Disability Rights Advocates Are Fighting the Wrong Fight on School Choice
Many respected national groups have recently set their sights on school choice as the new battlefront for disability rights. They are anywhere from open to highly skeptical to adamantly opposed to charter schools and private school choice, often aligning with teachers unions to try to block new proposals or to re-regulate existing policies. This opposition […]
A Matter of Perspective: Charter Schools From the Inside Out
When a career school district educator takes a position leading a charter school, her former district colleagues say, “She’s gone to the dark side.” And when a charter leader is offered a position in a district, she thinks, “How can I work with an office full of incompetent people?” Yet these “boundary spanners” quickly realize […]
Want a Truly Effective School Choice System? Have High-Quality Options in Every Neighborhood
In their efforts to expand school choice, city leaders have good intentions and lofty ambitions. They want to allow for diverse approaches to education, offering schools and programs that meet the demands and interests of a wide variety of students and families. They want to give both students and educators the opportunity to find their […]
“It’s Not My Problem!” Why Charter Schools and Districts Need to Work Together on the Politics of School Closure
District budgets are badly strained when many of their schools are under-enrolled. This is one of the biggest reasons that districts with growing charter enrollment hit financial hurdles. Meanwhile, charter schools can’t expand without access to facilities, and in a growing number of cities, suitable facilities are in very short supply. Understandably, charter leaders bristle […]
Good Government Is Not Good Enough When Managing Choice in the Real World
The portents of market failure—things like inadequate information and a lack of competition—are everywhere in public education. So, when it comes to school choice, government has an important role to play: reducing information asymmetries, bolstering accountability, and ensuring fairness. But the market for schooling also needs bottom-up, community action if it’s going to work for […]
In a Changing Rural America, What Can Charter Schools Offer?
Rural America is not your grandparents’ heartland. Its population is getting older: 21 of the 25 oldest counties in the United States are rural. It’s no longer overwhelmingly white: One in five rural residents is a person of color, and more than four of five new rural residents are people of color. Rural areas are […]
Increasing the Demand for High-Quality Schools in Cleveland
With the election of President Donald Trump and the appointment of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, it may seem like school choice is having its day, poised to gain momentum. But ask any educator or community leader in a city with lots of school choice already, and they’ll tell you choice alone isn’t enough. Instead […]
Personalized Learning Will Live or Die on Ability to Manage Change
This is the ninth installment in our series of “Notes From the Field” on personalized learning. Even the best thinking on redesigning schools to personalize learning will be for naught if school and district design teams can’t lead and manage the change process that a move to PL entails. In schools, that process means getting […]
Teachers Don’t Need to Go It Alone on Personalized Learning
This is the eighth installment in our series of “Notes From the Field” on personalized learning. When we first visited schools in spring 2016 for this project, teachers seemed to be taking on an unsustainably heavy lift as they transitioned to personalizing student learning (PL). Teachers were often rewriting units and lessons from scratch, with […]
District and Charter Leaders Talk Collaboration…In a Fishbowl
It’s common knowledge that school districts and charter schools rarely collaborate. At best, they are like oil and water and at worst, like cats and dogs. This is too bad: districts and charter schools share a deep commitment to educating children well, and they work in the same neighborhoods and serve the same families. Last […]
