Center on Reinventing Public Education

This report focuses on the work of DC School Reform Now. Since 2011, the organization has focused on making school choice work for families in Wards 7 and 8, two underserved areas of the nation's capital.

This guide unpacks how enrollment loss stemming from charter schools may or may not shape districts’ financial situations and provides guidance and resources to journalists.

This report examines how New Orleans education officials have managed the return of nearly all of the city’s public schools to the control of the local elected school board for the first time since the state takeover of public...

These essays rethink foundational aspects of the current education system and offer new ideas to shift the lens from schools to students. 

This working paper analyzes data from ReSchool Colorado’s “Blueprint4SummerCO” platform to understand  supply and demand of summer programs Denver.

This brief presents data on how special education students in Washington state are being served in charter public schools, using a national and local context.

This report explores the early promise and challenges in personalized learning and calls for more system-level supports and strategies for innovation.

An overview of the district-charter collaboration landscape and one strategy that many cities are pursuing: sharing instructional practices across district and charter schools.

This brief examines how students with special needs are being served by an innovative San Diego charter school network.

This report examines how politics shapes the work of district-charter collaboration and offers strategies for district and charter leaders to improve their chances of success.

This report examines why charter school growth in the San Francisco Bay Area has slowed dramatically and offers solutions for cities nationwide to encourage the development of new high-quality schools.

This paper provides an honest assessment of the portfolio strategy’s strengths, weaknesses, and necessary evolution.

This brief examines a promising new “third way” approach to school improvement and provides guidance for district and charter leaders and policymakers considering partnership schools.

This brief, the first in a multiyear series examining DC School Reform Now’s innovative High Quality Schools Campaign, offers lessons for district and city leaders who want school choice to work for all families.

CRPE researchers discover distinct school differences in three cities and offer innovative, evidence-based solutions to help urban U.S. districts increase options so that families can find the right fit for their child.

This guide helps city education leaders understand the benefits and costs of a fully unified enrollment system and outlines the questions they should ask before initiating changes.

This case study profiles the unique school improvement effort in Springfield, MA, and compares it with other turnaround strategies.

Based on six years of research, this report explores why a growing number of districts and charter schools are choosing to work together, the costs and benefits of different types of cooperation, and the real impacts of...

This study explores families’ experiences choosing and enrolling in schools using the new Camden Enrollment, and provides recommendations for improvements to the system....

Edited by Ashley Jochim and Betheny Gross, the sixth and final volume of the SEA of the Future provides SEAs a new framework under ESSA for strategic planning and concrete tools for implementation.

This analysis of trends across portfolio districts shows where cities are making progress on strategy implementation and where they are getting bogged down.

Betheny Gross and Paul Hill discuss the challenges and opportunities for state-level experimentation created by the Every Student Succeeds Act, in the Harvard Law and Policy Review.

This report profiles leading efforts by two cities to bring consistency and fairness to discipline practices in both district and charter schools.

Betheny Gross and Ashley Jochim look at why Baltimore's promising education reforms stalled out and how it can regain momentum.

This case study looks at the community engagement efforts underway in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where a diverse group of civic leaders are working to create high-quality new school options.

CRPE collaborated with the Fordham Institute to develop an online school policy leadership toolkit, a resource to help policymakers and advocates focus on getting great principals into all schools.

Edited by Betheny Gross and Ashley Jochim, this fifth volume of the SEA of the Future explores how state education agencies can bolster their ability to use research and data to drive key spending, policy, and program...

A groundbreaking new report that measures the health of school systems through a citywide lens.

CRPE convened a panel of experts to recommend a more comprehensive approach to capturing discipline data and evaluating and comparing school discipline practices.

Paul Hill and Tricia Maas explore the charter high school "backfill" issue, using interviews with charter sector leaders to understand competing perspectives and practices that support transfer students.

This report explores the challenges of leveraging co-location as a tool for school improvement.

This paper was written by Ashley Jochim for the American Education Institute's conference, The State of Entrepreneurship in K–12 Education, held June 24, 2015.

This report examines the implementation and early results of common enrollment systems in Denver and New Orleans.

This paper argues that district-wide systems changes are necessary to encourage and free up schools to innovate, in order to implement personalized learning at scale and meet the challenges of Common Core.

