Lets Not Cut Spending on the Blair Magnet Program

Source: "The Price of a Good Magnet Program," Kelly McQuighan, The Washington Post, April 27, 2008.

Montgomery County School Superintendent Jerry Weast has proposed budget cuts that will "only" increase the magnet teachers' course loads to five courses per year -- the same number as most county high school educators -- rather than the current four. Kelly McQuighan, a graduate of the Blair science magnet program and current high school science teacher protests:

Such a perspective underestimates the time and effort magnet teachers put into teaching the integrated science-research program.

When I attended the magnet program, my science teachers did not merely teach four sections of science; they also helped supervise four sections of research projects. They not only prepared for their own classes but they also coordinated an entire integrated curriculum. Reducing magnet teachers' preparation time can only degrade the quality of the magnet program.

Comment: My son, long ago was a student in that program, and it was great. It is a relatively small program, and represents a tiny portion of the county's $2.2 billion public school budget. Yet it is important.

Montgomery county depends now, and will depend more in the future, on high technology industries and science intensive governmental and educational activities. Providing a really stimulating science programs for the kids who can and will keep up is important in part because some of those kids will continue to live and work in the county when they finish their education. It is also important because the kinds of people we want to attract to our county as leaders of the emerging biotechnology industry and the expanding ICT industry want programs like the Blair science magnet for their kids.

In any case, we owe it to the nation to give every opportunity to the kids who attend this program. Year after year they have shown that they use that opportunity to excel, and go on to excel in the university and in their adult lives. JAD