The Maryland State Board of Education has condemned Montgomery County’s contract with a global textbook publisher to create and market its own name-brand curriculum.
The agreement “appears duplicative of state efforts, wasteful of resources, and further balkanizes [Montgomery County Public Schools] from the statewide reform initiatives,” the board wrote, even as it dismissed an appeal of the contract.
Montgomery County signed a $4.5 million deal in June to develop an integrated K-5 curriculum that could be sold to other school districts through Pearson, the world’s largest education publisher. Meanwhile, Maryland has started a statewide initiative to align its curriculum and tests with Common Core, a set of national academic standards.
The board said Montgomery would not be involved with curriculum planning. “It will be difficult, if not impossible, for [the state Department of Education] and the other school systems to share ideas with MCPS and Pearson who may, wittingly or not, appropriate them as their own for their K-5 project,” the board wrote, noting also that “all school systems in Maryland will ultimately be required to assess their students using the new assessments.”
Janis Sartucci, president of the Montgomery Parents’ Coalition, appealed the contract in June. “Our kids will have to take the tests the state puts out, but not be prepared on their curriculum,” she said. “Or are they sitting in a classroom learning the Pearson curriculum, then stopping for a month to do the state curriculum so they can pass the MSAs?”
Although the state board dismissed Sartucci’s appeal, calling the contract “sound education policy” on the local level, the board warned that all districts were expected to comply with Common Core standards.
Montgomery school board member Laura Berthiaume, who voted against the contract, said she won’t be surprised if the state’s curriculum eventually trumps Montgomery’s.
“We are going to find ourselves in three or four years having developed a product that will never be used by us,” Berthiaume said. “The state has a legal authority to impose [its curriculum] on us, and I don’t know why it wouldn’t.”
The contract allows Pearson and the school board to withdraw by Sept. 30, but the school system isn’t planning to back out, spokesman Dana Tofig said. The curriculum will be “fully aligned” with national standards and has voluntarily been implemented at kindergarten and first-grade levels in 110 schools.
The state board did not return calls for comment.