In this paper, two different "camps" on school reform find common ground on how to improve educational accountability.

This guide educates the media and decision-makers about what questions to ask regarding charter school research, and provides them with information about the limits of any new research.

This report examines Spring Branch Independent School District's progress on implementing the portfolio strategy.

In their new book, Paul Hill and Ashley Jochim offer a brilliant, simple, and distinctly American vision for revamping governance of our public K-12 education system.

Published in coordination with A+ Denver, the report evaluates Denver's SchoolChoice enrollment system from 2012 to 2014.

This paper looks at new efforts to ensure special education functions effectively in New Orleans' full-choice public education landscape.

This report summarizes CRPE's past two years of research and findings of special education in charter schools.

Michael DeArmond explains how city leaders can make school choice work for all families, in this essay prepared for the PIE Network 2014 Policy Summit.

This meeting summary outlines common principles to guide the redesign of next-gen accountability systems.

This working paper provides a systematic analysis of the field’s most rigorous studies on charter school achievement.

This report examines the experience of parents in cities with multiple public school options to answer the question, how can civic leaders create a choice system that works for all families?

In this compilation of essays, leading researchers and reformers share their views on how CRPE has impacted education reform over the last 20 years.

This report examines federal, state, and district barriers that principals say hinder their ability to make innovative school improvements.

This fiscal analysis finds that early difficulties forecasting enrollment and revenue can undermine implementation of personalized-learning models that blend computer-based and teacher-led instruction.

This issue brief explains how three cities—Denver, New Orleans, and Washington, D.C.—are addressing the issues involved with governing cross-sector enrollment systems.

This “Spotlight” brief outlines the elements of a successful common enrollment system, and the experiences and outcomes of cities currently using these systems.

This study explores the primary obstacles that inhibit state education agencies from better supporting school and district improvement.

This "Spotlight" brief describes successful collaborative initiatives in district-charter Compact cities, and highlights the advantages that portfolio district superintendents bring to collaboration.

This study uses NYC data to analyze the factors driving the gap in special education enrollment between charter and traditional public schools.

This brief explains how portfolio districts define and implement autonomies for schools.

This analysis of Hartford Public Schools seeks to show whether opportunities to attend quality schools and student outcomes have improved as the district implemented the portfolio strategy.

This edited volume explores how state education agencies (SEAs) can leverage performance management tools to provide strong support for school improvement.

This paper was prepared for the American Enterprise Institute's "Common Core Meets the Reform Agenda" Conference.

This analysis finds that over 70% of Wisconsin's school leaders will still be on the job in five years, with rural districts most affected by upcoming retirements.

This brief explains the need for student-based allocation to enable student choice and portable funding across schools within districts.

This new book from Paul Hill and colleagues explains the underlying idea of the portfolio strategy.

Using wage and staffing data from states, this paper projects the financial and staffing implications of one innovative school model (the Rocketship lab rotation) to highlight potential impacts on the schooling workforce and...

Consideration of whether smaller classes are preferable to larger ones requires some recognition of the opportunity costs involved. This brief provides a state-by-state context by computing the dollars at stake in marginally...

This report identifies three fiscal requirements of federal education programs that stand in the way of promoting innovation in education. The authors recommend modifications that would break down barriers to innovation as...

This report examines the distribution of students with special needs in New York State charter and district-run schools. The analysis shows that different levels of comparison yield different results. The authors recommend...

This report examines how charter schools would fit into Washington state's public education landscape.

This brief recaps the themes of the seventh Portfolio School District Network that was held in Seattle, WA, July 2012. It also outlines some of the supports that CRPE is providing to help districts keep moving forward.

This Rapid Response brief examines the real numbers on the Chicago teachers contract costs.

This report offers a set of powerful new tools to help state policymakers diagnose their principal workforce needs and develop comprehensive strategies to address them.

This report evaluates lessons from U.S. charter school legislation and implementations to inform South Africa and other countries about how to achieve the best possible results with charter school policies.

In this working paper, Eric Nadelstern discusses New York City's efforts to change the central office and create a system of support organizations to oversee networks of autonomous schools.

