Education wasn’t explicitly on the national ballot in 2020, but education is always on the ballot, even when you don’t see it. Now that the election is behind us, education reformers can focus again on states and communities, where most of the important decisions about K–12 education get made.
Before the election, too many jurisdictions were trapped in a stalemate between reformers pushing for more parent choice and choices, such as charter schools, and teachers unions holding fast for the status quo but asking for more money. Fortunately, about twenty urban districts around the country are exploring a more promising “third way”: the creation of autonomous, accountable district schools. Particularly in urban America, it is imperative that we replace centralized, standardized, industrial-era systems with more decentralized, student-centric schools designed for today’s world.
Such schools are known by a variety of names: innovation schools, partnership schools, renaissance schools, and pilot schools. The most effective models are nonprofit schools governed by independent boards of directors separate from the local school board. In some districts, such as Denver and Springfield, Massachusetts, innovation schools are organized into “zones” with a single board of directors for a group of schools within each zone.
Zone or innovation school boards negotiate schools’ performance contracts with the district, usually for five-year terms. Those contracts include clear metrics for success that the schools must meet for the agreement to renew. This creates an urgency to improve academic growth because the consequences for failure are real, including replacement of the team that runs the school.
Read the full piece here.
