Mobilizing Parents to Support Governance Reform
Last week, three cities pursuing portfolio strategies held elections. In Denver, voters kept a pro-reform majority on the school board. In Boston, a strong pro-reform mayoral candidate lost, but to a man who serves on a charter school board and favors continued charter expansion. In New York, the mayoralty was won by a candidate who […]
Reinventing Public Education Must Be About Problem Solving, Not Ideology
When Paul Hill wrote CRPE’s treatise, Reinventing Public Education, nearly 20 years ago, he was taking off on an idea developed by David Osborne and Ted Gaebler in Reinventing Government: the role of government should be to steer, not to row. It should get out of the business of central planning and instead unleash innovation, […]
City Spotlight: Boston
In Boston, 128 district schools, 16 charter operators, and 22 Catholic schools are represented in their Collaboration Compact. Under this agreement, the three sectors have joined forces to figure out how to best implement the Common Core State Standards, share and develop effective instructional practices via school-to-school partnerships, better align the student enrollment process, deepen […]
John Deasy and the Impossible Job
A few years ago I sat with a group of urban district leaders in a noisy L.A. restaurant, leaning forward to hear every word from the new Los Angeles Unified School District superintendent, John Deasy. Deasy had, admirably, given up a comfortable job at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to get back into the […]
Charter Schools and New York City Education Reform
New York City mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio has promised to reverse his predecessor’s policy of providing facilities rent-free to charter schools. His reasons? First, charter schools have financial advantages, including money from foundations. Second, teachers and principals in traditional public schools are annoyed by having to share facilities with charter schools. This proposal, and […]
Portfolio Governance Reforms: Why We Shouldn’t Wait
People who see the portfolio strategy as a threat and those who see it as an opportunity both want to know: What’s the evidence that it works? The concept is still relatively new, and it will take a while to build a robust evidence base. But that doesn’t mean that cities desperate for viable solutions […]
Evidence Matters: Proving Whether School Reforms Make a Difference for Kids
When people lament that innovation is not possible in “regular” districts—ones that are overseen by elected school boards and working with active teachers unions—we at CRPE often point to Denver Public Schools. We’re not alone in noticing Denver—cities around the country have heard about its energy, new ideas, and solid implementation. Last year alone, more […]
Charter Schools: Special Needs “Served Well Here” or “Need Not Apply”?
One of the most important challenges for governing city schools in an era of choice is protecting the interests of students with special needs. These kids are often desperate for better options, but also vulnerable to being pushed out of schools that don’t want them. The fact that charter schools tend to enroll a smaller […]
Will New York Reforms Survive?
Michael Bloomberg’s final term as New York City mayor will soon end. Will the nationally influential education governance changes he introduced end too? From the tone of the now-concluded Democratic primary, one might expect so. The winner, Bill de Blasio, condemned recent actions by Bloomberg’s Department of Education as “a cynical effort to lock communities […]
Good Governance Starts and Ends with Strong Schools
CRPE is a policy shop. We study governance systems and propose policy solutions at the systems level, but I start every presentation about CRPE’s work with this list of the attributes not of effective systems, but of effective schools. I also tell new CRPE employees that one of the most important reports they can read […]