citing new flavors -- creamy caramel and cookies 'n cream. good morning everybody. i'm jim handly. welcome to "viewpoint." our focus this morning, prince george's county schools, improvements changes on the way and challenges ahead. the man at the helm dr. kevin maxwell, ceo of prince george's county schools. >> good to see you. >> let's start with growth. you're in the thick of your second year and the student population hovering around 128,000. >> yes. after about nine straight years of decline, we've grown 3,600 children in a little over a year and a half. we're very excited that we're growing again. >> what do you attribute that

to? schools are so important to go hand in hand with real estate and county population too. >> i think it's a couple of things. i think partly it's a normal shift in enrollment and demographics. we've had -- we certainly have had growth in our immigration population students who are coming here from other parts of the world. that's clear in our numbers. but also we expanded our specialty programs last year. so we had waiting lists for gifted children montessori french immersion. so we expanded programs like that. that's not the only ones but we expanded programs like that and started three new elementary spanish immersion programs. there have been people coming to board meetings and saying for a long time we want to be a part of the school but we want the programming that's important to us. so we have e panneded those

programs as well as international baccalaureate programs. we certified new high school last year and started our first primary years, elementary program for ib and one at james madison and one in ellwood. they feed douglas high school. i think it's really talking to people who are considering their options and saying wow, there's new options in prince george's county and we're really excited. it's a mix of why. but i think we certainly give credit for at least the expansion of several of our very popular programs and addition of new ones. >> when you started out you had some long-term goals, some short-term goals. your first year was very intensive and you've seen results from terms of graduation rounts which has to be mayor mount up there when you see those numbers improve. >> absolutely.

i feel very strongly there's no reason our district can't be doing a lot better. one of the things we wanted to do at the very early stages as we did our analysis of the entire district while we created a transition team from outside experts, had an entry plan when we came in and began a year-long project on a strategic plan which we're releasing next week in its entirety we wanted to show that we really can do it. so we came in and we looked at data points and a couple of the really important ones were things like ninth grade promotion rate. it's very clear -- a couple things are very clear. it was almost identical to our graduation rate and there's a lot of data going back over a decade that says children who are suspend friday school in ninth grade, children who fail a course in nine grade are very unlikely to graduate on time or at least in the top part of the

graduating class. so we said so what are we going to do about this? we worked with our data people. we worked with some other folks and created this early warning system. we give our principals in middle school and high school based on the metrics we run for them in central office and we give them a list that says you need to take a look at kevin. based on what we have in our data points what we see strategically, he's not likely to pass the ninth grade. so what are you going to do for him? and let the schools decide what the right interventions were. it saves them a lot of time. they don't necessarily have to do all that work to develop the list. they have to worry about the intervention part. the other thing we did, we had some high schools that had a computer-based credit recovery system so kids who had fallen behind who missed a course for graduation had the ability to make this up online under the

supervision of a teacher but you can do multiple courses at one time. so kids were able to catch up without having to worry about night school or summer school which can be a struggle for some because they don't have the money to pay for night school or summer school. we got a ninth grade promotion improvement and in the first year we got an overall graduation increase of 2.47%. for other groups of children it went up over 4% for special ed up over 8%, up to 8.02%. the only place where it dropped significantly was english language learners. with students who speak french spanish, erdo we need to keep looking at options for those

people to help them acquire the language so we can have them graduate on time too. >> it's exciting. >> we'll take a quick pause. a lot more to get to on "viewpoint." stay with us as we continue the conversation with dr. kevin maxwell, ceo of prince george's county schools. if you'd like to learn more about what's happening in the school system there's the website. we'll be right back on "viewpoint."

♪ ♪ wow something sounds sweet in here!!!! ♪ ♪ need a little honey in the bowl. yeah!!! badabopbopbopa!!! no? must be the honey!!!

