MCPS, Pearson, and Missing an Opportunity

by David Wiley

I sent the following letter to the editor of the Washington Post, who reported on the MCPS / Pearson deal. It looks like they’re not running it, so I share it here.Montgomery County Public Schools’ shortsighted decision to sell its nationally recognized and taxpayer-funded curriculum to an education publishing company (Re: Global firm to pay Montgomery, Md., schools millions for elementary curriculum; June 9, 2010) will only further exacerbate the education budget crises in the region and throughout the nation...

 ...Now, when education budgets are tightest, other schools will spend additional taxpayer dollars to purchase materials originally produced with public funds. To call this “wasteful” would be an understatement. Why should the public pay over and over again for access to curriculum materials whose development they already paid to support? The current economic climate is not the time for school districts to engage in selfish educational isolationism. The county has missed a huge opportunity to explore a genuinely new way of doing things – sharing...

Read more: http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/1486#ixzz0qbodEQuU