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...
CRPE studied these efforts to determine how leaders can overcome the challenges of working across traditionally competitive boundaries. When done well, collective action can lead to tangible results:
For Charter Schools:
For School Districts:
For the Community:
CRPE’s studies on district-charter relationships focused most closely on 23 cities with District-Charter Collaboration Compacts supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Between 2011 and 2017, under a grant from the Foundation, we regularly interviewed leaders in school districts, charter schools, and support organizations to track progress on these agreements, reported on local political, legal, and financial barriers to collaboration, and facilitated networking and problem-solving between cities. In January 2017 we published our seminal study, Bridging the District-Charter Divide to Help More Students Succeed. In cities with size-able charter school student populations, we concluded that cross-sector policy coordination is a necessity, not a nicety. However, despite the urgent need, cooperation on common issues was too often treated as a time-limited, forced marriage rather than as a sustained effort and long-term relationship. This study built upon our 2013 interim assessment of 16 Compact Cities.
Our reports include:
Many of CRPE’s other reports offer examples of district-charter cooperation, including:
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...
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...
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...
This report on the newly merged Shelby County Schools’ (TN) provides an assessment of where the district stands in relation to the portfolio strategy’s 7 components.
The uproar over charging rent to New York City charter schools proves that control over facilities is a powerful but easily misused governance tool. Mayor Bill De Blasio and Chancellor Carmen Farina don’t like the...
This issue brief explains how three cities—Denver, New Orleans, and Washington, D.C.—are addressing the issues involved with governing cross-sector enrollment systems.
This brief provides an introductory look at how leaders can effectively engage stakeholders during the design and implementation of a common enrollment system.
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...
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...
This “Spotlight” brief outlines the elements of a successful common enrollment system, and the experiences and outcomes of cities currently using these systems.
Current Research
Previous Research
