In October 2018, when Tom Boasberg stepped down as superintendent of Denver Public Schools (DPS) after 10 years on the job, he was no doubt frustrated to see his longtime critics rejoice. What likely disappointed him most, though, was that some of his strongest supporters abandoned him, too. This article discusses how Boasberg redesigned Denver's…

In 2017, Matthew Chingos and Kristin Blagg of the Urban Institute convened a group of researchers to analyze students' school choices and travel to school in five cities-- Denver, Detroit, New Orleans, New York, and Washington, D.C.--where families are able to select from among many charter and district schools. The team found that a large number…

Facing the typical challenges of urban schooling, including overcrowded schools, mediocre academic outcomes, and high dropout rates, the Los Angeles Unified School District has been at the epicenter of big-city education reform over the past decade. This article takes a look at the past 10 years of reform strategies in Los Angeles, and how…

Student performance on standardized tests in Louisiana has trailed national averages for decades. In the 2017 8th-grade reading results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Louisiana public schools tied for 42nd in the nation and rated significantly higher than only one jurisdiction, the District of Columbia. Only 25 percent of…

In most of the U.S., the process for assigning children to public schools is straightforward: take a student's home address, determine which school serves that address, and assign the student accordingly. However, states and cities are increasingly providing families with school choices. A key question facing policymakers is exactly how to place…

The study for which James S. Coleman is best known today makes no mention of private education. The 1966 "Equality of Educational Opportunity" (EEO) study--better known as the Coleman Report--focused exclusively on the distribution of resources and student achievement in America's "public" schools. The report's ink was barely…

Five years ago, Baltimore City Public Schools seemed on the brink of a breakthrough. The district had been freed from mayoral control after more than a century, and a high-energy superintendent was leading bold moves to de-emphasize central administration, give schools greater autonomy, and engage families in a revitalized portfolio of educational…

When public schools opened in New York City in September 2003 amid reports of widespread classroom overcrowding, parents, educators, and policymakers demanded an explanation. There, at the ready, was Michael Winerip, the education columnist for the "New York Times." The crowding, wrote Winerip in the first of a series of hard-hitting…

Identifies three trends that restrain the ability of public school to transmit a common culture: The high concentration of racial and ethnic minorities in urban schools, the widespread teaching of multiculturalism, and legal decisions that have undermined the authority of principals and teachers. Private choice schools may counter these trends.…

In "The Education Gap: Vouchers and Urban Schools" (Brookings, 2002), the authors and their colleagues reported that attending a private school had no discernible impact, positive or negative, on the test scores of non-African-American students participating in school voucher programs in Washington, D.C., New York City, and Dayton, Ohio.…

Argues that while No Child Left Behind Act allows parents to transfer their children from failing schools to better performing ones or to enroll them in "supplemental services," few parents have exercised these options because many suburban schools have resisted transfers and few urban districts have informed parents of these options.…

Decentralization has been a popular theme in school districts for a long time. Indeed, most districts claim that they are decentralized, having latched onto the "site-based management" movement of the 1980s. Superintendents and central-office personnel point to their local school councils, staffed by parents, teachers, and school…

This article presents a progress report on urban school districts' efforts to execute the mandates of the No Child Left Behind Act, a law they greeted with both hope and fear due to the sanctions it authorized against failing systems. To investigate their progress, the Council of the Great City Schools conducted a survey of its 60 member urban…

On May 23, 2001, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives had rejected a proposal to fund a pilot school voucher program that would have provided a token voucher of $1,500 to students in five schools nationwide. Less than three years later, President George W. Bush delivered a far different message to voucher supporters--a declaration of…

It was in 1968, when Martin Luther King had been assassinated, and American cities were erupting in flames because of King's violent death and the decades-long smoldering resentments from racism, that the nation's first "magnet" school opened in Tacoma, Washington. The following year, 1969, the country's second magnet school opened--this…