Sunday, November 12, 2006

Real School Reform 

If D.C. Mayor Fenty really wanted to take a bold move regarding D.C. school he would scrap the traditional model of assigning kids to neighborhood schools and give each parent a voucher so that their child could attend the private or public school of their choice. The voucher amount would be the per pupil allocation that charter schools receive now. This necessarily means that all DCPS schools would now have to rent their facilities.

If the Mayor does not have this much courage he could decide to turn all DCPS institutions into charters. This would give them the freedom to innovate outside of the city beuracracy. These schools could still utilize the central office for support if they wanted to but they would have to pay for these services. Just think for a minute how this simple change would incentives for the DCPS administrative staff.

But if the Mayor still does not have guts he could go ahead with his proposal to disband the Board of Education. But in the realm of possibilities do you see in retrospect how meager his proposal really is?

PermaLink | 12:49 PM | |

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?