Social innovation blog looks at how to turn around Detroit's public schools

The first innovation is in the redesign of schools for low-income African-American and Latino students so they will beat the odds by staying in school, graduating, and going to college. These schools are designed to engage low income, “at risk” students in learning. They are small and personalized, not the big, impersonal, factory-style schools that traditional school districts keep operating.  Although some are charter schools, others are innovative schools within existing districts, and still others are private, religious schools. They share a basic model that works.

The second innovation is in school governance. Education reformers in Detroit and across the country have broken the grip of locally elected school boards over governance of schools. For most of the 20^th century governing authority over schools was in the hands of local elected school boards. Now, though, it is in many hands: Start with mayors in New York (1.1. million students) and Chicago (400,000 students), the first and third largest school districts in the nation. Then add in the hundreds of "authorizers" that states now allow to charter schools outside of traditional districts--universities and community colleges, county governments, Indian tribes, state legislatures, state boards of education, and nonprofit organizations.