CRPE's Robin Lake, Betheny Gross, and Paul Hill will be featured speakers at "The Urban Education Future?" - Lessons from New Orleans 10 Years after Hurricane Katrina conference, hosted by the Education
Robin Lake

Twitter: @RbnLake
Amazon Author Page: Robin Lake, Author
Robin Lake is director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) a non-partisan research and policy analysis organization developing transformative, evidence-based solutions for K–12 public education. Her research focuses on U.S. public school system reforms, including public school choice and charter schools; innovation and scale; portfolio management; and effective state and local public oversight practices.
Lake has authored numerous studies and provided expert testimony and technical assistance on charter schools, district-charter collaborations, and urban school reform. She is the editor of Unique Schools Serving Unique Students: Charter Schools and Children with Special Needs and editor of Hopes, Fears, & Reality: A Balanced Look at American Charter Schools. She co-authored, with Paul Hill, Charter Schools and Accountability in Public Education. She has provided invited testimonies to the U.S. House of Representatives Education and Labor Committee as well as various state legislatures.
She presents regularly at conferences and summits around the United States, and has advised on charter school implementation in South Africa and the United Kingdom. Lake serves as a board member or advisor to various organizations, including the Journal of School Choice, the National Center on Special Education in Charter Schools, the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, and Education Next. She was named to the summer 2016 class of the Pahara-Aspen Education Fellows Program, designed to support exceptional leaders reimagining U.S. public schools.
Lake holds a BA in International Studies and an MPA in Education and Urban Policy from the University of Washington. She currently serves as Affiliate Faculty, School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, at the University of Washington Bothell.
In this brief, we explore evidence related to the causes of OUSD’s financial crisis and why previous efforts to right the ship have failed.
This report is the first step in developing an evidence base about how charter schools meet the needs of unique learners, how they can improve in this work, and what aspects of chartering as a governance model support...
We convened leaders from cities around the country to explore ways that school districts can use the portfolio strategy to help cities improve education for...
Three new briefs assess the impact of California charter schools on school districts.
This essay explores how an education system built to meet the needs of “square pegs” could benefit all students.
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Robin Lake will be presenting in this session on the role of charter schools in overhauling school districts.
The AERA Annual Meeting is the largest gathering of scholars in the field of education research. It is a showcase for ground-breaking, innovative studies in a diverse array of areas—from early education through higher education, from digital learning to second language literacy.
At January’s Washington Education Innovation Forum, Professor Ed Lazowska discussed how Washington’s primary and secondary schools are doing little to give students skills related to the jobs that are being created in their backyard, potential consequences if we do not change course, and how we might best expose our youth to STEM skills that are increasingly shaping our region’s economy and identity.
Our next Washington Education Innovation Forum will feature Jen Davis Wickens, Chief Regional Officer for Summit Public Schools, and Sarah Satinover, Summit’s Director of Growth.
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Robin Lake is quoted about online schools in The Blade.
Robin Lake is quoted in Chalkbeat on the benefits and downsides of charter management organizations for charter schools.
Robin Lake is quoted in The Wall Street Journal about the failing public school district in Providence.
Drawing from our 25th Anniversary essay collection, The 74 highlights eight of the biggest ideas and proposals CRPE presented about the next era of public education.
Paul Hill and Robin Lake are quoted in this PolitiFact article on the history of busing.
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If we continue to focus only on adult divisions, kids will lose.
Our new blog series aims to clear the air and make room for the next big improvements in both charter schools and public education in general.
Schools need not wait for ideal policy conditions to begin improving education for students with disabilities.
The more choice and autonomy become the norm, the more urgent is the need to find new ways to ensure they bring advantages to the most vulnerable and unique student populations.
Let districts be districts, when they work. But when they don’t, Robin Lake argues, try something else.
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