Friday, September 02, 2011

A Modest Proposal

Rhode Island mayoral academies are regional, integrated urban/non-urban educational collaborations. The kind of thing I like. Except for reasons known only to them, the original promoters and implementers of these schools conceived this as an opportunity to bring urban charter models to the suburbs. This was always a very silly idea, and its shortcomings are obvious now.

If anyone is going to create a new, successful mayoral academy after the AFMA debacle, it will have to be based on a genuine needs analysis of the participating communities, and a school model that first and foremost appeals to suburban parents.

To cut to the chase, to me the best fit would be a "high tech" high school, like, say High Tech High or Science Leadership Academy. Those are the ones I know personally; they wouldn't do replication in Rhode Island, but there are CMO's with similar models. A proposal along those lines would serve a genuine need, not cause significant fiscal problems to the sending districts due to its moderate scale, and breeze to approval.

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