This case study of the implementation of Baltimore City Public Schools' portfolio strategy explores how the district's reform work aligns with CRPE’s definition of the portfolio strategy and how it compares to the approaches...

In 2009, the federal government committed over $3 billion to help states and districts turn around their worst-performing schools. This report looks at the results of a field study of the first-year implementation of those...

This is the final report from The National Study of CMO Effectiveness, a four-year study designed to assess the impact of CMOs on student achievement and identify CMO structures and practices that are most effective in raising...

The 6th annual edition of Hopes, Fears, & Reality provides a clear roadmap for school districts and charter schools interested in working together to improve education options. The report explains the risks and...

In this Education Week commentary, author Paul Hill suggests how to transform our education funding system in order to promote digital learning and technological innovation.

This paper illustrates the flaws in the existing structure for making resource allocation decisions in public education.

This report infers the causal impact of attending a charter school on student performance and finds that whether charters outperform traditional public schools depends on the location, grade, and subject.

As states look at building their own recovery school districts, this essay outlines key lessons from Louisiana’s leaders.

This essay was written for the PIE Network 5th Annual Policy Summit, September 2011. The authors argue that states can maximize their support for turnaround work by pushing for bold, workable plans, providing technical...

CRPE Senior Research Analyst Betheny Gross presented this overview of the latest evidence on choice policies including public school choice, vouchers, and charter schools at the National Conference of State Legislatures...

Drawing from the experiences of high-performing charter school networks, this white paper examines why districts struggle to close the achievement gap, what portfolio district leaders can find when they look outside the...

This working paper reports on a meeting in which representatives from several states gathered for a candid discussion of the lessons learned from Louisiana's dramatic school turnaround efforts.

Over the past two decades, some district leaders have asked urban universities to develop emergency strategies to rescue low-performing schools. How do universities and districts develop effective relationships that align with...

This brief examines why policies known as “last in, first out” may disproportionately affect schools receiving federal School Improvement Grants.

Washington State is set to spend nearly $100 million in the next two years on pay bonuses for teachers who receive national board certification. This brief explores whether this investment makes a difference in improving the...

This final report from the four-year Inside Charter Schools initiative examines how charter schools differentiate themselves from traditional public schools to attract students and families and how they recruit and...

In this one-page brief, Robin Lake summarizes key lessons for creating high-quality charter schools.

In this working paper the authors use student data from Ohio to compare the effectiveness of various types of charter school authorizers.

A look at New York City and Washington, D.C., this paper shows how portfolio—and perhaps traditional—districts can transform talent management from a bureaucratic staffing system into a core leadership function.

This report, part of a four-year study of charter school teachers and leaders, finds that many charter schools are unprepared when it comes to leadership turnover.

In this commentary from The News Tribune, author Christine Campbell argues that Washington State's need for bold reform is just as urgent as the cities featured in the film "Waiting for Superman."

"Waiting for 'Superman'" may leave Washington viewers wondering, “How does our state stack up?” This guide presents facts about the state of education in Washington and ideas for what parents and communities can do to get...

Improvements in productivity in other sectors may hold important lessons for understanding how the education system can become more efficient.

This interim report from the National Study of CMO Effectiveness explores how CMOs vary according to their theories of action, structural organization, and growth strategies and delves into the ongoing organizational and...

This book offers a pioneering look at the role of charter schools in meeting the needs of special education students.

This paper finds that shifting from a seniority-based hiring system to a “mutual consent” hiring system leads to a short-term increase in turnover and inexperienced teachers, but after a few years the level of inexperienced...

This article addresses the claim that charter schools worsen segregation by serving too high a proportion of minority students.

In this commentary from the Seattle Times, Christine Campbell argues that Washington will need to make bold education reforms to compete in the second round of Race to the Top.

This brief explores trends in K–12 education jobs—those funded through the stimulus and by other means—to answer the question of what role ARRA played in overall education employment.

This book examines the real-world factors that can complicate, delay, and in some instances interfere with the positive cause-and-effect relationships identified by the theories behind school choice. Hill explains why schools...

This analysis explores how state education spending has changed or will change given the application of the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund.

Calculating the per unit costs of what schools or districts deliver can provide the best insight into the implications of all that spending. This paper was published in the edited volume, "Stretching the School Dollar: How...

