An open letter to the Board of Directors of Ascend Learning
Dear Directors:
Dear Directors:
Just weeks away from what could be a watershed school board election, Denver hosted a community
A woman scrubs the bathroom floor on her hands and knees, hair pulled back in a scarf. Another woman dressed in a business suit applies lipstick at the mirror. Both are mothers. Both are black. One is a congresswoman. The other cleans the toilets and floors in the congresswoman’s office.
On September 25th, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) issued a report titled “School Choice in the United States: 2019,” which sorely misrepresents the prevalence, value, and impact of school choice over the last twenty years.
I. A hypothesis All organizations are founded on a hypothesis. Deliberate organizations are explicit about their hypothesis. The City Fund’s hypothesis, where I’m the Managing Partner, is that educational opportunity in cities will increase if:
Robert Pondiscio won’t like my review of his new book, How the Other Half Learns.
Dozens of studies have found black and brown students in urban charter schools make substantially more academic progress than otherwise similar students in traditional public schools; literature suggests achievement in district-run schools increases in response to competition from charters; and Fordham’s new study confirms the logical implication of those two strands: an increase in the percentage of students in a community who enroll in charter schools leads to systemic gains.
For big urban districts, the larger the number of black and Hispanic students enrolled in charters, the more all children or color achieve—no matter what kind of school they attend.