Schools for Tomorrow Blog

News of a school board moving beyond an initial adversarial approach to facilities and charter schools:

The district sponsored few charters and refused to lease empty schools to them even as many of its buildings stood empty. Still, other city charter schools thrived.

On Tuesday night, [city name] school board members heard a plan to sell three of the 12 schools the district has shuttered in recent years to charter schools. The district also intends to partner with the schools. Board members are expected to approve the agreements next week.

“For too long we said we would partner with charter schools, but it wasn’t real,” said board member Pam Costain.

The city above is not the New Orleans, Washington DC or New York, but (similar to Denver) a smaller district also in fly-over country: Minneapolis, MN, with 91 schools and 33,000 students. If a charter facility partnership can make it there, perhaps it can make it anywhere. Full article here.

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Several of the recent articles on the DPS school-sharing proposal feature school representatives voicing their fear over increased “competition.” In doing so they further blur a complex line between competition and choice, which finds that choice (and the resulting specialization) often helps both alternatives.

Competition is generally based in three areas: price, product and service. In business, the companies that offer basic (commodity) products have to compete primarily on price (think gas stations). The companies that offer non-commodities compete on some combination of different products or services. One of the main differences is that demand for most commodity products does not increase with more choice (you don’t buy more gas because there are two stations, although you might if this competition means that gas is cheaper). In contrast, demand for even basic products often increases if the product or service is reasonably different.

The common example of the latter is Starbucks, which…

Is anyone really questioning the priorities and the process behind the Denver Public Schools (DPS) record-setting $454 million bond proposal? (Besides me, of course.) Leave it to old Uncle Charley to raise more questions.

Undoubtedly, there are some significant facilities needs in DPS. But has the proposal really sought to prioritize those needs? The $40 million slated to revamp North High School: shouldn’t the district instead look to update its 50-year-old master plan, indulging in a bit of more cost-effective, long-range planning? Are 100-year brick buildings really the best bang for our education dollar when who knows what kind of facilities we’ll need in, say, 2030? In the 21^st century, do we want to continue the investment in low-maintenance brick, which also happens to be expensive to replace?

$40 million for renovations? Denver School of Science and Technology was constructed for $12 million total. How many students will DSST have served before it’s ready…

With Colorado’s new BEST school construction board getting underway, there comes a great reminder from Washington Post education columnist Jay Mathews:

Educators who have turned bad schools into good ones are patient with me, as they are with parents who put so much emphasis on everything looking nice. They nod when I ask about the bad impression left by a soiled restroom stall or a broken air conditioner. Then they repeat what they have said to me before: It is not the building, but the teaching, that makes a difference.

Mathews builds his case with a series of successful examples, including both traditional public schools and charter schools. Untold numbers of students who met in a church basement or a warehouse, or an old schoolhouse with peeling paint, squeaky doors, or the high-maintenance heating system, somehow learned to excel academically. Now I’m not talking about real health and safety issues. Those need…