Catalyst Notebook :: Pitfalls with school choice in Chicago, other districts:
"A new report by The Center on Reinventing Public Education strikes an optimistic note on the emergence of “portfolio schools”—that is, charter and charter-like schools—in Chicago, New Orleans, New York and Washington DC. But the report also offers a long list of potential pitfalls—from the evaporation of philanthropic dollars to shifting political terrain—that threatens any well-oiled network of autonomous school options.
The center is a research collective at the University of Washington that generally takes a constructively critical view of school choice and district decentralization efforts. In this report, the researchers offer little in the way of evaluation of each city’s portfolio initiatives, but they do serve up a good reference tool for understanding the differences in scale and scope of major reform efforts in the country’s hotspots for urban educational change."
"A new report by The Center on Reinventing Public Education strikes an optimistic note on the emergence of “portfolio schools”—that is, charter and charter-like schools—in Chicago, New Orleans, New York and Washington DC. But the report also offers a long list of potential pitfalls—from the evaporation of philanthropic dollars to shifting political terrain—that threatens any well-oiled network of autonomous school options.
The center is a research collective at the University of Washington that generally takes a constructively critical view of school choice and district decentralization efforts. In this report, the researchers offer little in the way of evaluation of each city’s portfolio initiatives, but they do serve up a good reference tool for understanding the differences in scale and scope of major reform efforts in the country’s hotspots for urban educational change."
