Getting from Here to There in Governance Reform
Andy Smarick, Ashley Jochim, and I have been exchanging posts on new roles for school districts and state education agencies. We agree government should set goals and hold providers accountable for performance but rely on independent parties to run schools and deliver services. But we are exploring differences about what kinds of government institutions are […]
Buried Treasure: A New Look at Inequities in School Funding
In May 2002, CRPE produced a little publication with a huge audience. “A New Look at Inequities in School Funding: A Presentation on the Resource Variations Within Districts,” by Marguerite Roza and Karen Hawley Miles, was the most accessed publication on crpe.org for more than a year. One reason it was so popular was that […]
Common School Performance Frameworks
Thirteen years after NCLB was passed, and with 44 states now committed to using Common Core State Standards, how public school performance is measured continues to vary widely not only between states and cities, but also within cities. Across the country both traditional district and charter schools have developed their own ways of tracking how […]
Smart Contracting Means Delegating, Not Abdicating
Last week The Atlantic published a tough article on cities’ recent experience with privatization—by which they meant making contracts with private organizations to do what public employees previously did. The article gave examples of government contracts that led to lower performance, increased costs to users, and much higher costs to government. The article was fair—it […]
To Take the Helm, State Ed Agencies Need a Navigator
Today the Fordham Institute added to a growing stack of reports about what states can do to support dramatic improvements in K-12 education. It’s important to think hard about states, which have constitutional authority over K-12 and provide most of the money, but historically have done little to drive reform efforts. Enter our friend and […]
Buried Treasure: Unique Schools Serving Unique Students
As the charter movement grew, so did concern that charter schools would become boutique schools for affluent families. By 2010, that concern had been dispelled—half of the 1.8 million students in charter schools came from low-income families. But it was increasingly clear that many charter schools were exclusive in another way: they were not enrolling […]
Buried Treasure: Inside Charter Schools
When I started working at CRPE in 2007, I didn’t know much about charter schools, but I was quickly immersed. From the end of 2007 through 2009, for a study funded by the U.S. Department of Education, my new colleagues and I made over 50 visits to charter schools in six cities, conducted over 250 […]
Buried Treasure: It Takes a City
Lyndon B. Johnson once quipped, “Good politics is good government.” Johnson realized that whether a given public policy achieves its intended objectives is rarely a matter solely of technical design. Rather, success depends both on the quality of the plan and whether it is implemented fully enough to stand the chance of having an impact—a […]
Spokane, WA: Washington’s First District Authorizer Approaches Charters with a Collaborative Mindset
Washington State voters approved a charter school initiative in 2012—its fourth appearance on the ballot—making Washington the 42nd state to allow charter schools. Spokane Public Schools (SPS) submitted its application to authorize charter schools shortly after the law went in to effect. SPS is the first and, to date, only district out of 295 in […]
Buried Treasure: High Schools With Character
I headed into my first teaching job in the 1990s full of exciting ideas about teaching and schools that I had learned from people like Ted Sizer and David Kobrin. But like a lot of young teachers, I quickly found a huge gap between my sense of what schools should be like and what they […]