I'm pleased to serve on the Board of Scholars for the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions, where I help advocate for meaningful education reforms like charter schools and school choice. Earlier this week the BIPPS blog featured a piece I wrote about how charter schools can empower school stakeholders - especially school principals - to make bold and innovative improvements in education.
In the blog post I describe a recent report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute called "Lacking Leaders," which argues that school principals are frequently foiled in their school improvement efforts by bureaucratic structures that treat them like low-powered middle managers rather than the influential instructional leaders they can actually be. And I argue that public charter schools - which are currently prohibited in Kentucky - give school principals just this kind of role.
One of the reasons public charters succeed is because they are free of most of the regulations, mandates and burdens faced by traditional schools. Principals in charter schools answer to a board of directors (and to the parents, of course, who may withdraw their children from the charter school at any time they are dissatisfied) but are otherwise free to hire, fire, train or retain teachers as they see fit.
Charter school principals can use their autonomy to foster a strong, student-centered culture and innovate new approaches to teaching and learning.
Read the whole thing here.
