Advancing and Sustaining College Ready Compacts: Outcomes from the January Superintendents’ Meeting
Late last month, district superintendents and charter leaders from 29 U.S. cities were invited to Houston to consider how to reach across the charter-district divide. Hosted by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the two-day meeting was designed to help these cities leverage their diverse strengths to improve outcomes for all students. Attendees represented a […]
Wait, Who Chooses My Kid’s School?
In many cities, it makes sense for universal enrollment systems to replace existing enrollment processes that are messy, opaque, and at times unfair or even unlawful. But—as a recent contentious community meeting in Philadelphia made clear—entrusting enrollment decisions to a computer can be a bitter pill for parents and schools to swallow. The universal enrollment […]
Shortsighted board action in L.A.
I was dismayed by news this week that the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) school board failed to renew two Aspire Public Schools charters because these schools are not participating in the district’s special education services (in California, districts provide special education services via what’s known as a SELPA: Special Education Local Area Plan). […]
Rethinking the State Role in Education
States can do a lot more to promote effective schools. But what? Answering this long-neglected question is one of the next frontiers of CRPE’s work. As we and other thought leaders, like Andy Smarick at Bellwether, take it on, the experiences of leading states—Louisiana, Massachusetts, Florida, and Tennessee—provide a starting point. The state’s responsibility in […]
What Does It Mean to ‘Engage’ the Public?
For district leaders impatient to implement school reforms for students’ sake, the question “How do we engage the community?” can sometimes be another way of saying “How can we get people to support what we’ve already decided to do?” Last week in Houston, CRPE brought together the people driving the portfolio strategy in 26 cities […]
City Spotlight: Collaboration and Resource Sharing in Spring Branch, Texas
In Spring Branch, Texas, co-location of charter and district school programs is an intentional strategy designed to support sharing best practices across sectors; it evolved from a history of school choice within the Spring Branch Independent School District (SBISD). Co-located programs are at the heart of the SKY Partnership, a formal collaboration between SBISD, KIPP […]
A Tale of Two (Charter) Cities
I spent the beginning of last week in Detroit, a city that spawned one of the nation’s early charter laws, now home to one of the most unregulated charter sectors I have seen. I believe that Detroit families are better off as a result of choice. There are some very strong schools that wouldn’t exist […]
Columbus Children Falling Through the Cracks
The recent news out of Columbus—that 17 of the 75 local charter schools had closed in the past year—is bad in so many ways. It throws up a big obstacle for reformers in that city, in Cleveland, and elsewhere who need to use chartering as a policy to create good options for all families. It […]
Asking the Hard Questions about District-Charter Collaboration
Egocentric standoffs between charter and district leaders too often get in the way of smart negotiations and collective action that would benefit students. That’s the reason many cities are pursuing portfolio reforms and district-charter collaboration agreements. But we also know that collaboration between historically hostile parties takes time, and that time is too often not […]
The Big Message from NAEP TUDA
It is tempting to squeeze the urban NAEP scores for evidence about what city is doing better or worse than other cities. But the big messages are that everyone’s scores are very bad, and that cities with the highest concentrations of low-income and minority kids do the worst. Some cities have gotten unstuck from the […]
