Hopes of charter schools advocates in Montgomery County suffered a setback this week when applications for two charters were turned down by schools Superintendent Jerry Weast.
Weast’s rejections virtually assure that there will be no charter schools in the county for at least a year, despite the popularity of the charter movement with both conservatives and the Obama administration.
Maryland’s charter school law has been judged as one of the weakest in the nation, in part because it gives local school officials — like Weast — control over charters’ viability. Charter school advocates say that often gives the power of life or death over the charters to officials with a strong investment in existing public schools.
The charter movement began among conservatives unhappy with public education choices. It was more recently embraced by the Obama administration, which has rewarded states with robust charter laws.
In a memo to the county’s school board, Weast took umbrage at Global Garden Charter School’s “[implication] that MCPS does not ‘cultivate each child’s natural curiosity through a vigorous curriculum that emphasizes inquiry, discovery, and authenticity.'”
He also questioned school leaders’ “grasp of the critical elements of operating a school.”
Founders of Global Garden applied with the aim of opening an International Baccalaureate program for students in kindergarten through eighth grade. Students would learn Spanish in elementary school, and Arabic in middle school. They proposed an extended school day as well as a year-round calendar.
The second application, from longtime Montgomery nonprofit Crossway Community Inc., described a pre-kindergarten through sixth-grade program with a wealth of “wraparound services” like health care and after-school programs.
Weast said the school lacked proper logistical planning, and he found little assurance that students would achieve the level of “academic rigor” required at Montgomery’s middle and high schools.
“I appreciate Dr. Weast’s commitment to academic rigor, but I wholeheartedly disagree with his assessment,” said Crossway’s Chief Executive Officer Kathleen Guinan, adding that her organization has long sustained “a learning community of excellence for children and their parents.”
The applications were judged by a panel of district stakeholders before Weast’s recommendations. School board members will cast the final vote on Tuesday. The board has been consistent in opposition to charters in the past.
Neighboring Prince George’s County has four charter schools, with two more slated to open in the fall of 2010. About 60 charter schools operate in D.C., serving one-third of the city’s students and making it one of the nation’s largest school-choice experiments. No charter schools operate in Northern Virginia.
