Buried Treasure: Inside Charter Schools
When I started working at CRPE in 2007, I didn’t know much about charter schools, but I was quickly immersed. From the end of 2007 through 2009, for a study funded by the U.S. Department of Education, my new colleagues and I made over 50 visits to charter schools in six cities, conducted over 250 […]
Buried Treasure: It Takes a City
Lyndon B. Johnson once quipped, “Good politics is good government.” Johnson realized that whether a given public policy achieves its intended objectives is rarely a matter solely of technical design. Rather, success depends both on the quality of the plan and whether it is implemented fully enough to stand the chance of having an impact—a […]
Spokane, WA: Washington’s First District Authorizer Approaches Charters with a Collaborative Mindset
Washington State voters approved a charter school initiative in 2012—its fourth appearance on the ballot—making Washington the 42nd state to allow charter schools. Spokane Public Schools (SPS) submitted its application to authorize charter schools shortly after the law went in to effect. SPS is the first and, to date, only district out of 295 in […]
Buried Treasure: High Schools With Character
I headed into my first teaching job in the 1990s full of exciting ideas about teaching and schools that I had learned from people like Ted Sizer and David Kobrin. But like a lot of young teachers, I quickly found a huge gap between my sense of what schools should be like and what they […]
Smart Regulation for Strong Schools
I recently read a fascinating Wall Street Journal article by Raymond Zhong, a Delhi-based reporter, about regulating global financial markets. I’m by no means a finance person; what caught my interest were the insights relevant to education and how we oversee and regulate schools. Zhong presented leading theories from Andrew Haldane and others about how […]
School Facilities Shouldn’t Be Political Spoils
The uproar over charging rent to New York City charter schools proves that control over facilities is a powerful but easily misused governance tool. Mayor Bill De Blasio and Chancellor Carmen Farina don’t like the people who operate certain charter schools, or the philanthropists who donate money to those schools. So they want to impose […]
Shouldn’t Principals Speak for Their Schools? A New Approach
A reporter wants to know what has led to big gains in reading scores at an elementary school. Why funds for a choir program have been redirected to math interventions at a middle school. Why a high school’s parking lot isn’t plowed. Who should answer these questions? Traditionally, it’s the district—but let’s rethink that. Districts […]
Advancing and Sustaining College Ready Compacts: Outcomes from the January Superintendents’ Meeting
Late last month, district superintendents and charter leaders from 29 U.S. cities were invited to Houston to consider how to reach across the charter-district divide. Hosted by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the two-day meeting was designed to help these cities leverage their diverse strengths to improve outcomes for all students. Attendees represented a […]
Wait, Who Chooses My Kid’s School?
In many cities, it makes sense for universal enrollment systems to replace existing enrollment processes that are messy, opaque, and at times unfair or even unlawful. But—as a recent contentious community meeting in Philadelphia made clear—entrusting enrollment decisions to a computer can be a bitter pill for parents and schools to swallow. The universal enrollment […]
Shortsighted board action in L.A.
I was dismayed by news this week that the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) school board failed to renew two Aspire Public Schools charters because these schools are not participating in the district’s special education services (in California, districts provide special education services via what’s known as a SELPA: Special Education Local Area Plan). […]