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Public schooling has always been politically fraught, but current disagreements over issues related to race, sexuality, gender, and COVID-19 have reached a tipping point. According to this report from the Center on Reinventing Public Education and RAND, half of school system leaders say that these disagreements are disrupting schooling. Almost one in three district leaders also said their educators had received verbal or written threats about politically controversial topics since fall 2021. The findings come from surveys issued to 300 district and charter network leaders and interviews with superintendents. Their responses shed light on how political polarization has affected classrooms and how districts are responding. This report presents results from the fall 2022 survey of the American School District Panel (ASDP). The ASDP is a research partnership between RAND and CRPE. The panel also collaborates with several other education organizations, including the Council of the Great City Schools and Kitamba, to help improve outcomes for students throughout the United States.

Public education depends on expertise, work, money, and cooperation from multiple actors who have different interests and beliefs. These lead to competition and negotiation--in other words, politics. Failure to consider the politics of reform implementation and sustainability has doomed many promising K-12 school improvement initiatives. This paper analyzes more than 10 years of data on the implementation of the portfolio strategy to identify practical lessons on managing the politics of reform K-12 schools. Sustaining complex reforms like the portfolio strategy in a political environment requires leaders to: (1) Continually seek new supporters and renew the support of existing ones; (2) Expect and prepare for attacks and be alert to the unnecessary harms caused by their own actions, which bolster opposition; (3) Develop information strategies that document intermediate results, alert leaders to emergent problems and actively counter hostile narratives; (4) Be attentive to competing agendas and political liabilities within their own alliances; and (5) Prepare for leadership succession so that reforms have a chance to last long enough to make a difference. These observations challenge the conventional wisdom that sustainable reforms can be built only upon the percolating up of good ideas and initiatives from below. Reform leaders are essential to knitting together fragile coalitions who may be motivated by different goals and aligning new programs and initiatives--and politically reinforcing them over time--so their benefits can accumulate.

In this report, we complement our latest fall 2021 survey research from the American School District Panel with in-depth interviews of leaders on the ground in five school systems. Our goal with these interviews was to learn from system leaders about the academic needs of children as they return to school, how districts and charter schools are addressing those needs, and how the pandemic has affected schools. In Brief: (1) Education leaders across the country recognize that students are falling behind academically during the pandemic. Some districts are responding by emphasizing grade-level instruction and just-in-time supports rather than remediation. We interviewed top leaders in five school systems committed to this approach to learn more about its implementation; (2) We found that implementing acceleration required school systems to work with schools in new ways, but the strategy was complicated by a host of factors that made getting to instruction difficult: challenging student behaviors, staffing shortages, and the politicization of health, safety, and education. All these pressures have made leading school districts in 2021-22 like playing a game of Whack-A-Mole; and (3) School districts across the country are working hard to catch students up. But the Whack-A-Mole experience of leading during the pandemic raises questions about how these pressures will affect system leaders and leadership and whether, in the future, schools alone will be able to do enough to help all students get the help they need to recover. [For latest fall 2021 survey research from the American School District Panel, "Flux in the Educator Labor Market: Acute Staff Shortages and Projected Superintendent Departures. Selected Findings from the Fourth American School District Panel Survey. Data Note: Insights from the American Educator Panels. Research Report. RR-A956-9," see ED617372.]

This report is part of the American School District Panel (ASDP), a joint project between the Center on Reinventing Public Education, the RAND Corporation, Chiefs for Change, the Council of Great City Schools, and Kitamba, an education consulting firm. The ASDP's primary work is conducting a series of nationally-representative surveys of school districts. In this report, we complement our survey research with in-depth interviews of leaders on the ground in six school systems. Our goal was to learn how these system leaders approached and managed student learning during this difficult year and to gauge what it means for the future. We found: (1) When it came to instruction, the school systems favored "acceleration" over remediation; (2) School systems that had coherent instructional systems in place before the pandemic had an easier time delivering grade-level content; and (3) In some cases, improving instruction alone may not be enough. Two of the systems that faced deeper inequity and performance challenges before the pandemic were considering more fundamental shifts. What happens next will depend not only on district actions but on the nature and depth of students' academic and social needs, which will only become clear over time. [This report was produced by the American School District Panel (ASDP).]

While state policymakers are ultimately responsible for public schools statewide, their influence over local school districts has always been incomplete at best. State chiefs, the ostensible leaders of state education agencies, have limited powers and local school boards ultimately control most of the money and staff. As a result, when state leaders seek change in local school systems--whether to address financial mismanagement, corruption, or weak outcomes for students--they are often stymied by factors outside of their control. State takeovers of local school districts emerged as one strategy for overcoming these limitations on state authority. State takeovers suspend the powers of local boards and put in place a state-appointed superintendent. They aim to provide states a direct means for influencing the oversight and operation of local schools that does not hinge on gaining local leaders' cooperation. While state takeovers can be powerful, they are never permanent. To understand how state leaders have sought to sustain the hard-won improvements they gained through state takeovers, the authors interviewed a total of 10 current and former senior state officials who had overseen state takeovers or served as state-appointed superintendents. The interviews provide key lessons for states seeking to make improvements in districts and schools navigating a transition to local control, and emphasize the need to focus on sustainability well before state interventions begin. The authors summarize the main themes that emerged from their interviews in three sections: (1) State takeover is an important but limited tool; (2) States must build a local political base for takeover-initiated reforms; and (3) Exit strategies must set the conditions for long-term success.

