9/29/16 • Dallas, TX, and Okemos, MI • Two Public Montessori Schools Named National Blue Ribbon School
9/29/16 • Dallas, Texas • Okemos, Michigan • Two Montessori schools, George Bannerman Dealey Montessori Academy in the Dallas Unified School District and Okemos Public Montessori at Central, in Okemos, Michigan, have been named 2016 National Blue Ribbon Schools in the “Exemplary High Performing”category.
The National Blue Ribbon Schools Award Program is a U.S. government program developed in 1982 by Secretary of Education Terrel H. Bell in response to a broad study of American education which also produced the influential 1983 reportA Nation at Risk. Two to three hundred awards have been given every year since then for academic excellence or for closing achievement gaps—over 8,000 since the program began. The Blue Ribbon Award is widely regarded as a high honor for schools.
The award has gone to a Montessori school eleven times, honoring ten schools (George Bannerman Dealey, which received an award this year, was also honored in 2002). All of the awards have been for high performance except Drachman Montessori Magnet School, a public magnet school in Tucson, Arizona, which was recognized as an “Exemplary Achievement Gap Closing” school in 2015.
Montessori National Blue Ribbon Award recipients, by year:
- 1986: Pines Montessori School, a private school in Kingwood, Texas, founded in 1977
- 1994: St. Joseph Montessori School Columbus, a private Catholic Montessori school in Columbus, Ohio, founded in 1968
- 1999: The Montessori Academy, a private school in Arlington, Virginia founded in 1981
- 2001: Near North Montessori School, a private school in Chicago, Illinois, founded in 1963
- 2002: George Bannerman Dealey Montessori Academy, in the Dallas Unified School District (also in 2016)
- 2011: Rosenthal Montessori Elementary School, a public school in Alexandria, Virginia
- 2012: Park Road Montessori School Charlotte, a public magnet school in Charlotte, North Carolina, founded in 1992
- 2015: Harry Stone Montessori Academy, a public school in Dallas 2015
- 2015: Drachman Montessori Magnet School, a public magnet school in Tucson, Arizona
- 2016: George Bannerman Dealey Montessori Academy (also in 2002)
- 2016: Okemos Public Montessori at Central, a public school in Okemos, Michigan founded in 2002.
David worked in private Montessori for more than twenty years as a parent, three-to-six year-old and adolescent teacher, administrator, writer, speaker, and advocate. In 2016 he began working with the National Center for Montessori in the Public Sector. David lives in Portland, Oregon.