Milwaukee’s low-performing Carver Academy got more money, new leadership and “five years of attention from Milwaukee’s best minds in business and education,” reports Erin Richards in Lost Lessons in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. After five years, less than five percent of students at the K-8 school test as proficient in reading and math, little better than before. Carver Academy teacher Symona Gregory works with a third-grader in May 2018. Photo: Angela Peterson/Milwaukee J

“After Katrina’s devastation, New Orleans embarked on the the most ambitious education overhaul in modern America,” writes David Leonhardt in the New York Times. New Orleans’ reforms raised achievement, graduation rates and college success, concludes a new study. “The state of Louisiana took over the system in 2005, abolished the old bureaucracy and closed nearly every school. Rather than running schools itself, the state became an overseer, hiring independent operators of pu

Enrollment is soaring at Benito Juarez Community Academy. Photo: Amadou Diallo/Hechinger Report Choice has emptied many low-performing Chicago schools, but enrollment is climbing at Benito Juarez Community Academy, reports Hechinger’s Amadou Diallo. A skills-mastery model adopted in 2013 got the school off academic probation. Juarez now ranks 49th out of 658 Illinois public high schools based on test scores and college readiness. When Principal Juan Ocon started in 2008, Juar

After seven years and $7 billion in School Improvement Grants, low-performing schools showed no improvement, concluded a federal analysis. The final evaluation found “no evidence that SIG had significant impacts on math or reading test scores, high school graduation, or college enrollment” compared to similar low-performing schools that didn’t receive grants. To receive up to $2 million per year for three years, school had to adopt one of four Education Department models. Sch