King Canute and the Baltimore School Board

Click here for a story from Baltimore that illustrates what seems to me upside-down thinking regarding conventional publicly-funded schools and charter publicly-funded schools. The story concerns a Montessori charter school in a "struggling but gentrifying" neighbourhood that is so good that it is attracting students from wealthier neighbourhoods. By law, the school has to decide admissions by lottery, meaning that something like 90% of its students come from outside the area. 

The school's founder wants to be able to accept more local students - she's already asked the city for permission twice - but the Baltimore school board doesn't like this idea because it is worried that the nearby conventional publicly-funded school will lose students and have to close its doors. And, as it happens, the Baltmore school board is in the business of trying to protect its conventional schools from its charter schools - it gives the charters less money, arguing that giving the charters more money will result in under-funding for the conventional schools.

I expect that if the Baltimore school board was instead the Baltimore whale-bone corset company, it would be pulling out all the stops in an effort to force its citizens to continue to wear corsets. But times change, disruption and competition happen, and the smart thing is to accept the new wave and try to stay on top of it. The Baltimore school board should be embracing charter schools, helping them in every way possible, while at the same time leveraging their competition to galvanize its conventional schools into improving their service.

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