Okay, I’m impressed. Last week, the Washington Post ran the following editorial, Another promising charter school is wrongly rejected by Montgomery County, in which the Post rightfully complained about the state of affairs regarding charter schools in Montgomery County, Maryland, which supposedly have been kosher in MC since 1998. Said the Post
But more than 20 years later, no charter schools exist in Montgomery County, and the school board recently gave the thumbs-down to a promising proposed charter that would offer business and finance-related education. Having the local school board sign off on charter school applications is akin to requiring Target to get approval from Walmart to open a competing business — so let’s hope this misguided decision is overruled by the Maryland State Board of Education.
I single out the Post for this “daring” criticism of the entrenched educational establishment making rules to prevent exposure of its own incompetence because back in March they let loose a volley defending a decision by the Fairfax County, Virginia school board to get rid of those nasty old standardized tests to determine which students would be admitted to the prestigious Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. As I said at the time, “I think a school set up to cater to academically proficient students should do just that, and that educators should stop using the meretricious arguments of critical race theory to disguise the clear disparities in average student performance between racial groups in this country, which they are very largely doing to escape the charge that they have “failed” black and Hispanic students.”
It's nice to see the Post “thinking outside the box” on this one (for once), realizing that the K-12 public school establishment in the U.S., dominated as it is by the teachers’ unions, particularly in Blue states like Maryland and Virginia, hates competition, hates criticism, and uses its power in consistently and persistently selfish ways, with little regard for students or the public as a whole. Little steps, Washington Post! Little steps!
