On Top of the News
Has the MCPS Board Learned Its Lesson?
Bethesda magazine | May-June 2016
Behind the Headline
Lost at Sea
Education Next | Summer 2004
How does a local school board decide to hire a superintendent? Or fire a superintendent? In Montomery County, Md., a suburban school district outside of Washington, D.C. with over 150,000 students and an annual budget of $2.4 billion, most people probably couldn’t answer these questions because much of the work of the school board seems to take place behind closed doors.
In a long article for Bethesda magazine, Lou Peck gives readers a look behind those closed doors at the sometimes dysfunctional workings of the Montgomery County school board, which hired a superintendent, fired a superintendent, and tried to hire a new superintendent in a process that left many residents of the county perplexed.
Chester E. Finn, Jr. identifies several problems with relying on local school boards to run school districts in”Lost at Sea” (co-authored with Lisa Graham Keegan) and “The Problems of Education Governance in Twenty-First Century America.”
—Education Next