This white paper explores the alternative path to graduation that charter high schools make possible.

As portfolio districts take on duties they were not designed for, this report offers guidance on how to manage some of the most complicated tasks.

This analysis argues that in the current fiscal climate, districts should rethink automatically paying teachers for master's degrees, and consider how money could instead be channeled into compensation in ways that lead to...

This analysis examines ways in which per-pupil spending in high schools varies by subject and course level, and demonstrates how such fiscal metrics can reveal the financial implications of the inner workings of individual...

This brief presents rank order projections of changes in state K-12 education spending amidst state revenue gaps and the addition of ARRA funds.

This paper explores the relative importance of specific policy components on post-secondary outcomes, and how such policies impact students with different aspirations or economic and ethnic backgrounds.

This paper adds to the nascent literature on teacher pensions by exploring two questions: How well do teachers understand their current pension plans? And, what do they think about alternative plan structures?

This brief makes early projections of of what state budget cuts might mean for education spending and job losses.

In this commentary, the authors argue that the economic crisis could ultimately strengthen public education if leaders make tough resource decisions that can produce greater efficiencies.

Are teachers unions and collective bargaining agreements barriers to high school reform and redesign efforts in Washington, California, and Ohio? The report offers an overview of real and perceived barriers to reform, along...

This year's edition explores how charter school achievement varies across the sector, how the educational strategies used by charters differ from those used in traditional public schools, how charters are providing unique...

This report is the conclusion of an extensive six-year national study funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The authors criticize school finance systems for being outmoded and not linked to student results and...

This report summarizes the work of of the National Working Group on Funding Student Learning, a group of eleven top school finance scholars. The report both describes the problems with state school finance systems and offers...

In this report CRPE researchers explore the complex job of charter school directors, who may have little experience with facilities, finances, hiring, or strategic planning; some of the most serious issues for charter schools...

This paper explores the value teachers place on financial incentives and how much of a salary incentive is needed to attract new teachers to high-needs schools.

This paper offers empirical evidence on the size of incentives that might be needed to make teaching a relatively more attractive occupation for people with technical skills or high academic aptitude.

This report provides a framework for policymakers and practitioners to identify the key cost components involved in expanding the school day.

This report analyzes specialized charter leadership programs and finds that they show promise in their responsiveness, course relevance, and methods of instruction.

This report demonstrates in greater detail than ever before how America’s methods of school finance work against a single-minded focus on student learning.

This paper describes how high-quality authorizers have changed their application procedures and standards and examines the effect these changes have had on the quality and quantity of new charter school applicants.

This paper outlines competing principles of charter school oversight and examines how those principles affect an authorizer’s approach to finding and selecting new schools, conducting day-to-day oversight of performance, and...

This working paper summarizes common problems faced by new and established charter schools and highlights strategies to diagnose and, when appropriate, intervene in struggling schools.

This working paper presents results from a qualitative field study of school-based hiring—one of the more foundational ideas for reforming centralized and bureaucratic human resource management (HRM) systems.

This paper identifies tactics districts can use to influence the factors that shape the supply and quality of providers of autonomous schools in thin markets.

This paper finds that informal partnerships between authorizers and private organizations have the potential to improve the quality and quantity of new schools.

The paper looks at the evolution of California’s largely state-controlled funding system and makes suggestions for policymakers to improve their education finance system.

This paper summarizes the research evidence on charter school innovation to date and suggests ways to more productively pursue future research and development in the charter sector.

This report addresses choices made at the intersection of two very important trends in education: special education and charter schools.

New accountability systems require that states and districts accomplish something never accomplished before—ensuring that all students meet state standards. This report explores how these expectations have altered resource...

This paper reviews other cities' experiences with mayoral intervention and provides an evidence base for use in case takeover proposals surface again in Seattle.

This Interim Report explains the study questions, research strategies, and early findings of the School Finance Redesign Project.

Like previous editions of Hopes, Fears, & Reality, the 2007 edition explores some of the most challenging issues facing the charter school movement with a focus on the pressing concerns, tensions, and opportunities...

This study takes an in-depth look at funding differences between and within Texas school districts and finds that funding decisions within districts currently have a greater impact on a school’s resources than inequalities in...

