“School choice,” a complex, important and controversial issue in Baltimore and across the country, is examined at length today in The Baltimore Sun, but the reporter clearly had a tough time conveying the “controversy” part, at least on the local level.

Why?

When the big boss, (Baltimore city schools CEO Andres Alonso) makes increasing the number of new charter and transformation schools “a hallmark” of his administration, as the story puts it, no one wants to criticize him on the subject.

“You wouldn’t believe how many schools wouldn’t talk about challenges with school choice. No one would touch it,” Tweeted the story’s author, Erica L. Green.

In the three years since Alonso has taken control, Baltimore has introduced 30 charter schools and 13 transformation schools. Alonso has also been lauded nationally for his reform efforts in Baltimore, and recently gave a talk to the Gates Foundation on his work here.

But other states and jurisdictions have been slower to move to school choice, an approach to education reform which also has critics. The Sun story includes one of the best-known of those critical voices, that of  NYU professor Dianne Ravitch, who said “instead of communities pulling together and coalescing around their schools, they fall apart because they are competing with one another.”

But in Baltimore, it seems, “public school leaders” willing to be quoted on the subject, were hard to come by, a frustration Green discusses openly on the paper’s InsideEd blog.

Here are some other excerpts on the subject from Green’s Twitter feed today.

http://twitter.com/#!/EricaLG/status/32989721965629440

http://twitter.com/#!/EricaLG/status/32992419385442306

http://twitter.com/#!/EricaLG/status/32992726014234626