welcome back to "viewpoint." again, our guest this sunday morning, dr. kevin maxwell, the ceo of prince george's county schools. you have worn many hats over your long career in prince george anne arundel as a teacher and long-time principal. we were talking about improving dropout rates. how do you convince or persuade a kid to stay in school? is there a common thread you can share? >> i think there are a couple of intertwined things. one is helping them find

success. it's not always about you go through the process of teaching and assessing and teaching an assessing, reteaching, reassessing. that's a part of it. but when kids fall behind you really have to help them with the options of how do you get ahead. they fall behind for a lot of different -- sometimes they simply strugal in a subject. sometimes there are situations they have no control over around family or moving or homelessness or things. that's not your typical kid, but those are certainly part of what contributes to the issues we deal with. but i would say beyond sort of the rules and regulations of schools and the teaching and learning process, there's a relationship piece to it that to me is really central to the success of children. in my long experience as a teacher, as an assistant principal, middle school principal, high school principal

in two different districts, and even in my role as superintendent in the last nine years i've always had stew departments i interact with either on school visits or i have an advisory now or i had one when i was in anne arundel, of high school students. theying connected to that conversation and personalizing things for kids. when you're a teacher or principal, you need to meet kids on their level. they appreciate that. if you say, kevin, what's going on this week? where have you been? what's happening? how can i help you? i had a student at one of my schools once that was having an issue with senior english and not getting some things turned in on time. he came in one day and throwing up his hands, i'm not going to get this paper done the teacher is not going to accept it because i'm late. i sat him down at my computer in my office i sat him down and said finish your paper. he said but.

i said, no butts. finish your paper and i will talk to your teacher. he graduated. i was at a program at a university in another state, a program on educational leadership and i was walking across the campus and this gentleman was jogging and he stops dead in his tracks and he's like mr. maxwell, dr. maxwell. he said yeah. it was this child's father. he stopped to say thank you because he went on to a two-year school and transferred into a four-year school. he's doing great. if you hadn't sat him down and said look finish this get this done and helped make that possible for him, he would have nod great ated. it would be a whole different story for my son. >> sometimes it's an individual attention and knowing someone cares and is holding them accountable. >> correct, correct. i don't think the student was right that the teacher didn't care. i think there are deadlines,

there are rules, you have to learn to follow them. there are also times when exceptions are appropriate and other opportunities should be available for kids. it's kind of navigating that piece. it's like i said oh we'll waive the paper. i said get the paper done. she graded the paper. it's about making sure that kids are sometimes pushed sometimes pulled but at the bottom of everything they understand you care about them and want them to be successful. >> prince george's county is unique in many ways your growing student population about 128,000, more than half are from low-income families. what kind of challenge does that present for you and your teachers and staff? >> so let me be really clear. i think it was summed up well in a presentation i saw at a national conference a couple years ago. and they were talking about this issue. they said poverty in america is

a reality, it's not an excuse. i think you have to approach things from that perspective. when you get back to what does each child need some of our kids come in really ready for kindergarten and prepared to come in and engage in school. some of our kids don't. our charge our responsibility when kids come to us is to give them the tools to succeed. that's why as part of our strategic plan and part of our budget request is to expand all-day pre kindergarten opportunities for children to give them that extra full day year of getting ready for kindergarten. our kindergarten readiness numbers are going up. we certainly have shown in the state of maryland that through that move some years ago now, over ten years ago now to all-day kindergarten the test scores moved up across the state because of the early start.

early childhood education is really important. >> we'll be right back on the other side with dr. kevin maxwell, ceo of prince george's county schools. stay with us.

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in customer satisfaction studies, fios is rated #1 in internet speed and reliability - 8 years running. plus, fios has the fastest wi-fi available from any provider. period. see the difference for yourself. get a fios triple play online at an amazing price, guaranteed for two full years! plus, get a $300 bonus with a two-year agreement. call the verizon center for customers with disabilities at 800.974.6006 tty/v welcome back to "viewpoint." our guest this morning is dr. kevin maxwell, ceo of prince george's county schools. on your first year added about 800 new teachers. you've been a long-time teacher and principal, too, before superintendent here and in anne arundel county. what does it take to be a good teacher in 2015? >> i think it takes first and foremost knowledge of the content, whatever it is you're teaching. if you're smanish teacher or

physics teacher, elementary teacher, kindergarten teacher, you need to know that body of work you're expected to pass on to children. i think it's also really really important that you understand the pedagogical work the how to teach, so you know but can you impart that? it's not a lot of help if you come in and sort of say here are the facts and if the kids don't learn them -- i think the other piece and i alluded to this earlier, i think there's sort of a range, there's never any one way or the other kind of thing, there's a range of personality style that relates to other people. if you're in sort of the social sectors and you don't feel comfortable relating to other people maybe that's not the right place. i think development of relationships with your colleagues developing those relationships with your students and parents, i think that's