This commentary by Paul Hill first appeared in Education Week, September 4, 2007. Hill lays out the reasons that school choice has been more challenging than originally envisioned and suggests which problems need to be...

This paper describes research designed to shed light on how teachers feel about different pay and incentive reforms.

This report analyzes why replicating successful charter schools has been tougher and more costly than expected for both for-profit and nonprofit charter management organizations (EMOs and CMOs).

This policy analysis tool, created by by Education Resource Strategies, helps districts deliberate about how to use funds effectively.

This report reviews the available data to describe the current corps of charter school leaders: how they are prepared, how they experience their work, and the institutional strategies in place to sustain and transition...

This brief begins with a look at the main problems faced by organizations attempting to replicate charter schools at scale, followed by a summary of lessons from the for-profit and nonprofit sectors about the process of...

When school boards enter contracts with teachers unions, they determine the use of nearly half of all the funds available to public education. In this paper Julia Koppich looks at an important source of resource allocation...

This report analyzes the incentives under which public school teachers and leaders work. It concludes that there are few rewards for producing high levels of student achievement and many rewards for work that does not promote...

Analyzing data from the 2003-04 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS), this working paper finds that charter schools consistently reported significantly fewer issues with threats to persons or property and fewer behavioral...

This report demonstrates that there are many promising alternative ways to allocate and use funds under Title I, the federal government's largest K-12 funding program.

New accountability systems require that states and districts accomplish something never accomplished before—ensuring that all students meet state standards. This report explores how these expectations have altered resource...

How might money be used in a more productive system? This working paper imagines a public educational system in which it is possible to link benefits received with costs borne.

This working paper paper suggests how a performance-driven system would allocate funds, monitor performance, search for more productive models of instruction, and replace less effective schools and programs.

This paper proposes the creation and use of school spending profiles as a way to communicate more complete and comparable school spending information.

This is the introductory report from the "Inside Charter Schools" initiative, a multi-year, federally funded study of the people and work of charter schools.

This op ed discusses why it is important to understand how much money is spent on different school-district policies, including those dictated by common teacher-contract provisions.

This article shows how a regulated market in education would work and how one could be created.

Plaintiffs in adequacy lawsuits presume that school districts know how to use additional funds effectively. This chapter, from Courting Failure: How School Finance Lawsuits Exploit Judges' Good Intentions and Harm our Children...

As attention shifts to how districts allocate resources to schools, student weighted allocation has emerged as an alternative to traditional staff-based allocation policies. This article examines how the shift to student-...

This report reveals how two very different school districts, Milwaukee and Dayton, are affected by and responding to the pressures of school choice.

This report summarizes a meeting of leaders from charter management organizations, school districts, and foundations to address the question of charter expansion and provides concrete recommendations for those interested in...

This paper investigates the effects of implementing CSR models on student achievement.

This white paper from the Charter School Achievement Consensus Panel examines the existing research on student achievement in charter schools and details how future research could be improved.

This working paper evaluates the effect of implementing one of three prominent Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) models on student achievement and discipline outcomes, using a matched sample of Florida model and non-model...

This report presents the results of an analysis of legal, regulatory, and policy barriers to high school redesign in California.

Too many charter school authorizers aren't fulfilling their responsibilities in providing adequate oversight for charter schools. This white paper examines the causes and consequences of poor authorizing and proposes how the...

This report examines licensure content for principals to address whether the licenses that states require encompass the knowledge and skills principals need and how decisionmakers might rethink licenses.

This article from Education Week argues that claims about the effectiveness of charter schools compared to traditional public schools that are drawn from NAEP data are generally overstated due to limitations of the dataset....

This Ed Week commentary calls for a coherent strategy for rebuilding public education in New Orleans post-Katrina.

In this article, originally published in the Washington Post, CRPE's Paul Hill and Marguerite Roza argue that district accounting practices and the of tendency of experienced teachers to choose wealthier schools result in...

This paper argues that decentralizing decisionmaking authority to schools is a reform worthy of a new look, despite the perceived failure of earlier school-based management (SBM) efforts to improve student performance.

This working paper presents a principal-agent model in the context of public schools to help explain the factors that affect district decisions about merit pay.

This paper, prepared for The Aspen Institute Congressional Program, February, 2005 explores the causes of school level spending variations.

