I am officially agnostic, on charter schools and unions. Not the combination of the two but each individually. We need to judge charters by their results on both quality and equity and we need to do the same for unions. That was the gist of my relatively recent comments in NOLA at the Education Research…
Month: February 2016
Fixing the School Choice Equation with New Technology to Choose and Judge Schools
We are finally paying some attention to parents and families in the whole school choice thing, creating better tools to help families choose schools, but we have a long way to go. Good to see GreatSchools.net making their site more responsive and also OUSD working on a better school finder tool, but looking at these…
What Has Worked in Oakland– Small Schools
I think it was Nietzsche who said that “every revolutionary tide eventually recedes, leaving only the sludge of a new bureaucracy”. In Oakland he is wrong. I had a chance to reminisce with some of the architects and builders in Oakland’s New Small Autonomous School and early charter movements this week (Superintendent Chacones, Laura Flaxman…
Keeping the Oakland Promise
You have to love the Oakland Promise Initiative, an ambitious visionary look at the supports that families and students need to be successful; coordinated early care, school based college and career pathway development and money to pay for college. Kudos to the mayor, superintendent, district, and the constellation of funders and nonprofits for making this…
Do Black Minds Matter in CA? What do the numbers say?
Kicking off Black History Month let’s take a look at the current state of Black education in CA. Disturbing but not unexpected results came out from the recent Black Minds Matter report published by Ed Trust West. Some lowlights; Black students in California are LEAST LIKELY TO: Become proficient readers by third grade; Be placed…