After absolutely zero popular demand, the occasional series "From the To-Read Pile" is making its triumphant return! This is where I plug articles, books, or reports that I should've read long ago but didn't. This installment covers four reports that address a single broad issue--managing a city's portfolio of schools--from different angles.
First, is the exceptional "Performance Management in Portfolio School Districts" by Robin Lake and Paul Hill at CRPE. I'd read anything on this subject by these two, but this report deserves the rapt attention of anyone who cares about changing urban school systems. It reports on major developments in the field while considering what's possible and how to bring it about. If you put quality above sector or provider and think an ongoing process of new starts, replications, and closures makes more sense than a static set of similar schools that exist in perpetuity regardless of quality, then read this report.
Second, is the very good "Growing Pains" from Education Sector; it's about the significant challenges to expanding and replicating great charters. A couple months back it got some unfavorable attention for alleged politicized editing. I can't speak to those particulars, but I hope that didn't depress interest because the report itself merits reading. Though the end feels shortened, given the serious issues it raises, it didn't strike me as bowdlerized. I learned a good deal--the history of NSVF, the legal and regulatory obstacles to CMO growth, fascinating data related to financial sustainability, and much more. (This Ed Week piece by Tom Toch, the original author, is a very good short summary of the argument.)
Another worthwhile take on the same issues can be found in the short "Charter School Replication" from NACSA. The report provides guidance to authorizers thinking about enabling their best charters to grow. It discusses important but under-appreciated issues such as the number of schools a single governing board can oversee, whether each proposed replication merits a separate application, and, most interestingly, the possibility state-level charter growth funds. Though ostensibly for authorizers, the report has meaningful insights for anyone interested in growing great schools.
And finally, a good, quick companion piece for all of the above is the summary of testimony from Aspen's NCLB Commission's hearing on failing schools from late last year. Lots of senior education leaders discussed alternatives, including my option of choice: a new schools strategy.
--Andy Smarick