The search continues for effective ways to educate disadvantaged children in big cities. Different cities have tried varied approaches--intensive work on the professional skills of teachers and administrators in Boston, standardized approaches to instruction in San Diego, and extensive use of vouchers and chartering in Washington, D.C., and Milwaukee. Though some school districts have shown flexibility, government and education sector leaders in some cities have become convinced that they must look outside the traditional boundaries of the district for new ideas, talent, and learning opportunities. While also trying to strengthen existing public schools, leaders in several cities, including New York, Chicago, New Orleans, and the District of Columbia, have adopted a "portfolio strategy". The essence of a portfolio strategy is the provision of public education by multiple means. Districts pursuing a portfolio strategy (portfolio districts) sponsor some schools operated by district employees in the traditional way, and others operated by independent organizations and run under new rules. District and community leaders in cities adopting a portfolio strategy (presently including New York, Chicago, New Orleans, Denver, Philadelphia, Hartford, and the District of Columbia, among others) must search for answers to questions that have seldom been asked in American public education: (1) How do they know whether a given school or initiative is likely to succeed or fail?; (2) When do they shore up a struggling school or abandon it?; (3) How do they avoid being stuck with no option other than to continue supporting a school in which children are not learning?; and (4) How do they make sure students are not hurt by closing a school or replacing one school provider with another? This paper is the first to offer answers to these questions. The authors hoped to mine the experiences of other organizations that have developed the capacity to oversee diverse portfolios of service providers, and to apply lessons learned to the challenges districts face as they adopt portfolio-based strategies. While acknowledging that public education is unique in many ways, the project tried to use the practices evident in other organizations as sources of ideas, and it applies them to education cautiously. Subsequent papers, based on a recently funded national study of districts pursuing portfolio strategies, will provide detailed examples of data systems, analytical methods, and decisionmaking processes. These papers will be available in late 2010. "Managing School Performance" Working Paper Series are appended. (Contains 4 tables and 24 footnotes.)

The Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) has launched a new initiative entitled "Doing School Choice Right." Funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates, Annie E. Casey, and Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundations, the initiative's goal is to help state and local leaders handle practical issues whose resolution can determine whether school choice helps or harms children, especially low-income children in big cities. The first activity was in August 2004, when CRPE and the Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings co-sponsored a two-day seminar on communities and choice held in Washington, D.C. The meeting drew together parents, researchers, and community leaders to explore the practical challenges of implementing school choice programs. As a result of this discussion, the Doing School Choice Right initiative mounted four major lines of inquiry: Explore what it takes to inform parents (especially low-income parents who normally get very little information about schools) about the choices they have so they can match their child's needs with a school's offerings. Paul Teske, a political scientist at the University of Colorado, Denver, and a recognized national expert on parent information use, leads this study. Initiate case studies on how school districts can try to help traditional public schools cope with the challenges of choice and competition. Christine Campbell, Michael DeArmond, and Kacey Guin, all with CRPE, jointly lead this study. Examine issues involved in moving toward pupil-based funding, particularly technical, legal, and regulatory barriers. Marguerite Roza of CRPE, and the recognized national leader on studies of school district budgeting and spending, leads this study. Create models for how school districts can oversee public schools in multiple ways--including direct operation, chartering, contracting, and licensing private schools to admit voucher students. Work to date on this study has been led by Kate Destler and Stephen Page of the University of Washington's Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs. Bryan Hassel of Public Impact, one of the few scholars ever to study public oversight of schools of choice, will lead a major fieldwork effort starting in spring 2006. These projects are still underway. This paper gives an advance report on the results of these studies, each of which will produce extensive reports in the coming year. Major studies are appended. [This document was published by the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington.]

The 2004-05 school year was tumultuous for charter schools, marked by dueling studies with conflicting conclusions on whether charter schools boost student performance or hinder it. Even before this dustup occurred, a consortium of foundations decided to support a new national research center to raise the standard of research on charter schools and provide balanced perspectives on issues that had become polarized. The result was the National Charter School Research Project (NCSRP), which is the author of this report. The report is in two parts. In the first, NCSRP provides new data that inform questions such as: Is the charter school movement growing or slowing down? Do charter schools serve more or fewer disadvantaged children than regular public schools? Are charter schools innovative? The report also identifies several important questions on which state and local record keeping needs to be improved. The second part of this report takes up issues and controversies that characterized the discussion of charter schools in 2004-2005. NCSRP's goal is to provide essays that examine these controversies in a broad context and assemble evidence in a balanced and informative way. The essays are unlikely to settle any of these issues definitively, but they may establish a more constructive basis for continued discussion. Appended are: (1) About the Authors; (2) Data Sources & Methods for Chapter 1; and (3) Charter Schools & Student Achievement: List of Studies Reviewed.

