Q&A: Exit Interview With A Nationally Known School Leader
Joshua Starr, a nationally prominent superintendent with the Montgomery County schools in Rockville, Md., this month was granted early release from his contract after 3 1/2 years.
Starr, 45, a father of three, is the former superintendent of the Stamford, Conn., schools and director of accountability for the New York City public schools. He is known as a bit of a maverick. As the head of the 154,000 student district in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, he gained notoriety in 2012 by calling for a three-year moratorium on standardized testing. And he's incorporated measures of student and employee engagement and well-being into school report cards.
But Starr lost the confidence of his board. Opinions differed as to why: because of his rising national profile, or stubborn achievement problems in the district; questions about the administrative handling of some school sex abuse cases, or a controversial debate over whether to change school start times. We caught up with him for an exit interview.
What are you most proud of from your time as superintendent?
Well, I'm proud of our results. Graduation rates are up across the board, and we've also narrowed the gap in graduation. SAT and AP scores continue to be high. I'm proud of that. We also reduced suspensions pretty significantly.
The second thing is the way that we've redefined what public education should look like, to include creative problem solving and social and emotional well-being to be as important as academic success.
We saw the biggest one-year increase in graduation rates at Wheaton High School, where we reframed what teaching and learning looks like by focusing on project-based learning.
How did you become convinced of the importance of these "squishier" concepts like creativity or even emotional well-being — that these are central to the mission of a public school?
I like to say the problem we are trying to solve in public education today is the democratization of information.
I ask teachers all the time, if you can Google it, why teach it? Because we have so much information today. How do you help kids navigate that? That's critical thinking and creative problem solving.
And when I talk to the business community, they always talk about the fact that they want kids who have good academics, of course, but more importantly they want kids who can solve problems and think critically.
And what about the social and emotional stuff?
When it comes to social and emotional well-being, we mean that kids should value and respect diversity, make healthy good personal decisions, and build resilience. We believe kids should be good people.
Hard work is the most important thing in life. That means learning from failure, setting goals, having a vision of your future, a sense of hope those things are really Q&A: Exit Interview With A Nationally Known School Leader : NPR Ed : NPR:
