Giving Compass' Take:

• Uncommon Schools, a network of charter schools in Newark, recently provided training to public school teachers. This is a step in the right direction toward educators working together for a common goal. 

• How can donors help to inspire school districts to work together? How can we lessen the divide?

• Here's why states and districts should give public charter schools access to facilities.

Dozens of Newark Public Schools teachers got a crash course in reading instruction Wednesday that, on the surface, looked like a typical training.

Seated around tables in the Elliott Street School cafeteria in Newark’s North Ward, the educators underlined key lines in a piece of academic writing — a critical skill for students trying to make sense of a complicated reading. They learned how to gauge the difficulty of a text, which they practiced on a passage from an Edgar Allan Poe story. And they watched a video of a teacher “aggressively monitoring” her students’ reading by asking probing questions and recording their answers.

But this workshop came with a twist: The instructors, materials, and videos were provided by Uncommon Schools, a network of charter schools — schools that are often viewed as district rivals, not partners.

Read the full article about charter schools helping teachers in Newark by Patrick Wall at Chalkbeat