We are delighted to send you this inaugural issue of the School Reform Newsblast, a new information service launched by Reinventing America’s Schools. It aggregates important news about developments in school innovation and reform across the country. The Newsblast is going to a select audience of school reform leaders and activists in government, business, and the civic sector, and we hope you find it useful.
Reinventing America’s Schools is a project of the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), a longtime advocate for improving and modernizing the nation’s elementary and secondary public schools. The project’s director is David Osborne, the co-author of Reinventing Government, a best seller that had a profound impact on President Bill Clinton’s efforts to make government less bureaucratic and more performance-oriented. David is working on a new book that will show how cities across America are developing a new model for organizing and governing public education.
In addition to keeping you abreast of developments on the K-12 reform front, the Newsblast from time to time will update you on the project’s work, and solicit your comments and ideas. To highlight developments in your community, please email us at ReinventingEd@www.progressivepolicy.org. Ultimately, we hope to forge a nationwide network of influential people like yourself and encourage you to weigh in with political leaders when critical decisions about K-12 reform are made.
With the 25th anniversary of the first charter school bill in June, conversations about the 21st century model of school governance were big in the press. Hot button issues included the false binary of school choice and democratic control, the future of charter schools, school accountability, and much more. In articles written in the past month, Chester E. Finn, Jr., Bruno V. Manno, Brandon Wright, and Matt Barnum discussed the successes of charter schools and THE importance of accountability. In other pieces, Andy Smarick, Peter Cunningham, Danielle Dreilinger, and Chris Gabrieli explored the debate over the best model of school governance. With the 25th anniversary of charters and the presidential conventions coinciding this past month, we were provided important material to consider as we promote 21st century school governance across the nation.