High-tech schools of the future end up looking a lot like schools of the past, writes Larry Cuban in Regression to the Mean, Part 1 and Part 2. His examples are a public middle school in New York City, called the Downtown School in a study, and School of the Future, a public high school in Philadelphia. The first had funding from technology entrepreneurs, the second from Microsoft. Disruptive Fixation: School Reform and the Pitfalls of Techno-Idealism  describes the New York

Kicked Out shows how districts in the Philadelphia suburbs keep out non-district students. In one segment of the series, WHYY reporter Avi Wolfman-Arent rides along with a private investigator looking for evidence students don’t really live in the district. Suburban parents are sneaking their kids into a Washington, D.C. magnet school, reports the Washington Post.An investigation of enrollment fraud found that nearly 30 percent of students at Duke Ellington School of the Arts

At a high-poverty, low-performing K-8 school in Philadelphia, eighth graders don’t get into fights any more. Their principal promised to pay each student $100 if they reach graduation without any fighting, reports Kristen A. Graham on Philly.com. If any of the 33 eighth graders break the peace, they all lose the money. “They have a choice — to become the violence they see in their day-to-day lives, or to be peaceful models for our school and our community,” said Stephanie And

Is school discipline reform moving too fast? asks Wayne D’Orio in The Atlantic. In the Highline district south of Seattle, suspensions are way down, while the graduation rate is up. But teacher turnover has increased. Kimmie Marton, a special-education teacher at Mount Rainier High School, said students became more disrespectful after the threat of out-of-school suspensions diminished. “Kids will cuss you out, there’s stealing and disobedience,” she said. Los Angeles, which b

Philadelphia’s discipline reforms, which limited suspensions, improved attendance but not achievement for previously suspended students attending schools that complied with the new rules, concludes a new study. Never-suspended students “experienced worse outcomes in the most economically and academically disadvantaged schools.” Only 18 percent of Philadelphia schools fully complied with the new policies, while 60 percent were “partial compliers,” reports Evie Blad in Educatio

Backpack Full of Cash, an anti-charter documentary showing at film festivals, blames charter schools for taking funding from traditional public schools, writes Mark Walsh in Ed Week. The documentary follows the 2013-14 year at South Philadelphia High School, where Marian Anderson, Chubby Checker, and Frankie Avalon attended school, but where there is now no money for a music program. . . . Charters such as the String Theory school “are islands of privilege in a sea of inequit

Boys Latin Of Philadelphia Charter School will be featured on NBC’s Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly. The motto of the school, which primarily enrolls boys from low-income black families, is Faber est quisque fortunae suae, or “Every man is the architect of his own future.” Washington D.C. has opened an all-boys’ high school as part of the district’s “Empowering Males of Color” initiative. #blackboys #BoysLatin #manhood #Philadelphia #charter #WashingtonDC

People who exercise choice in educating their own children want black parents to exercise patience, writes Sharif El-Mekki, principal of Mastery Charter School in Philadelphia. Mastery Charter School in Philadelphia is open to all students. His middle-class friends choose their children’s schools, exert pressure to get their children the best teachers and pay for “tutoring, trips, camps, and experiences that can supplement what they believe their children need,” writes El-Mek