In New Orleans, the Work Has Just Begun
This week marks nine years since Hurricane Katrina forced evacuation of New Orleans. The rebuilding of public education there has been a real accomplishment. But the schools there have a long way to go. Due to Katrina, 80 percent of the city was flooded and the floodwaters lingered for weeks. The vast majority of families […]
Making School Choice Work Requires Leadership
This commentary was originally published in Education Week on August 18, 2014. It’s a truism in public policy that every solution breeds a new problem. School choice has created new possibilities for families desperate for better options, but it can also create serious access challenges for disadvantaged families. In localities where many state and local […]
How the Portfolio Strategy Evolved from Idea to Action
In 2003, Paul Hill and I, along with James Harvey, wrote a book called It Takes a City. The book was written for mayors, civic leaders, school board members, and involved citizens, as a practical guide on how to formulate a reform plan bold enough to work while dealing with political opposition to change. It […]
Real-Dollar Spending Analyses: One of the best things we ever did
In our 20th anniversary publication, Russlynn Ali wrote about CRPE’s research on real-dollar spending within school districts. Russlynn was the perfect person to assess the impact of our work in this area, because she had drawn on it twice to great effect: once in California to advocate successfully for a more transparent state funding system, […]
District-Charter Texas Two-Step
You may have caught John Merrow’s PBS show featuring a Texas school district’s interesting partnership with KIPP and YES Prep! charter schools. Today in Education Next, Richard Whitmire highlights the same district and other district-charter “compacts.” Spring Branch Independent School District (SBISD) is a large semi-suburban school district in Houston. About two years ago, the […]
Chartering Schools: We Have to Get It Right
A core insight behind the school reform movement is that no single entity should both operate a school and be the sole judge of its performance. Any entity, public or private, that both operates and judges is in conflict of interest, and can be expected to accept levels of performance and service to children that […]
Taming the Many-Headed School Choice Monster
I’ve been closely following the Detroit Free Press series on charter schools, having spent time in the Motor City recently. The series concluded somewhat sensationally that charter schools spend $1 billion per year with little transparency or accountability. Predictably, charter advocates in Michigan and elsewhere have dismissed these conclusions while those in favor of traditional […]
Comprehensive Social Services Can’t Substitute for Strong Schools
New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio has announced his big inequality-reducing school improvement initiative, a commitment to community schools. Citing Cincinnati’s community schools as their inspiration, DeBlasio and Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña pledge to start 40 new “wrap-around services” schools and add nearly 300 organizations to the list of approved after-school service providers. DeBlasio is […]
Do Federal Regulators Need to Get Out of the Way?
State leaders and policymakers are working hard to figure out how to bolster the capacity of state education agencies to meet the unprecedented demands they face to drive improvements in K-12 performance and productivity. In a report released Friday by the Center for American Progress, Patrick Murphy argues that SEAs could better meet those demands […]
Market-Based Accountability Won’t Be Enough
This blog was first posted on 6/11/2014 at redefinED, as part of their series on the future of parental choice and accountability. Like it or not, many cities are moving toward nearly universal school choice. In cities like Detroit, Cleveland, and Milwaukee, nearly all families have the opportunity to choose among district schools, charter, and […]
