Education Lab is a Seattle Times project that spotlights promising approaches to the most persistent challenges in public education. The following articles open conversations around innovation in schools such as charter schools and gifted programs in public schools focusing on national and local research.
Community schools such as charter schools often have a mission to serve underserved populations. A new national study is suggesting that charter schools may affect school segregation by income. Public schools may become more separated based on class.
In Washington State, the present 9 charter schools are publicly funded and privately run. Do these “specialized schools” help the state’s most disadvantaged students or create more inequity?
New national tests scores in reading and math suggest that the performance gap among Washington students is widening. Why does the gap between the high performing student and the lowest performing student continue to grow? Conversations about lifting children that struggle and those at the top of the class are now looking at “specialized programs” that differentiate by serving students at the top of the class with a lot of resources in the form of gifted programs.
In looking back at the history of access to accelerated learning in Seattle, students passing certain tests were enrolled in “specialized” programs. The access in Seattle was always considered inequitable. Cohorts of highly capable students were enrolled in magnet programs far from their home in an effort to curb white flight.