Education Next – Michael DeArmond, Robin J. Lake and Ashley Jochim
“In a recent report, we looked at how public education is delivering on the promise of educational opportunity in 50 mid- to large-sized cities in the United States. The project grew out of a practical problem we encountered when studying big city school systems: in many cities, the public school “system” is actually a collection of systems: school districts (often more than one), charter schools, and even state agencies. When city enrollments are spread across multiple agencies, city leaders can struggle to see the health of schools citywide. That makes identifying problems and searching for solutions that affect all families and students harder than it should be. So, our project looked at how well all of the schools in a city—whether they are district- or charter-governed—are serving their city’s children and how a city’s schools compare to those in other cities. Importantly, we also wanted to expand the conversation about school quality to include a range of indicators that go beyond test-scores and proficiency rates.”(more)