State board condemns MoCo school deal

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 Washington Examiner reports.

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.

Read more on this story in The Washington Examiner.