Long ago, I concluded that the traditional urban school district structure was incapable of running a dynamic, self-improving system of high-performing schools. Though many conservatives and education reformers point to unions as the primary cause of dysfunction in big city public education, I don't. I blame the district structure.
It was created through a series of historical peculiarities, it hasn't come close to accomplishing its primary raison d'etre for 50 years, and, thanks to chartering, it has been shown to be expendable--that is, public education can and will go on without the traditional district system.
For these reasons and more my primary interest is in figuring out what the urban school system of the future looks like. I've written glowingly about NYC's and NO's work to fundamentally alter the district structure. Thanks to Joel Klein (and his very able team), Mike Bloomberg, Paul Pastorek, Paul Vallas, and others those cities have done remarkably good and important work that will serve as the model for years to come.
But I recently came across some information from Denver that has me intrigued and excited. The leaders there are also thinking creatively about how to manage a portfolio of schools in order to drive quality and provide choice while carefully addressing technical issues related to grade levels and geography.
You ought to check out this report, produced by??NACSA with support from the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, which identifies which Denver schools are sufficiently high performing, which are not, and where these are located. It discusses the need to create high-quality seats in discrete locations and how the city might get there. Best of all, there's a level of what I call "sector agnosticism" ingrained in the report. It doesn't matter if it is a charter, magnet, or traditional public schools--all are evaluated based on quality. (Someday, hopefully soon, such studies will include private schools as well.)
The icing on the cake is this document, an RFP for new schools sent out by the??Denver Public Schools??Office of School Reform and??Innovation. If you scan the maps in each document, you'll see the connection between the first report's areas of need and the RFP's focus locations.
Seriously exciting stuff.
(Picture by dherrera_96 from Flickr)
--Andy Smarick