Montgomery County Public Schools

Superintendent Joshua Starr's second book club event is tonight at 7 p.m., at Carver Educational Services Center, 850 Hungerford Dr. in Rockville. The book for this event is Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink, who will be among Dr. Starr's guests for the discussion. You can watch online, on TV or at a Barnes & Noble viewing event, and join in via Twitter or email.

Eighth-grade students at Roberto Clemente Middle School in Germantown held a forum to address important educational issues. The students researched and developed formal presentations on a variety of topics, including bullying, testing, arts and music education, teacher performance and class size.

Tune into this week’s edition of News Update to learn about an English teacher’s $25,000 surprise, BOE President Barclay’s Student Voice talk show, The Superintendent’s Book Club featuring Mindset author Carol Dweck, and the MCPS Latin Dance Competition where students danced up a storm to win big.  News Update, hosted by Todd Hochkeppel, is your weekly video source for news and information about Montgomery County Public Schools.

This week’s edition includes Dr. Starr on MCPS values, principals get slimed as part of a reading challenge, a middle school’s Educational Forum and random acts of kindness helping to transform Loiederman Middle School. News Update, hosted by Todd Hochkeppel, is your weekly video source for news and information about Montgomery County Public Schools.

The students of Forest Knolls Elementary School had a little extra motivation to do their reading—if they read for a total of 150,000 minutes in a week and a half, they could “slime” their principal and assistant principal. The results? 220,000 minutes of reading and two school leaders covered in slime.  

Tune into this week’s edition of News Update to learn about more African American and Latino students taking advanced placement courses, see how the public can get involved in the budget process and much more.  News Update, hosted by Todd Hochkeppel, is your weekly video source for news and information about Montgomery County Public Schools.

Sixty educators achieved certification by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards in 2011, bringing the number of Board-certified teachers in MCPS to more than 600. Montgomery County ranks fifth in the nation in the number of new National Board Certified educators. On Dec. 7, 12 of MCPS’s newly certified teachers were invited to the White House for a forum on effective teaching.

MCPS students took more than 31,700 Advanced Placement (AP) exams in 2011—an all-time record—and 72 percent of those exams received a college-ready score of 3 or higher. AP participation and performance among African American and Hispanic students also improved significantly across the district.