Our new report, Stepping Up: How Are American Cities Delivering on the Promise of Public School Choice?, finds a variety of public school choice available in cities—district-run magnet, innovation, and open-enrollment schools; charter schools overseen by multiple authorizers; and district-charter partnership schools. In some cities, private schools accept publicly subsidized vouchers. In others, students can choose from schools across multiple districts within a municipal boundary.
The Lens
Bringing vision and clarity to education policy
School choice is probably the most controversial topic in public education today. The Trump administration’s support for private school vouchers has set off a rhetorical war in Washington that is increasingly playing out in states. Meanwhile, public school choices (magnet schools, innovation schools, charter schools, and the like), which have historically enjoyed strong bipartisan support, are increasingly implicated in partisan fights.
Across the country, in Atlanta, Camden, Indianapolis and at least ten other cities, more schools are operating under a kind of partnership school model: a “third way” governance strategy that breaks through district-charter divides. Some education leaders, like Fordham Institute president Mike Petrilli, think this approach should be avoided at all costs.
Our report, Better Together: Ensuring Quality District Schools in Times of Charter Growth and Declining Enrollment, takes an honest look at an urgent problem that has long divided education leaders. To help inform and advance a thoughtful discussion, we invited a number of experts to share their views on this complex and politically charged issue.
Our report, Better Together: Ensuring Quality District Schools in Times of Charter Growth and Declining Enrollment, takes an honest look at an urgent problem that has long divided education leaders. To help inform and advance a thoughtful discussion, we invited a number of experts to share their views on this complex and politically charged issue.
Our report, Better Together: Ensuring Quality District Schools in Times of Charter Growth and Declining Enrollment, takes an honest look at an urgent problem that has long divided education leaders. To help inform and advance a thoughtful discussion, we invited a number of experts to share their views on this complex and politically charged issue.
In 1997, Paul Hill published his book Reinventing Public Education: How Contracting Can Transform America’s Schools (the center where I work at the University of Washington was founded on the ideas presented). With his co-authors, Lawrence Pierce and James Guthrie, Hill proposed that all schools in a city should be contracted out to school-based nonprofits as a means of improvement.