Weekend reads: When school choice means moving from a struggling school to another struggling school

  • Neighborhood schools often serve as an anchor to personal histories and community ties. So when those schools cease to exist, there is usually a great sense of loss. (NPR)
  • School choice doesn’t necessarily lead to a student moving from a bad school to a significantly better one. In Chicago, more than a quarter of transfer students ended up at another struggling school. (Hechinger Report)
  • After 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed was arrested for bringing a clock he built to his Texas school, his school sent him — and others — the message that his creativity is something to be feared. (Vox)
  • Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Steve Jobs, committed $50 million to change the model for public high schools. Will the handful of proposals that end up with funding make a difference? (Slate)
  • Poor kids are increasingly priced out of extracurricular activities that require fees and that exclusion can have long term consequences. (WGBH)
  • School districts around the country are trying to reform zero tolerance discipline policies, but are finding that making meaningful change is difficult. (The Atlantic)
  • A Los Angeles parent explains that her decision to send her children to private school is rooted in a distrust of public schools’ expectations for young black students. (LA Times)
  • A new study reports that the number of black teachers in nine cities dropped between 2002 and 2012, raising big questions about teacher diversity efforts. (Washington Post)
  • As schools rely more and more on philanthropy, some educators worry that schools are marketing their students to donors as charity cases and the competition for donations will leave many children behind. (Tiny Spark)
  • A year after the Ferguson protests, a student-led group is trying to improve the city’s schools from the inside out. (EdWeek)