Does Fixing America’s Schools Mean Scrapping The Public Model?

WUNC News | By Laura Pellicer,

Published October 10, 2017 at 12:21 PM EDT

David Osborne's new book 'Reinventing America's Schools: Creating a 21st Century Education System' delves into case studies where the charter school system helped boost school performance.

The charter school experiment is in many ways still in its infancy. In the past 25 years thousands of schools across the country have turned to the model to tackle low performance and to give administrators more freedom to play with school structure. There are some glowing success stories, but studies show inconsistency in charter school performance even within particular states.

Host Frank Stasio speaks with David Osborne, education policy analyst and author of “Reinventing America’s Schools: Creating a 21st Century Education System”, about lessons that can be learned from the charter school experiment.

David Osborne is an education policy analyst whose new book argues that schools need more independence in order to succeed. He is a proponent of giving schools the power to make their own rules and to step out from under the shadow of school boards and superintendents.

His new book “Reinventing America’s Schools: Creating a 21st Century Education System” (Bloomsbury/ 2017) delves into case studies of charter school success and details lessons that can be learned from the charter school experiment. Osborne speaks with host Frank Stasio about his findings ahead of his talk at North Carolina State University’s James B. Hunt Library auditorium on Tuesday, Oct. 10 at 7:30 p.m. The event is hosted by EducationNC.