Joe Siedlecki

Starting next year, more than 1,300 additional students in DC will have access to Tier 1 public schools. The method of ranking that enabled this is not rocket science. The authorizing board determines if the school is performing academically and if parents want to send their children there. If the answer is yes to both questions, then the board will likely vote to increase enrollment.

I hear the argument that there’s a problem with tying funding to students all the time, and all I can think is, “How odd.” Why? Because the implicit counter-argument is that adults working in the school district are the ones who should be funded.

With district schools around the country facing closure, one has to wonder: Were the school leaders in charge ever given the freedom to lead their schools to success? Or are the schools and their principals simply scapegoats for poorly designed strategies pushed down from the district central office?

As expected, the new report on quality in the charter school sector from Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) hit the education reform space with a splash. But most commenters missed one key finding: Schools that contract with independent school support organizations perform better than CMOs, independent charter schools and traditional public schools.

In light of the recent findings out of Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO,) commitment to a districtwide plan of active management of school quality is crystal clear.

The performance of district and charter schools fall on a bell curve. We need to replicate the schools in the far right tail, regardless of school type. Andy Smarick argues that it is the process of chartering, not charter schools themselves, that can revolutionize urban public education.

ANet began work in seven Boston charter schools in 2005. Five years from now, the company’s goal is to embed data-driven instruction into at least 500 schools nationwide, and to inspire an additional 1000 schools to adopt similar practices.

The real innovation of the charter movement is the chartering process. A well run chartering process is a continuous improvement strategy that evaluates school performance, closes low performing schools, and replaces them with high performing or high potential alternatives.

Time and again, piecemeal education reforms have been grafted on to public school systems that are chronically resistant to change. Some reforms have gained limited traction, but all have failed to spark the systemic change needed to ensure all families have access to the high quality schools they deserve. The portfolio strategy seeks to help districts break out of the cycle of failure by significantly altering district behaviors.

In the age of big data, when advances in our ability to slice and dice data promise a revolution in measurement comparable to advances that accompanied the invention of microscope, education data myths hurt teachers and students more than any other single constituency.