Will Maudlin: Testimony at the Board of Education: Oct. 23, 2025

I know that capital improvements are the topic of the day, but I hope you’ll give me three minutes to discuss something way more important to my wife and daughters—and to our county and even, I would say, our nation.  

I’m talking about competition. (And no, that’s not a bad word.) Specifically, the importance of competition for top-tier countywide magnet programs to educate our most advanced students for an increasingly challenging world. 

For me, the competition began when I was a senior at the Mississippi School for Math & Science, a STEM magnet school that draws students from the entire state. (Eighty-two counties.) 

My school went to the National Science Bowl competition here in Chevy Chase. That’s when my classmates and I first encountered students from Blair High School’s STEM magnet program. Guess what? I immediately resented them. 

After getting trounced in the Science Bowl, I met a whole bunch of Montgomery County kids that weekend. The experience influenced my family’s decision to move to the area, and we settled on a beautiful country lane near Burtonsville. 

Flash forward to this year, when my oldest daughter finished the humanities program at Eastern Middle School and got a coveted spot at Blair’s STEM Magnet. 

Nearly every day she tells me what Mr. Shafer taught them in physics class. I’ll spare you the details of the effects of air resistance on projectile motion—which they do at Blair with computer models even before they’ve had calculus and we never did at my Mississippi school.  The point is that with top students—and teachers—competing for spots there, they’re covering in one semester of ninth grade physics what I learned in all of 11th grade at my magnet school. Previously, I worked as a tutor for kids from New York’s Stuyvesant and Bronx Science schools, and I can tell you what we have here is better.  

At a regional magnet school representing part of a single county—imagine Manhattan’s Upper West Side—you wouldn’t have the pool of fast-moving learners that would allow Mr. Schafer to accelerate his physics class to light speed. It doesn’t take a mathematician to tell you that the result is fewer scientists of national distinction from our county. 

As a Mississippian, I know that when school leaders devise ways to separate schools or academic programs, they never end up being equal. 

People who can’t afford homes in Takoma Park or other enclaves will be priced out of what’s left of the Blair CAP and STEM magnet programs, while locals get an easier path to admission. What’s equitable about that? 

For those of us eligible for fewer top-tier academic programs, the answer may be private schools or relocation to Northern Virginia. Where I live, we can see Howard County from our house. 

These days we see attacks on elite institutions from all sides, with different justifications. In Washington, they want to go after the science funding at Harvard and Johns Hopkins. Meanwhile, students and activists have been attacking top universities from the other side, closing libraries and demanding faculty changes. In Jackson, Mississippi, members of the legislature have been trying to kill my math and science high school for years and have frozen its funding. Not to mention cuts at the CDC and the National Institutes of Health (which is the main reason we have so many great science kids here). 

I want to tell you that no matter what your motivations, if you weaken or eliminate our prized institutions of learning, the end result is the same. As board members and administrators, I hope you won’t repeat my earlier mistake of resenting the students and families benefiting from Blair STEM or other countywide magnet programs. Let’s improve on what previous generations got right, and let’s add better math and science instruction to other parts of the county at the same time. 

I’m from Mississippi, and trust me, this affluent county can afford to do both.