Emily Langhorne

The Albert Shanker Institute recently released a report that analyzed the negative effects of private schools on integrated public education in Washington, D.C. While only 15 percent of students in the nation’s capital attend private schools, 57 percent of white students do. Private schools essentially create the segregation equivalent of white flight to the suburbs, […]

When I was a teacher, I didn’t have a “cute” classroom. My colleague upstairs designed a reading space for students, complete with comfortable seats, a special carpet, and twinkle lights. I was lucky if my posters stayed on the wall (which, often they didn’t because of the school’s erratic temperature changes). Regardless, most students loved […]

Could charter schools and school choice be the best hope for integrating our public schools by race and income? Charter schools are public schools operated by independent organizations, usually nonprofits. They are freed from many of the rules that constrain district-operated schools. In exchange for increased autonomy, they are normally held accountable for their performance […]

“The building used to be a tomato factory. This space was where the trucks would pull up to unload the produce,” Ralph Bland said as he gestured around the large, airy room that is now the cafetorium — the combined cafeteria-auditorium — of Detroit Edison Public Academy School, a PK-12 public charter school in Detroit, […]

Diana Smith, principal of Washington Latin Public Charter School in Washington, D.C., received a lot of press this summer when her No-Tech Tuesday Challengecaught the interest of the media, educators, and parents. At the end of the last school year, Smith challenged the 160 eighth and ninth grade students at WLPCS to stay off of […]

In a recent media release, Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) announced they are looking for “quality partners” to launch innovation network schools for the 2018-2019 school year. IPS explains their innovation school network as a group of “public schools with expanded autonomy to make academic and operational decisions that will maximize student achievement. Innovation schools also […]

Since President Obama’s Race to the Top competition made teacher evaluation systems based in part on academic growth a central requirement of winning, most states have mandated them. Making teachers accountable for student success is a laudable goal, but district-wide approaches don’t usually work. Most teachers regard evaluations as part of a bureaucratic checklist that […]

In a recent article, Derrell Bradford mentioned New Jersey and the state’s practice of having off-duty police officers follow students home to make sure the students are attending school in their assigned district. “When we’ve criminalized the pursuit of a good school, we must ask whether the mission and intent we ascribe to public education […]

When I was a kid, my parents bought a house in a middle class neighborhood of an economically diverse city. My brother, who is a year older than me, embarked upon his schooling in our local public elementary school – an adventure that lasted one year. His teacher struggled to control the class, fights broke […]

Last week, the National Education Association (NEA) voted to adopt a new policy statement[1] on public charter schools. Ignoring mounting evidence that the best charter systems are finally giving urban children a shot at a decent education, the NEA calls for a moratorium on the creation and expansion of public charter schools. The NEA says […]