Comprehensive Social Services Can’t Substitute for Strong Schools
New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio has announced his big inequality-reducing school improvement initiative, a commitment to community schools. Citing Cincinnati’s community schools as their inspiration, DeBlasio and Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña pledge to start 40 new “wrap-around services” schools and add nearly 300 organizations to the list of approved after-school service providers. DeBlasio is […]
Do Federal Regulators Need to Get Out of the Way?
State leaders and policymakers are working hard to figure out how to bolster the capacity of state education agencies to meet the unprecedented demands they face to drive improvements in K-12 performance and productivity. In a report released Friday by the Center for American Progress, Patrick Murphy argues that SEAs could better meet those demands […]
Market-Based Accountability Won’t Be Enough
This blog was first posted on 6/11/2014 at redefinED, as part of their series on the future of parental choice and accountability. Like it or not, many cities are moving toward nearly universal school choice. In cities like Detroit, Cleveland, and Milwaukee, nearly all families have the opportunity to choose among district schools, charter, and […]
Time Flies When You’re Reinventing
The time has flown. This year marks CRPE’s 20th anniversary. Tonight we’re celebrating in D.C. with some old friends and colleagues, and we’ll be sharing a compilation of essays about how leading researchers and reformers view our impact so far. We’re also wrapping up our “Buried Treasure” blog series highlighting staff’s favorite CRPE publications. I […]
Charter School Quality: Policy Matters, But So Does Implementation
This blog originally appeared on Fordham’s Flypaper on June 4, 2014. Mike Petrilli over at Fordham raises a question that I get all the time from policymakers: what explains the pretty extreme variation we see in charter school outcomes across states? The easy answer is that it’s policy, and by changing policy we can ensure […]
Keeping Personalized Learning Schools on Track
This blog was originally published by the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, June 5, 2014 Charter schools are leading the nation in seeking new ways to personalize learning with a blend of teacher-led and technology-based instruction. If they are successful, these schools will dramatically accelerate student learning and use their funding much more strategically. […]
Conserving Principal and Teacher Talent
Reformers taking over a troubled big-city school system are understandably pessimistic about the educators they inherit. How could there be any good teachers or principals in a district where not even one child in ten achieves on grade level? At CRPE, we have learned from working with more than 40 urban districts that such despair […]
Innovation in Progress: Proceed with Caution
A new study released last week provides first glimpses at how blended learning is affecting student performance. The report, published by the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation and SRI International, is rich with information about blended-learning programs and implementation details, but the study’s new contribution to the field is that it presents an impact analysis […]
Buried Treasure: An Impossible Job? The View From the Urban Superintendent’s Chair
Over a decade ago, CRPE conducted a set of leadership studies funded by the Wallace Foundation’s Leaders Count Initiative. Of all the reports we produced, perhaps the most interesting was on the urban superintendency. (Other reports focused on the job of the principal, principal shortages, principal licensure, human resource development, and key indicators of school […]
Charter Regulation: How Much Is Too Much?
In a recent USA Today piece, Rick Hess and Mike McShane blasted what they see as a trend toward charter school re-regulation. Rick and Mike argue that charters are losing their ability to innovate thanks to lots of new rules and restrictions imposed by government. I’m with them in spirit, but the specifics matter a […]