It’s March 11, Verdi liked to debut operas on this date (Don Carlos and Rigoletto). TNTP is debuting a something that while less artistic arguably has more day-to-day utility: It’s a trove of best practices on hiring and building school teams. This is a lot of great stuff and a very cool transfer or IP from the top-performing charter schools to the field at large.
Also on charters, various ideas about a charter merger in LA have been kicking around for a while and now the LAT writes-up the idea moving forward. Leave aside the ins and outs of the article, which are classic for anyone who follows LA closely, there is a larger issue here: While mergers may make sense from a financial perspective do they always from an educational one? Different schools and school networks have distinct cultures and norms. It’s part of what makes them effective. Blending those (or carefully designing a merger so as to not blend them) is a tricky proposition and more complicated than just integrating operations.