This Works: Improving Urban Education

Introduction

There is probably no public policy issue in America today that is more important, or more daunting, than the need to improve urban education. Despite an overwhelming national consensus on the value of a good education, both to individual children and to communities as a whole, the appalling performance of urban school systems has proved remarkably resistant to change. While cities throughout the country experienced a renaissance during the 1990’s, making vast strides in everything from preventing crime to reducing the welfare rolls, their progress in educating their children was notably limited. To meet this challenge, urban leaders will need to embrace innovative measures to improving their school systems.

There are two key concepts that lie behind practically every successful attempt at education reform: Choice and Accountability. Giving parents and students real educational options to choose from injects competition into the public school system, forcing it to improve and adapt, while at the same time providing greater opportunities for those students who are currently being ill-served. Making schools accountable for their performance, by setting strict standards, tracking their success in meeting them, and mandating consequences for not doing so both establishes firm incentives for improvement and makes it impossible to sweep failure under the rug. Basing their efforts on these ideas, reformers around the country, of all political persuasions, have had significant successes in bringing about positive change through a wide variety of approaches. Taken together, and adapted to local circumstances, these specific measures and the principles of competition and accountability that generated them represent a blueprint for success in reversing the decline of America’s urban schools.

READ THE FULL REPORT