Portfolio Districts and Network Governance: From a “School System” to a “System of Schools”

Abstract

School district leaders across the U.S. have turned to the portfolio strategy to manage charter school growth and budget crises disproportionately facing low-income communities of color. The portfolio strategy aims to manage school choice options through increasing central office oversight of charter schools, autonomy for district schools, and accountability around student learning outcomes. This article examines the portfolio district in Oakland, California as a case of network governance, a lineage of “third way” policy strategies that bring together public and private sectors. I argue that district leaders and reform advocates advanced Oakland’s portfolio strategy to resolve fiscal and organizational challenges of school choice policies based on networks of trust, collaboration, and reciprocity between district schools and charter schools. However, new governing arrangements and collaborative initiatives repeated some of the same exclusionary practices and deepened mistrust, revealing new political challenges to improving district-charter coordination.