Crossing the chasm: How one district is moving its innovative staffing model from pilot to mainstream
This blog is part of our series profiling three school systems several years into implementing workforce innovations or strategic staffing solutions. Scaling up innovations within school systems is a notoriously difficult process. While new instructional approaches or staffing strategies may catch on within a few classrooms or schools, they often fail to become integrated system-wide. […]
Leader-to-leader collaboration: Real talk, real results
This past November was a dream come true for The Oakland REACH—and for me as a leader. For two days, leaders from Rochester, Birmingham, New Orleans, Greenville, Jacksonville, Providence, Boston, and San Francisco, Richmond, and Oakland, CA, gathered together for our first-ever REACH Way Institute (RWI).
These leaders represented the opportunity to impact 350,000 students. I still cannot find the right words to express how much it meant to have groups from all over the country come to learn—not just from us, but from one another. We built an instant community that affirmed just how critical leader collaboration is.
If we’re serious about pandemic recovery, we need summer school at scale
For everyone committed to educational equality, an ambitious new analysis from researchers at Stanford and Harvard today brings grim news. In most states studied, the gap in student achievement between low-income and high-income districts grew dramatically between 2019 and 2023, in many cases by a half-grade or more. We have long known that student performance […]
A “good life” for every student: High schools embrace many pathways to success
CRPE & CPRL hosted a webinar on this report with the co-authors and report stakeholders. Check it out! Can the lessons schools learned in the Covid-19 recovery period contribute to more lasting, transformative shifts in high school? Researchers from CRPE and the Center for Public Research and Leadership (CPRL), with support from the Barr Foundation, […]
Breaking the teaching mold—with help from the teachers union
This blog is part of a three-part series profiling school systems that have been implementing workforce innovations or strategic school staffing models for several years. Through innovative and strategic school staffing solutions, efforts to reimagine the teacher workforce have grown over the past several years. This is in response to prolonged teacher shortages and consistently […]
The passing of Linda Brown and the elephant in the room
The school reform community has lost one of its brightest lights. Linda Brown is dead at 81. I met Linda in 1993 at the dawn of the public charter school movement. Her unrelenting commitment to excellence in urban schools inspired my work through the decades, and I was fortunate to serve for years as board […]
Communities in the driver’s seat: Black Mothers Forum microschools raise sustainability questions
The Black Mothers Forum (BMF), established in 2016 to combat institutional racism in Phoenix-area schools, responded to the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic by creating a network of microschools. With Black leadership and a focus on racial justice, BMF fills a unique niche in a region where Black families are often underrepresented. In 2022, CRPE documented […]
School choice: Vital, but not automatic
Post-pandemic America is in a heyday for school choice, at least in red states. From Florida to Ohio to Arizona, parents can get new state subsidies via education savings accounts (ESAs) to choose extracurricular activities, support homeschooling, or pay at least partial tuition in private schools. Elected officials and advocates behind these new supports for […]
Literacy for all: The story of Sobral
The scorching, arid northeastern state of Ceará, Brazil has long been known for growing cashews and coconuts. Now, it’s defied expectations by cultivating one of the world’s best public elementary school systems, despite high rates of poverty. How Sobral transformed its public school system and attained near-universal literacy offers lessons for communities everywhere. With 85 […]
2024: Reflecting on 30 years of CRPE
Happy New Year! With the start of 2024, we kick off a celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Center on Reinventing Public Education. Throughout 2024, our 30th Anniversary series will highlight some of CRPE’s most impactful work, shine a spotlight on current systems and organizations we think are worth watching, and reflect on the […]
