Several weeks ago, Baltimore managed to thwart a state takeover of several failing schools, including seven of the city's twenty-three failing middle schools (see here). This week, another story brings the Baltimore school district's bureaucratic inertia into sharp relief.
Over the past decade, champions of bold K-12 education reform, ourselves included, have often termed charter schools the most promising innovation. It's fitting that this week-National Charter Schools Week-educators, reformers, and policymakers are examining where the charter movement stands and where it's headed.
Talk to education reformers about the potential for district school boards to bring about positive change, and they’re likely to channel Nietzsche: School boards are dead. But are they? May’s Governing magazine profiled the school board in our hometown of Dayton, Ohio, which over the past several years has measurably improved Gem City’s perennially failing schools.
Imagine a school where Colin Powell teaches the finer points of diplomacy and Meryl Streep guides the newest batch of budding actors. It doesn't exist, but if it did, that's where New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof would send his kids.
Private scholarship programs faced turbulent waters up and down the Atlantic coast this week.
Center for the Future of Arizona & Morrison Institute for Public PolicyMarch 2006
Belatedly, policymakers and researchers are recognizing that quality charter schools depend on quality charter school authorizing. This report presents findings from a pioneering national examination of the organizations that sponsor, oversee, and hold accountable U.S. charter schools. Its primary aim is to describe and characterize these crucial but little-known organizations.
