As I continue to make my way through the gigantic stack of articles and reports I should've read over the last year and a half or so, I keep finding interesting and timely stuff. ????Given the critical role being played by high-quality charter networks in our cities and the stimulus plan's $650 million fund for scaling up what works, two articles from the 2008 summer edition of Education Next deserve particular attention.
"Brand-Name Charters" takes a look at the growth of "franchising" great schools and how it relates to similar practices outside of education. ????It includes a good discussion of the history, challenges, and successes of well-known nonprofit charter management organizations ("CMOs") like KIPP, Uncommon Schools, and Achievement First, and their for-profit cousins, education management organizations ("EMOs", which are different than this). ????There's been entirely too little written about this phenomenon, which I consider among the three most important education reform developments of the last 20 years, so this is a worthwhile and much-needed contribution.
"Scaling Up in Chile" is an excellent companion piece. ????It discusses similar developments that have taken place since Chile overhauled its public education system in the early 1980s. ????Today, only about half of that nation's students attend schools run by local governments. ????The rest either attend non-subsidized private schools or a diverse and growing array of charter-like schools (publicly funded but operated under various auspices). ????Though this article is primarily about the achievement effects of different sized networks, I was more interested in its depiction of a delivery system of public education that America's urban areas are slowly but surely beginning to emulate.