critical to advancing the work. i think the last piece is and in prince george's county and other districts across the country, there has to be a little bit of a sense of urgency about the work. this is really important work for our country, for our counties for our states for our cities to make sure we're properly educating the next generation of workers. it's a competitive world out there. we're not -- we're a pretty powerful country, but we're not as big as other countries. we have over 330 million people here but china and india, big competitors in the world marketplace, they have 2.5 billion people between them. if we enjoy the quality of life we have here in this country, we can't do a bad job at this. we have to do a good job. that sort of sense of urgency, that being -- having the ability to use data and say, okay how

do i move my class ahead, how do we move our schools ahead? >> let me ask you, technology how has that helped children learn? are children smarter and more efficient, learning faster today? >> i think some are in at least one way. that is they're much better and this is true in the workplace, they're much better at finding information, not necessarily knowing information. >> interesting. >> i think it's a different things. they know where to look up facts, they know where to find answers, but i don't know that always the way we primarily use technology -- those are important skills. kids need to leave k-12 education, pre-k-12 education and head into the workforce knowing how to use those basic tools of technology they need to be able to read and produce spread sheets be able to do

don'ts use e-mail and to some degree other methods of communication, texting and the younger group with tweeting and i know there are other ones out there, but i think that -- so the communication piece is important. i think that in schools being able to create reports and use the tools that are at your hand are really really important. i just think they're smarter in some ways for it but there's still a non-technology piece. i think the important thing to understand about technology is a lot of the assessments are moving to online. the new park assessments as opposed to the msa, these are online assessments. you can't have a child walk into a testing session where it's online and interact with the technology for the first time. i think the technology is helping with creativity. there are a lot of tools on today today's computers, in science,

arts graphics all those things are really helpful and help kids express themselves and helps them with that creative thinking part of things. >> excellent. take another quick break. we'll be right back with dr. kevin maxwell, the ceo of prince george's county schools. stay with us.

welcome bark. our guest again, dr. kevin maxwell, ceo of prince george's county schools. we talked about your roles, teachers' roles, the students' role. parental engagement do you see it improving and how do you get parts more involved? >> i do see it improving. there are a couple things quickly. we reorganized the school district a little last year to focus on that work and created a new department for community engagement and outreach and took

somebody from our comer office and put her in charge of it and we'll expand that department going forward. we had about 30 or 31 community outreach folks, parent advocates essentially in our title i schools and we expanded it to 30 schools and by another 20 next year. their role is to reach out to parents affiliated with that particular school as opposed to that department which is a countywide program. we are having more interaction, particularly on the school level which is what we really want. we want parents to be engaged in their child's life and in their school. >> we mentioned earlier in a segment about 65% are from low income households within the county. there are many middle income african-american families send their children to private schools. the county is 25% white, only 5% in the public school system. how do you bring those people back into the public school system? >> i think listening is a good

way to start. i think again what we've heard from parents who want to be a part and right now have been taking other opportunities is they wanted more montessoris, more french immersion, we've added spanish immersion. i think those programs are the kinds of things middle class families are looking for and i think in their heart they understand there are differences. if you're really wanting your child to have parochial education and a religious program, i respent that. i would say in a lot of the private schools, teachers are not highly certified,. they may not have the content knowledge. we know in our public schools,

our teachers are prepared to teach. >> county executive rayshern baker is push thing the plan for $125 million tax increase. let me give you 25 seconds to sell residents as to why this is important? >> no one is coming to meetings i attend saying we have too much. they're saying we have too little. that we need things. i think it's really clear that we need the resources. we've been cut multiple years by over $100 million during the great recession. we haven't recovered from that yet. we have already shown results in year one. we'll show more in year two. we have a five-year strategic plan that sets targets. we will improve this school district and parents should invest in it now. >> congrats with the results you're seeing. good look with your strategic plan next week. we'll see that unveiling. dr. kevin maxwell, thank you. thank you for having us in on "viewpoint." we'll see you later for "reporter's notebook."

right now on "news 4 today," a cooler and breezy day is ahead for your sunday. cold air from the west will be moving in. meteorologist veronica johnson is in for chuck tracking those temps. first, we're following a developing sorry this morning. a crash in ft. washington left one person dead. this happened on livingston road after 1:00 in the morning. you're looking at the scene. a single car crash. the driver did die at the scene. he lost control of the car causing it to roll over and end up in that wooded area you see right there. the driver was thrown from that vehicle. >> good morning, everyone. welcome to "news 4 today." i'm angie