This paper lays out a performance-based model to better leverage the mission and power of school boards toward improving student learning. It moves beyond discussions about whether boards should be elected or appointed, instead arguing that mode of selection is less directly responsible for board success than clarity and focus about its mission and its role. The paper examines key issues and provides recommendations for school reform. The paper is organized into three parts: part 1, "Why the Existing Structure of Oversight Does Not Promote School Performance"; part 2, "What Performance-Focused Oversight of Schools Would Entail"; and part 3, "How the Missions and Activities of School Boards and District Central Offices Must Change." The paper concludes with a table, supplemented by text, on governance alternatives, and a table, also supplement by text, that compares board missions under two new governance models. The paper ends with a brief discussion of responsibility and accountability in light of recent educational legislation. (Contains 29 endnotes and 2 tables.) (WFA)

The most important burden of charter schools is the need to demonstrate that the instruction they provide actually benefits students. They can hire their own teachers, make their own tradeoffs between spending on administration and teaching, locate anywhere in the community, and let parents know in advance what a child must do to succeed in the school. Therefore, charter schools are exempt from many rules, and instead are required to demonstrate student learning. Unlike conventional schools, however, charter schools can lose their public funding and be forced to close if they cannot demonstrate that their students are indeed learning. The question becomes whether performance can replace compliance as a mechanism of accountability to government? Does dependence on parents and teachers force charter schools to ignore their responsibilities to the public? This report studies individual charter schools and their authorizers with differing legal provisions in six states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Massachusetts, and Michigan. It asks how the schools' relationships with authorizers affect their day-to-day operations, and how they develop relationships of trust and confidence. Major findings regarding internal accountability are discussed. The appendix covers survey data and analysis methods. (DFR)

In March 1995 the Ohio General Assembly enacted a Pilot Project Scholarship Program intended to provide a limited number of vouchers to allow Cleveland public school students to attend alternative schools, i.e. private schools, including those operated by religious organizations, within the Cleveland city limits and public schools in surrounding suburban school districts. Vouchers were to be available for the first time in the 1996-97 school year. Voucher winners were to be chosen by lottery, with voucher winners accepted by lottery into the alternative schools with preferences given for current students and their siblings. The maximum voucher value was to be $2,500, with reductions for increasing income above the federal poverty line until eligibility ended at 200% of the poverty level. Students, once admitted, could continue receiving vouchers through grade 8, subject to continued funding by the state. Although about 4,000 families were made some kind of voucher offer, many refused. An evaluation was designed to determine why so many did not enroll, and the significance this might have for future program management and evaluation. The designed evaluation will have a study of parent choice and satisfaction, with interviews with at least 25 parents (those that enrolled children and those that did not), and a study of the initial effectiveness of the program in terms of student achievement, subject to the limitations of available data. The rationale behind and planned implementation of both evaluation components are described. (SLD)

This document addresses the difficulties of urban education, particularly relating to inner cities that contain immigrant and minority students, and argues that schools contribute to the problems of today's urban youth and that schools must do a better job of educating students. It recognizes that schools are burdened by the urban environment but contends that the public cannot wait to change schools until other problems are solved. It grants that someone must address problems, such as poor student health and family instability, but argues that educators have enough to worry about in their own backyards. Better schools will not solve all the problems of American cities, but they are definitely part of the solution. Further, the document argues that: (1) bad public schools are making their own distinct contributions to the problems of cities, (2) there is a substantial consensus among educators and parents about how schools can be made to work for disadvantaged and minority students in the big cities, (3) better inner-city schools are unlikely given today's methods of financing and governance, and (4) better schools are possible in the inner city but only if efforts are made to make a major change in what is meant by a public school. (Contains 19 references.) (GLR)

When federally funded categorical programs for educational equity converge at the school level, difficulties such as resource competition tend to arise. This study addresses interference (categorical and core local program conflicts) and cross-subsidy (categorical fund misuse) problems at district, school, and classroom levels in terms of pervasiveness and intensity. Telephone interviews in 48 school districts, and site interviews in 10 of those districts obtained demographic, financial, and operational, as well as interference and cross-subsidy data. Findings reveal that all districts experience both problems, not only in the face of multiple categorical requirements, but also when schools administer programs imposed by another government agency. At fault are federal program structuring and local administrative habit, both of which encourage separation of categorical and core programs, thus adversely affecting services to disadvantaged children. Solution recommendations include not assigning to separate categories students who can be assigned to regular classrooms. An appendix of success stories and references follow. (KS)