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A Reform-Driven System
Via this ambitious strand of work, we seek to deepen and strengthen the K–12 system’s capacity to deliver quality education to every child, based on rigorous standards and ample choices, by ensuring that it possesses the requisite talent, technology, policies, practices, structures, and nimble governance arrangements to promote efficiency as well as effectiveness.
Recent Publications
Half empty or half full: Superintendents' views on Ohio's education reforms
May 16, 2013
This report is based on the responses to an online survey conducted in Spring 2013 with 344 school district superintendents in Ohio. The survey covered seven education policies, specifically: Common Core State Standards, teacher evaluations, the Third Grade Reading Guarantee, open enrollment, A-to-F ratings for schools and districts, individualized learning (blended learning and credit flexibility), and school choice (charter schools and vouchers). It also included several questions on general attitudes towards school reform in Ohio and two trend items. Download today to discover the key findings!
Limitless: Education, The Reynoldsburg Way
Terry Ryan , Ellen Belcher / May 8, 2013
The Reynoldsburg City School District, just east of Columbus, is far down the “portfolio management” path – further than probably any suburban school district of its size. This feature article discusses portfolio management and takes readers behind the scenes in Reynoldsburg.
Redefining the School District in Tennessee
Nelson Smith / April 23, 2013
As the challenges of education governance loom ever larger and the dysfunction and incapacity of the traditional K-12 system reveal themselves as major roadblocks to urgently-needed reforms across that system, many have asked, “What’s the alternative?”
Governance in the charter school sector: Time for a reboot
Adam Emerson / March 28, 2013
When charter schools first emerged more than two decades ago, they presented an innovation in public school governance. No longer would school districts enjoy the “exclusive franchise” to own and operate public schools, as chartering pioneer and advocate Ted Kolderie explained. Charters wouldn’t gain all of the independence of private schools—they would still report to a publicly accountable body, or authorizer—but they would be largely freed from the micromanagement of school boards, district bureaucracies, and union contracts. Autonomy, in exchange for accountability, would reign supreme. Over the course of its twenty-year history, however, American education and its charter school sector have evolved in important ways. One of the significant ways is school governance—not a topic that gets a lot of attention but, as it turns out, a crucial one that is overdue for an overhaul (and not just in the charter sector). The growth of nonprofit charter networks (CMOs), the ubiquity of for-profit school-management companies (EMOs), and the emergence of “virtual” charter schools have all upended the notion that charters would mostly be freestanding “community-based” schools of the “one-off” variety. Yet the public policies and practices that characterize charter governance haven’t kept pace with these real-world changes. To examine this mismatch more closely and consider how it might be set right, we interviewed nearly two dozen analysts, authorizers, board members, and practitioners with interest in and knowledge of charter schools. Not one of them felt that the inherited assumptions and regulations about governance in the charter sector are truly well suited to present-day realities. This brief explores several ways that charter governance might be rebooted.
Searching for Excellence: A Five-City, Cross-State Comparison of Charter School Quality
March 13, 2013
Conducted jointly by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and Public Impact, the new research study Searching for Excellence: A Five-City, Cross-State Comparison of Charter School Quality sheds light on charter performance — in Albany, Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, and Indianapolis. These cities were highlighted because they have relatively large numbers of charter schools and charter school students. These are cities where charters have been part of the educational landscape for a decade or more. Read this exciting report today!
Recent Articles
Flypaper
Am I a part of the cure...or the disease?
May 17, 2013
Mike Petrilli's second entry in Bridging Differences
Choice Words
Religious schools, the ADA, and the Justice Department
May 16, 2013
The Justice Department has taken school-voucher policy to unstable ground
Flypaper
The moderate extremism of relinquishment
May 15, 2013
Neerav Kingsland of New Schools for New Orleans outlines the basics of Relinquishment
Common Core Watch
By the Company It Keeps: The U.S. Department of Education
May 15, 2013
This interview with the United States Department of Education is the third and final installment in our Common Core testing consortia series
Common Core Watch
By the Company It Keeps: Smarter Balanced
May 14, 2013
The second installment of the testing-consortia series is a conversation with Smarter Balanced
