Chicken Slaughter in Vermont

CRC Education Watch director Phil Brand has begun his American Schools Tour, 2008-2009.  He’s exploring the idea of school choice by visiting two schools in each of the 50 states. This week, his first, Phil was in Vermont.

His new blog, Education in America, reports on the two schools he visited there–the Mountain School and St. Johnsbury Academy. The Mountain School has a kind of learn-by-doing curriculum (although the kids only have to watch the chicken slaughter). St. Johnsbury, a private school for public school students, shows that the common school proposed by Horace Mann in the early 19th century and now almost universal, is not the only way to organize a school system.

Phil’s reports can also be accessed through CRC’s Education Watch website. They are not the usual policy wonkery common to school choice advocates. Take a look.

Next week Phil will be in New York where he will visit the New Heights Academy Charter School in Harlem.