No Time to Lose: Autonomous Public Schools Go Virtual in Indianapolis
Three much-admired school networks in Indianapolis didn’t skip a beat in going virtual. At Purdue Polytechnic High School, which enrolls 442 students at two campuses in the city, remote learning kicked off this past Monday, after schools closed throughout the city last Friday afternoon. By Tuesday, 95 percent of Purdue’s North Campus students were attending […]
What We’re Learning from an Early Look at District COVID-19 Response Plans
This is the first in a series of updates on our findings on school district response plans. See our latest analysis here. Today, the Center on Reinventing Public Education is releasing an initial, baseline database of school districts’ plans for supporting students during unprecedented mass closures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. More than 100,000 public schools […]
Brave New World at Success Academy
In a remarkable webinar this afternoon, Success Academy shared their plans for going virtual starting Thursday. None of us have been through anything like this before, and no one can claim a solution for shuttered schools. But Success consistently delivers extraordinary levels of student proficiency. So as districts and networks struggle to find their way […]
As Outbreak Forces Schools to Go Digital, We Must Innovate—and Embrace Learning As We Go
I’m distressed that my hometown, Seattle, is ground zero for the U.S. outbreak of COVID-19. I am heartened, though, by the fact that our community is primed to offer innovative responses, including in K-12 education. As we face the prospect that the disease will spread in other parts of the country, it is imperative that […]
Ceding Power to Create More Transformative Innovation
This blog is the third in a series reporting on CRPE’s “Big Think Network.” Through this project, CRPE is convening a diverse group of practitioners who are working on a variety of projects, all geared toward the goal of creating a more customized and equitable education system. Our goal is to learn from the Network’s […]
We See the Challenges of School Choice and Special Education Through Parents’ Eyes
Finding the right-fit school is hard for all families, but it is particularly challenging for families with children with disabilities, like my own. As a research analyst at CRPE, I have had the opportunity to talk with many parents in Washington, D.C., and New Orleans this past year who are working tirelessly to find the […]
Finding a Great Fit: Improving the School Choice Process for Students with Disabilities
Two briefs provide a summary of the special education landscape in New Orleans and Washington, D.C., and offer recommendations for further steps that might be taken to strengthen the cities’ support structures for parents of children with disabilities.
The Future of Charter Schooling May Mean a Return to Its Roots
Robin Lake and Steven Wilson disagree on some things, but both are right that chartering has a future. I’d suggest that this future looks more like the origins of the charter movement than its recent past. In the mid-1990s, the argument for chartering was that it provided the mix of autonomy and accountability that […]
Compatibility Error: Today’s High-Performing Charter Models Can’t Run on District Operating Systems
“A Charter for Change,” Al Shanker, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, titled his column in the New York Times one Sunday some three decades ago. Shanker had just returned from San Francisco, where 3,000 representatives from across the states had gathered for the union’s 70th convention. “The main idea that gripped the […]
A More Skeptical Take on Charter Growth
Steven Wilson, CRPE’s new Senior Fellow, makes a strong and compelling case here for the expansion of charter schools. Steven’s argument comes at a crucial time. The charter school movement is under full frontal attack. Opponents who have long viewed charter schools as an annoying sideshow have finally come to see their strong track record […]