Ohio Education Gadfly Biweekly
VOLUME 7, NUMBER 9
May 8, 2013
Limitless: Education, The Reynoldsburg Way
A profile feature article about the Reynoldsburg City School District
By
Ellen Belcher
,
Terry Ryan
Briefly Noted
The latest Fordham news
Limitless: Education, The Reynoldsburg Way
Ellen Belcher , Terry Ryan / May 8, 2013
Introduction
One of the most exciting developments in American education during the last decade has been the reconceptualization of school districts and how they should be organized and managed. Neerav Kingsland, CEO of New Schools for New Orleans, describes this as a movement of “relinquishers.”¹ Relinquishers, according to Kingsland, are superintendents who use their authority to transfer power away from the central office to individual schools – and, most important, to their principals and teachers.
Education researchers Paul Hill, Christine Campbell, and Betheny Gross at the Center on Reinventing Public Education in Seattle have written for more than a decade about “portfolio school districts.” Like Kingsland’s relinquishers, portfolio school district leaders see their role not as running the schools, but rather as creating the conditions for a “tight-loose” system of school management – “tight” as to results, but “loose” with regard to operations. Superintendents are no longer owner-operators of schools, but rather “quality control agents” for portfolios of different types of schools in their districts.
Portfolio school district managers, according to Hill and his colleagues, think like savvy financial managers who build a diverse portfolio to ensure overall financial success even if parts of the portfolio underperform. A successful portfolio manager:
…avoids betting everything on one investment, knowing that some holdings will perform much better than expected and some much worse. This manager is agnostic as to which
Limitless: Education, The Reynoldsburg Way
Briefly Noted
May 8, 2013
The Fordham team has been involved in a variety of discussions and events during the past few weeks. Here's a recap of the latest Fordham highlights:
Fordham's Checker Finn discussed Conservatives and the Common Core in a recent blog. Terry Ryan was quoted in a Columbus Dispatch article about Common Core critics.
Terry Ryan testified May 7 at the Senate Finance Committee with high achieving charter school leaders. Read his testimony and a recap of the event.
