The charter chain came under fire for submitting late financials two years in a row and losing track of credential status for some instructors.

San Jose's low-income families are in a rougher spot today than 30 years ago. We can flip this script by working together to strengthen public education.

Two events I attended this week provide some optimism about traditional public and charter schools’ ability to coexist. Stories of eliminating inequality in public education are playing out in real time all over the valley. We should stand proud of how the region is rising up to form powerful coalitions to lobby elected officials and public leaders.

How many more years will the country and Silicon Valley put up with broken promises made to our children, before it is too late for us to recover from the lack of political will? This year we commemorate the 30-year anniversary of a national report that provided a clarion call to improve our public education system.

There are several critical “gaps” in the education of our children. One is the gap of how our high school students compare to high school students in cities like Helsinki and Shanghai on PISA (Program for International Student Assessment). Let’s call this gap the “Global Achievement Gap.” It is related to how students perform on comparable international assessments to real world problems in reading, math and science.

Much like the early partnership of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, which transformed the manner in which we use technology, three pairs of individuals are at the forefront of improving education for Silicon Valley’s students. These innovators and provocateurs work to challenge the status quo, and their goal is equitable, high quality education opportunities for all children.

Someone asked me last week if there are underreported stories about public education in the Bay Area. Absolutely there are. People and ideas are converging in Silicon Valley, and they have the potential to alter the landscape of schools and learning.