– or not a proficient student – in year one, how much growth has that student made from one year to the next? That accountability is critical.

The first thing again is taking that centralized top-down system and creating a more decentralized system with accountability for results. Part two – in order to make that successful – is a real focus on people and most importantly teachers. To do everything we can to retain our talented teachers, to reward them and to recruit them but also where teachers are not performing to remediate and when necessary to remove teachers. There is both a system’s focus on decentralization and accountability, but also a real focus on are we doing the right thing to get, keep, reward and develop good teachers.

CMF: Is this a working model that is has proven to be successful in other school districts faced with similar challenges?

Boasberg: There is not an urban system in the country that I think, is a successful urban system. I think that there are urban systems that do better than others. There are elements of those that are noticeable for getting better results. Some of our charter schools are very high performing and some are charter schools that are very low performing, and it’s not necessarily about curriculum, because we all have wonderful schools – again, I think it’s about people. I do think that we and other school districts have through our policies, through collective bargaining agreements, through state statues, that we have not had the right incentives and systems in place to get and keep our best people. I do think where I’m seeing other school districts take steps in that regard – New York being an example of that; Houston being an example ...