San Francisco, despite its reputation for unabashed progressivism and rapidly growing wealth, has a public school system with gapingly large achievement gaps and a more pronounced failure to serve low-income black and Latino students than other California districts, a new report says.

“The current results should raise deep questions about the will of district and city leaders to recognize the problem and do what’s necessary to fix it. A school system that leaves so many children behind should be held accountable,”

Innovate Public Schools, an education reform advocacy group in the Bay Area, said in its report released Thursday. It will also be presented to leaders at City Hall.

In the short term, the report urges San Francisco leaders to work on school turnaround and suggests models that give strong school leaders more autonomy, like the Mastery schools in Philadelphia. The group also suggests opening new schools and, long-term, adopting “whole-district change” through strong district leadership, a new emphasis on instruction, and other efforts that have worked in other districts.

Read the full article by Carolyn Phenicie about San Francisco schools on The 74