Measuring Up: How American Cities Are Shortchanging Black Students and What We Can Do About It
We recently published Measuring Up: Educational Improvement and Opportunity in 50 Cities, a report that provides a citywide assessment of the changing and complex public school landscape in the U.S., where multiple agencies oversee public schools and enrollments are spread across a variety of school types. Though it comes as no surprise to anyone who […]
More Than One Path Out of the Bottom
Five years ago, the Obama administration’s School Improvement Grants (SIG) famously targeted extra resources to the nation’s most struggling schools. The feds defined “struggling” schools as those performing in the bottom 5% of their state based on performance. As is often the case with sweeping policy initiatives, the results were mixed. It’s probably unsurprising, then, […]
Rethinking High Schools: Past Efforts Should Inform New Models
Pundits on the left and right have criticized Laurene Powell Jobs’ new $50 million initiative to develop new high school models. Some say earlier efforts to create new models have been a bust, others say that the new models might be good but they can’t possibly survive in the harsh environment of public education. But, […]
Realizing the True Power of State-Run School Districts
As the nation reflects on the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the impact of Louisiana’s Recovery School District (RSD) has been the subject of reasoned, evidence-based analyses as well as fiery, often baseless, attacks. Meanwhile, the record of the Louisiana RSD seems to be speaking for itself. In state legislatures across the country, laws establishing […]
A Court Decision Only the Kremlin Could Love
This blog was first published in Fordham Institute’s Flypaper. Last Friday, in a 6-3 decision, the Washington State Supreme Court declared unconstitutional the state’s voter-approved charter school law, throwing nine new schools and more than 1200 students into chaos. The ruling was not based on the merits of the law (one of the strongest in […]
School Discipline Isn’t Working. Let’s Not Attack It or Defend It, Let’s Fix It
Last month, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute put out talking points on six education issues for the 2016 presidential candidates. A number of these positions—strong accountability, parent choice, paying attention to our poor standing globally, and providing instruction on civics—enjoy support from all sides of the political spectrum. More importantly, these positions are largely supported […]
School Systems Need a Disaster Response Plan
What happens to a city when “the big one” hits? Depending on where you live, the big one could be a flood, a tornado, a hurricane. For me, it looks like it’s going to be an earthquake, at least that’s what a recent scary New Yorker article says as it lists a parade of horribles […]
The Best of Both Worlds: Boundary Spanners & Co-location
CRPE has produced two new reports on district-charter collaboration. District-Charter Sector Boundary Spanners A growing number of districts are moving away from the idea that charter schools are the enemy. Instead, districts are breaking down barriers and openly discussing how to share resources, responsibilities, and knowledge of what works. This report explores a lesser-known form […]
Hiring District Leaders From the Charter Sector: A Conversation with Superintendents Tom Boasberg and Duncan Klussmann
Listen in as two successful superintendents discuss an under-the-radar trend in school district hiring practices – the bold move to fill high-level central office positions with leaders from the charter sector. Between them, Denver Public Schools Superintendent Tom Boasberg and retiring Spring Branch Independent School District Superintendent Duncan Klussmann have pushed the thinking around how […]
Governance and Its Limits
Ashley Jochim explains how the formal tools of public education governance can be limited because of institutional inertia and a weak leadership pipeline in this blog originally published in Fordham’s Flypaper. The push to raise standards and boost outcomes for students has placed states at the center of efforts to improve public education. But as […]