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Big-city school systems face many problems, including high dropout rates, low academic achievement, and achievement gaps between middle-class and low-income children. Many big-city systems are also losing enrollment and facing financial deficits. These problems inevitably lead to criticism of the boards that govern urban school districts, and questions about whether some other governance arrangement might get better results. Seattle faces the same problems as other big-city districts. Critics of the school board have pointed to a few cities that have put mayors in charge of public schools in hope of overcoming political paralysis, pursuing consistent reform strategies, narrowing the achievement gap, and bringing expenses in line with revenues. This paper explores the underlying logic of mayoral interventions into public education, their consequences to date, and their possible suitability for Seattle. The report highlights a range of reforms that aim to improve the governance of urban school districts. (Contains 50 footnotes and 1 table.)

This is the second annual report from the National Charter School Research Project (NCSRP) at the University of Washington's Center on Reinventing Public Education. Like last year's debut edition of Hopes, Fears, & Reality, the 2006 volume explores some of the most current and controversial issues facing the charter school movement. This year's essays focus on the implications of continued charter school growth for leading players in the charter school debates, including parents who choose schools, teachers unions, school districts, authorizers, and state policymakers. The authors examine issues that educators, policymakers, and parents grapple with, such as how to inform parents about school choices, how to broker conflicts between unions and school leaders, how to improve schools and attract families in the face of enrollment declines and funding losses, and how to assess the quality and performance of individual schools. The following chapters are included: (1) Doing Their Homework: How Charter School Parents Make Their Choices (Paul Teske and Robert Reichardt); (2) Life After Charters: School Districts and Charter School Growth (Christine Campbell and Deborah Warnock); (3) A One-Day Ceasefire: What Charter School and Teachers Union Leaders Say When They Meet (Lydia Rainey, Andrew J. Rotherham, and Paul T. Hill); (4) Improving State and Local Assessments of Charter School Performance (Paul T. Hill and Julian Betts); (5) Charter Authorizing: It's a Dirty Job, but Somebody's Got to Do It (Katharine Destler); (6) A Better Way: Measuring Charter School Success and Failure (Laura S. Hamilton and Brian M. Stecher); and (7) Counting Graduates: A New Challenge for Charter Schools (Mary Beth Celio). Appended are: (1) About the Authors. [This document was produced by the National Charter School Research Project Center on Reinventing Public Education Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs University of Washington.]

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.]

This report is based on a survey of two statewide samples of elementary schools whose fourth-grade students took a state test in reading, writing, mathematics, and listening. The first sample was a group of 30 schools whose scores had improved significantly from 1997 to 1998. The second sample was a comparison group of 10 schools that served demographically similar students and were located in the same parts of the state as the first group but whose scores had improved only slightly or not at all. The principals of the schools, or a principal's designee, were also interviewed. Findings indicate that schools that made significant gains in test scores took a proactive approach toward improvement. Principals and teachers in these schools assessed strengths and weaknesses, set a limited number of priorities, focused on improving instruction, and took the initiative to find the help the school needed. It was also found that effective changes in teaching methods and materials were focused and schoolwide, not random and fragmented; that improving schools operate as teams; that professional development is school development; that performance pressure is positive when it leads to determination, not to fear; and that improving schools do not wait for help as they make strategic use of limited resources. (RJM)

An accountability system is proposed for the education system in Washington. Reform efforts in Washington have been designed to create a school-centered system in which state standards motivate teachers, parents, and principals to search for more effective ways to help students learn. Drawing on the experience of other states, recommendations are made for a statewide accountability system that will: (1) promote school-level instructional improvement by eliminating compliance-oriented rules and regulations and transferring real-dollar resources to schools; (2) stimulate creation of a range of public and private assistance sources; (3) measure and report real, unadjusted student achievement scores; (4) empower local school districts to classify schools, reward success at the local level, work with struggling schools, and reconstitute schools that consistently fail their students; (5) re-align the responsibilities of existing state agencies; (6) create a new State Accountability Commission to review school district progress toward the state standards; and (7) allow teachers and principals to hold students accountable for diligent effort and reasonable behavior. The proposed accountability system meets the standard that all education reform efforts must meet, that of being serious enough to make real measures of student performance, assign clear responsibilities to all actors, and acknowledge the connections between educators' efforts and student achievement. (Contains two figures, two tables, and seven references.) An appendix reviews five state accountability designs. (SLD)