This report provides a practical discussion of what is required to develop a school district management guide, along with an actual guide built on evidence-based indicators.

Edited by James Harvey and Paul T. Hill, this book identifies roles for foundations and civic groups in defining strategies for big-city school reform, and ensuring that promised changes are implemented. This is the third and...

Under current budgeting practices it is difficult to assess how resources are distributed between schools and whether every school is afforded the same opportunities to meet its educational goals. This paper addresses one key...

This report summarizes a two-day seminar which addressed the question, "How Can Communities Do School Choice Right?" convened at the Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C., in August 2004.

This report explores legal issues affecting the establishment and operation of small high schools in Washington State.

In this commentary for The Hoover Institution, Paul Hill offers some ideas for how to attract quality people to teaching.

The National Working Commission on Choice in K-12 Education, chaired by CRPE's Paul Hill, was established to explore how choice works and to examine how communities interested in the potential benefits of new school options...

This paper argues that choice programs should be compared against the real performance of the current public education system and attempts to establish an appropriate baseline against which choice programs can be assessed.

A number of states and localities are now considering creating voucher programs. This paper focuses on the administrative costs of these programs.

This article, published in Education Policy Analysis Archives, attempts to estimate the size and nature of the celebrated teacher shortage of the late 1990s by using data from the U.S. Department of Education's 1999-00 School...

This Education Next article addresses how problems within the public education system particularly affect urban children.

This report finds that although some districts and areas are experiencing difficulties finding good school principals, there are far more candidates interested in assuming school leadership roles than there are principal...

This Koret Task Force book, published by Hoover Institution Press, reviews the furious national debate over school choice, examining the benefits of choice for children, families, and schools-and showing how properly designed...

Prepared for the Washington State Academic Achievement and Accountability Commission in 2002, this report attempts to take a fresh look at the data from the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) in order to provide...

This paper presents the first results of a series of studies on within-district spending patterns. It provides an overview of some early analysis of variations in spending among schools within three districts.

This paper looks at five trends in education and what they imply about the kinds of buildings and spaces districts will need for tomorrow's schools.

This report, prepared for the Annie E. Casey Foundation, describes why community schools are important, addresses the initial questions and concerns in creating community schools, explains promising approaches, and concludes...

This report marks the third year of CRPE's exploration into the way fast-improving schools in Washington State work, with a focus on high schools. The other reports in the series are: Making Standards Work (1999) and Making...

This article explores the concept of charter districts—school districts composed entirely of charter and contract schools.

This report examines the first-year finances of Massachusetts charter schools.

This essay written for the Hoover Institution looks at new trends in education initiatives undertaken by private corporations and individuals.

An increasingly pressing issue impacting the quality of educational services in the United States is the country's growing need for new public schools equipped to meet the unique demands of this generation's students and...

More than 1.2 million students are now being taught at home, more students than are enrolled in the entire New York City public school system. This report discusses the pros and cons of learning at home and the effects home...

How can we move toward a public education system that can supply good schools for city children? This chapter presents two discussions: first, an analysis of the practices and attitudes that now prevent big cities from...

This book identifies the essential elements of reform strategies that can transform school performance in big cities beset by poverty, social instability, racial isolation, and labor unrest. It also suggests ways that local...

A heated debate is raging over our nation’s public schools and how they should be reformed, with proposals ranging from imposing national standards to replacing public education altogether with a voucher system for private...

What, if anything can now be said about whether decentralization of public school systems is possible and, if so, under what conditions is it likely to lead to changes in instruction and improvements in student outcomes? This...

This Report describes the mission, functions, capabilities and plans of a potential nonprofit Technical Assistance Activity (TAA) for charter school applicants under House Bill 1834, the Charter School Act previously under...

In September of 1995, the Program on Reinventing Public Education invited twelve experts to Seattle for a workshop about the business side of charter school start-up. This report summarizes the strategies for charter school...

In this article, Paul Hill argues that there is ample evidence that universal public school choice would strongly benefit all children, including the disadvantaged, by promoting candid and demanding relationships among...

This article provides details about the charter school concept: its relationship to other well-known proposals for school reform, the essential characteristics of a charter school, and the approaches taken by states to...