Changing governance arrangements clearly can make a difference in
the way urban public school systems function, but such a strategy requires the right combination of ingredients - committed and skilled leadership by the mayor, willingness to use scarce resources, a stable coalition of supporters, appropriate education policies, and a cadre of competent, committed professionals to implement the reforms.
In a symbiotic and mutually reinforcing
way, a robust
public school choice
system can help to attract young families to an
urban area while an influx of young families can also create political momentum around more robust
systems of
public school choice.
We have seen
urban public schools successfully adopt many charter
school «secrets,» including the nine - hour
school day (e.g., United for Success Academies in Oakland); a rigorous, standard curriculum (e.g., the more than a dozen Chicago
public schools that offer the International Baccalaureate); merit pay (e.g., the Washington, D.C.,
system); and the regular use of teacher video in professional development and evaluation (e.g., the Houston
system, which was using video in this
way as early as the 1980s).