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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 my class as much as they loved my colleague’s. I think they actually developed an affectionate spot for the chaos of the room. Some generously told me that it mirrored the personality of my energetic teaching.

Despite outward appearances, both my colleague and I spent hundreds of our own dollars, as well a lot of our free time, to make our classes fun and welcoming places where students wanted to go to learn.

My colleague’s expenses were obvious. She created a place where children want to go to read. That’s money well spent.

My expenses weren’t so obvious. You couldn’t tell from looking around my classroom, but it was also money well spent. No amount of colorful paper or pretty lights would have helped me keep a tidy and cute classroom, but I too purchased things to keep my students engaged in learning. These were my hidden costs of teaching.

Continue reading here.

Continue reading here.

This summer, The 74 launched a special series of articles, profiles, and videos — as well as an exclusive microsite — based on the new book Reinventing America’s Schools: Creating a 21st Century Education System by the Progressive Policy Institute’s David Osborne. In it, Osborne spotlights some of the country’s most innovative cities in rethinking their school systems, and lays out a road map for improving the nation’s education system.

Continue reading at the 74. 

Both major Twin Cities public school districts are facing some tough realities right now: relatively new leadership faced with multimillion-dollar budget deficits and declining enrollment.

Many families within the districts’ boundaries are exercising school choice by open-enrolling their children in suburban districts or enrolling in charter schools. Since federal and state funding follows students, that means the Minneapolis and St. Paul Public School districts are feeling the financial strain of trying to maintain program and building expenses built for a larger student population.

As district leaders face some tough budgetary decisions in the coming months, local education reform groups are hoping to glean some insight from David Osborne, a nationally renowned education reform expert. In his new book, “Reinventing America’s Schools,” Osborne looks at how other large, urban districts that have had to make major changes turned to the charter school sector for inspiration and collaboration. He’ll be presenting his findings on Nov. 8 at the Amherst H. Wilder Foundation, from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. The event —  which is sponsored by Progressive Policy Institute, Education Evolving and Ed Allies — will include a reception and panel discussion with local education leaders.

Continue reading at MinnPost.

“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, Mich.

Bland is DEPSA’s superintendent. This campus he leads consists of one building for pre-K through eighth grade, a separate building for the high school, and a community garden.

It’s picture day. Elementary school students wearing uniforms file by. The kids wave to Bland or reach out to shake his hand.

“The pre-K to second graders wear red ties, the rest of the elementary school wears plaid, and the middle school wears black,” Bland explains. “It makes it easy to spot someone who isn’t in the right place.”

This type of thoughtful design permeates the entire school. The environment is deliberately crafted to encourage excellence through structure and rigor. It’s a warm place, but it’s also an environment designed to promote scholarship.

Continue reading here.

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 their screens, including televisions, all day every Tuesday during the summer — from June 13 to August 22, 2017. She promised to give each successful student $100 out of her own pocket.

Last week, when WLPCS opened for the new school year, Smith awarded $3,400 dollars to 34 of the 38 successful students.  (Four students declined the momentary reward, but all students gained something).

WLPCS is a Classics-based school with a clear mission and impressive reputation. A Tier 1 public charter school, the school uses a classical approach to education to help students distinguish between information and knowledge, to engage in public forums and socratic seminars, and to develop character, which WLPCS defines as the intersection of intellectual and moral development.

And, yes, each student must take Latin.

The success of the school comes from the hard work of many educators and involved parents, but no one can overlook the role that Smith — imbued with creativity and sense of purpose like her No Tech Tuesday Challenge — and her strong leadership plays in the school’s achievements.

Reinventing Schools’ Emily Langhorne recently spoke with Smith to discuss what makes WLPCS unique.

Read the interview here.

For almost two decades, education reform has been a source of conflict in the City of Brotherly Love. Much progress has been made, but too much energy is still devoted to fruitless district vs. charter debates. Those invested in such debates should take a look at the nation’s fastest-improving big cities, to see what can happen when conflict turns to collaboration.

The most rapid improvement over the last decade has come in New Orleans, where all but a handful of public schools have been converted to charter schools. Charters are public schools operated independently of the district, with freedom from many state and district rules but accountable for performance. If their children are not learning, they are supposed to be closed or replaced by a stronger operator.

Like Philadelphia, New Orleans has intense poverty: more than 80 percent of its public school students are low-income, and an equal percentage are African American. Yet on two key measures — graduation and college-going rates — New Orleans is the first high-poverty city to outperform its state.

Continue reading at the Philadelphia Inquirer.

If we were creating school systems from scratch, would we teach the same way we did 50 years ago, before the advent of personal computers? Would we send children to school for only eight-and-a-half months a year? Would we let schools survive if, year after year, a third of their students dropped out? Would we give teachers lifetime jobs after their third year?

Few of us would answer yes to such questions. And thankfully, public schools are changing, particularly in cities, where the needs are greatest. In Boston, for instance, 86 percent of students are minorities, 45 percent speak English as a second language, 20 percent have disabilities, and 70 percent are “economically disadvantaged.”

Cookie-cutter public schools can’t meet the needs of all these children, so we are innovating. Boston has 27 independent public charter schools, which use their freedom from most district and state rules to create new models that work for inner-city children.

Read more at the Boston Globe. 

David Osborne’s eyes light up when he talks about proof.

A nationally renowned public policy reformer who is most well known for writing the New York Times bestseller Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit is Transforming the Public Sector, and who now serves as a director of the forward-thinking Reinventing America’s Schools project at the Progressive Policy Institute, his animated tone and the sparkle in his eye suggest this particular proof is especially compelling.

And not just that, it’s living.

The proof he’s talking about is the significant, life-altering student achievement gains in big cities across the countries, including New Orleans, Denver, and Washington, D.C., which have embraced innovation full force in recent years in an effort to reinvent public education.

In his new book, Reinventing America’s Schools: Creating a 21st Century Education System, which is out September 5 along with an immersive multimedia experience curated in partnership with The 74, David vividly and specifically unpacks his theory of how U.S. education must be redesigned and sketches out a roadmap for cities and policymakers across America to adopt.

Read more at The 74.