Giving Compass' Take:

• Chalkbeat reports on the charter school network IDEA and its plan for a diverse-by-design model, theorizing that exposing kids to peers from different backgrounds in high school will prepare them for higher ed.

• IDEA has a health career focus, but could this model apply to other types of charter schools? What are the pros and cons of building a diverse student population deliberately?

• Here's why one charter school network in Los Angeles believes it has cracked the diverse-by-design code.

When the fast-growing charter network IDEA asked the federal government for several million dollars two years ago, it explained that it wanted to do something different with one of its next schools.

The school would be located in Austin, near a few schools the network already operated but far from the Rio Grande Valley where IDEA Public Schools got its start. It would be a magnet school.

The school would be located in Austin, near a few schools the network already operated but far from the Rio Grande Valley where IDEA Public Schools got its start. It would be a magnet school. And it would attempt to serve a mix of students that IDEA, which serves mostly students of color from low-income households, hadn’t yet enrolled.

“Put simply, graduates of IDEA’s traditional schools have had relatively little exposure to white and affluent students, and this is a cause of stress and discomfort for minority students as they adjust to college,” IDEA’s application said.

IDEA won that $15 million grant in 2017, one of 32 winners last year, and the school is set to open in 2019. And with officials holding a groundbreaking ceremony Wednesday, the network is inching toward putting its theories about how it can create a racially diverse school — and how that might benefit students — to the test.

Read the full article about creating a more diverse charter school by Francisco Vara-Orta at Chalkbeat.