Public schooling has always been politically fraught, but current disagreements over issues related to race, sexuality, gender, and Covid-19 have reached a tipping point. According to a new report from the Center on Reinventing Public...
States, along with legislatures, governors, advocacy groups, and citizens, are urging state education agencies to drive changes in K-12 education. The restructuring of work on various fronts, such as supporting struggling schools, raising standards, addressing labor market weaknesses, and strengthening educational connections, is necessary to meet these demands. Importantly, these efforts must be undertaken amidst constrained resources. The focus of our work is to explore how SEAs can effectively respond to the increasing demands they face.
Key questions guiding this exploration include:
What capacities need to be developed for states to act on reform agendas?
How can state agencies balance their compliance responsibilities with the demand for services and public oversight of K-12?
What actions can state legislatures, governors, advocacy groups, and other stakeholders take to support the work of SEAs?
Public schooling has always been politically fraught, but current disagreements over issues related to race, sexuality, gender, and Covid-19 have reached a tipping point. According to a new report from the Center on Reinventing Public...
How can school systems possibly find the bandwidth to act on new visions for public education when their leaders are constantly trapped in crisis mode? One particular mechanism might allow them to pull this off:...
This report provides key lessons for states seeking to make improvements in districts and schools navigating a transition to local control.
The State of Texas passed an innovation law (Senate Bill 1882) in summer 2017 to foster partnership schools, much like those profiled in CRPE’s recent brief. CRPE research analyst Sean Gill spoke with Molly Weiner,...
As states unfurl their Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) plans, we’ve been hearing a common dialog from state education leaders—promising on the one hand, troubling on the other. PromisingState leaders are taking seriously the mandate...
This case study profiles the unique school improvement effort in Springfield, MA, and compares it with other turnaround strategies.
Many have observed that the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act provides states a prime opportunity to support improvement in K-12 education. But can state chiefs, historically weak and with few formal powers, deliver?...
Paul Hill and Ashley Jochim offer ideas and examples for how state chiefs can best use their powers to effectively lead the improvement of schools and districts.
Polarization was the theme of 2016, and we’d be kidding ourselves to think that will be much different in 2017. Still, there has rarely been more need for new ideas that people can begin to...
In the ongoing debate about federal and state roles in K–12 public education, states got a leg up with the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). It renounces the strong regulatory role that...
