Weast downplays high school's failure to teach English

Montgomery Blair High School flunked the state standardized English test, earning it the unwelcome status of "failing school," but our superintendent is pooh-poohing the problem.

Maryland State Department of Education data, released on October 25, shows that Blair did not meet its Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) proficiency level in English.

"Blair will consequently remain in a state-mandated improvement stage for failing schools," the school's student paper, Silver Chips Online, reports.

Weast made light of the issue in an October 25 memo. The failure, he said, was only the "mathematical equivalent of less than one student among the nearly 3,000 students enrolled at the school."

The school tried to rig a recount of the results by getting four of its lowest performing students to take a modified version of the test, but the state disallowed the maneuver.