Reinventing America’s Schools
America needs a 21st century model of public education geared to the knowledge economy. Charter schools are showing the way, because they provide autonomy for schools, accountability for results, and parental choice among schools tailored to the diverse learning styles of children. David Osborne’s book, Reinventing America’s Schools, explores the new paradigm of public education that is emerging to fit the realities of the 21st century.
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Our Work
Washington Monthly: How New Orleans Made Charter Schools Work
08.31.2015
Last year 2.9 million children attended 6,700 charter schools in America—public schools independent of districts and free of many bureaucratic constraints. Since charters were invented in Minnesota twenty-four years ago, they have become the subject of intense battles between supporters and detractors. Supporters point out that charters receive 28 percent less money per child, on…
Osborne for US News: Motor City Schools Makeover
05.07.2015
Public education in Detroit, where 57 percent of children live below the poverty line, is a mess. Detroit Public Schools, which ranked last out of 21 large districts on the 2013 National Assessment of Education Progress tests, is almost bankrupt, shrinking so fast it has about a third of the students it had a decade…
U.S. News & World Report: Why Charter Schools Work — Or Don’t
03.17.2015
Nothing frosts me more than Diane Ravitch and her friends’ charge that charter schools amount to “corporate reform.” This is such nonsense. The charter movement was launched in the 1990s by public activists and state legislators – most of them Democrats – while business conservatives were busy pushing standards or vouchers. The critics also love to repeat…
Washington Post: To improve schools, let teachers run them
01.19.2015
Walk through a typical public school, and you see students, sitting in rows of identical desks, listening to teachers talk. Unless the teacher is particularly inspiring, half of the students are zoning out. This isn’t just a problem for teachers, half of whom leave the profession within their first five years. It’s also a problem…
PPI Unveils New Study, Rome Conference on The Data-Driven Economy”
10.04.2012
NEWS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Steven Chlapecka – schlapecka@ppionline.org, T: 202.525.3931 WASHINGTON—Government statistics don’t show it, but the production and consumption of data is the leading edge of economic growth in the United States, says a new report released today by the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI). The report, Beyond Goods and Services: The (Unmeasured)…
Improving Charter School Accountability: The Challenge of Closing Failing Schools
06.26.2012
Today some 5,600 charter schools are in operation, with more than two million students. Some critics persist in a fruitless argument that these schools have failed, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary. But regardless of your opinion about them, charter schools are here to stay. Those concerned about public education should quit debating…