or to perform simple math in their head.  Raise the issue in your community; let your local school and school board know.  Raise the concern about where Fairfax County ranks compared to other school systems.  Until the community expresses its lack of satisfaction, the schools will proceed on the same course that they are on today.  One I fear will not bring about the world class educational institution that we have all come to expect from Fairfax County.