First charter school eyed for Montgomery County [Maryland]

[Recursion]

From the Washington Times (I know, I know, but they do better local coverage than the Post)

Montgomery County school officials appear poised to approve the county’s first charter school, but want more time before reaching a final decision.

The county’s Board of Education voted Thursday to delay until July 25 a vote on whether to approve Community Montessori Charter School, a proposed pre-kindergarten to third-grade school to be run under county supervision by Kensington nonprofit Crossway Community Inc.

...

The Maryland General Assembly legalized charter schools in 2003, giving local school boards complete authority over whether to accept or deny applications. The schools are founded by private groups, but are publicly funded and staffed by union teachers.

Forty-two charters have since opened across the state, including 33 in Baltimore. But Montgomery officials have long resisted the schools, which are often established to provide unique instruction in underperforming school districts. There are more than 5,000 charter schools in the United States.

(Emphasis mine.)

I'm much cooler on charter schools than I was a few years ago, but Maryland seems to more or less be doing it right: keep the number low, use them as labs rather than substitutes for traditional public schools, and keep the union involved. Plus I'm pro-Montessori enough that I'm happy about this.

[elleng]

1. Yes, and Montgomery Cty. seems to do these things well.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/06/education/06oneducation.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1&hp

[Recursion]

2. There was a push to get Henderson (the new Rhee) in DC to adopt something like PAR

but sadly it went nowhere. Particularly troubling was the fact that she pointed to the low number of teachers fired as evidence of PAR's being a failure rather than evidence of its being a success.

EDIT: gerunds take the possessive of their agent

[elleng]

3. In DC teachers had to be fired, as they'd hung on forever w/o success;

very different story in MontCo. DC ed horrible story, historically. Lived in DC + sent daughters to private/parochial, for want of a better option. (Didn't want to move.)

[kwassa]

4. We have plenty of Montessori schools already ....

like the one my daughter is attending. Of course, it costs us lots.