On these pages is a call to action for teachers who have been shackled by the self-serving motives of agenda driven politicians. Here we present a new innovative process designed to prepare children to be productive members of their community. Students are empowered to take charge of their educational lives where thinking is valued above obedience, and their parents are respected as full partners in the process. The greatest challenge to educators in this decade is to prepare children to rise above the confirmation bias and embrace critical thinking. In this day of continuous propaganda from many directions, everything requires in depth thinking, research and processing. Change won't come from the top! The time has come to go underground to subvert the system from the bottom up. We infuse creative ideas while providing a pattern for systemic change that empowers teachers allowing them to take back their profession. Teachers are the saviors who are in the position to expand children's minds to the stars and beyond, giving them hope that they will make the world a better place. It is time to take a risk for children by subverting the system with the goal of true, whole child education.

The late Theodore Sizer's vision for a truly democratic public high school system

Our current high schools are ill-designed and inefficient. We have inherited a program of studies that in its overall structure has not changed in over a century. The question is "What's next?" Theodore Sizer, the founder of The Coalition of Essential Schools, was a passionate advocate for the American school system. In this, his last book, he offers a vision of what a future secondary education might look like. In a book that tells the story of his own odyssey, Sizer gives shape to a much-needed agenda for improving our high schools.Includes a vision for the future of our High Schools from one of America's greatest leaders of educational reformWritten by Theodore Sizer founder of The Coalition of Essential Schools and author of landmark book "Horace's Compromise "

This final book from the late Theodore Sizer reveals the man and his vision for our secondary education system.

We are in an era of radical distrust of public education. Increasingly, we turn to standardized tests and standardized curricula-now adopted by all fifty states-as our national surrogates for trust.
Legendary school founder and reformer Deborah Meier believes fiercely that schools have to win our faith by showing they can do their job. But she argues just as fiercely that standardized testing is precisely the wrong way to that end. The tests themselves, she argues, cannot give the results they claim. And in the meantime, they undermine the kind of education we actually want.
In this multilayered exploration of trust and schools, Meier critiques the ideology of testing and puts forward a different vision, forged in the success stories of small public schools she and her colleagues have created in Boston and New York. These nationally acclaimed schools are built, famously, around trusting teachers-and students and parents-to use their own judgment.
Meier traces the enormous educational value of trust; the crucial and complicated trust between parents and teachers; how teachers need to become better judges of each others' work; how race and class complicate trust at all levels; and how we can begin to 'scale up' from the kinds of successes she has created.

Tal Birdsey's Hearts of the Mountain: Adolescents, a Teacher, and a Living School sketches an utterly unique entity: an independent and virtual one-room middle school in the Green Mountains of Vermont. Hearts of the Mountain takes a deep look into an intimate, wild, and unpredictable year of learning, in and out of the classroom, with a diverse collection of funny, profound, troubled, and hopeful adolescents.

Beyond Testing describes seven forms of assessment that are more effective than standardized test results. These assessments are more honest about what we can and cannot know about children's knowledge, skills, and dispositions. Readers can compare and contrast each approach to determine which is most appropriate for their school.

Is it possible to fundamentally improve the daily workings of the urban classroom in less than seven years? According to John Simmons, it will take a revolution in the way that leaders of urban school systems think and operate, from the classroom to the boardroom. In this ambitious volume, Simmons and a stellar group of contributors, including Linda Darling-Hammond, Richard Elmore, Michael Fullan, Charlotte Danielson, Susan Moore Johnson, Adam Urbanski, Alan Odden, and Valerie Lee, bring the best current research to bear on a range of critical topics, creating a practical framework that superintendents and their teams can use to transform their big-city school systems into true learning communities. As it integrates many voices into a larger vision, this book: demonstrates convincingly how current, cutting-edge thinking about system change in business has been used to successfully transform schools and close the achievement gap among diverse students; provides an overview and assessment of the reform efforts of current large-district superintendents, including Alan Bersin, Tom Payzant, Arne Duncan, and Kaye Stripling; directs the reader towards a larger understanding of issues and priorities with three principles and four key strategies; applies current research to illuminate what has succeeded and what has not worked in cities such as Boston, San Diego, Houston, and especially Chicago; and, features the perspectives and experiences of notable experts who have been working in the trenches of school reform for decades.

Crucial to the public debate about schools, curriculum, testing, academic standards, and teacher training are the voices of successful teachers, like Kathy Greely, who speak to the dangers of an overemphasis on standardized testing and a punitive, back-to-basics approach. This work is a chronicle of a year in the life of a school classroom. The author provides an alternative model of education and shows how a strong and supportive community is essential in helping students reach their highest potential. Included in this account are: specific projects that explain in detail critical practices in the classroom; class discussions that show efforts to interweave academic study with personal awareness; excerpts from student journals; and descriptions of daily failures and frustrations, as well as successes and victories.

How do teachers and schools create meaningful learning experiences for students with diverse skills, abilities, and cultures? How can teachers authentically assess the learning of their students and build on their strengths and interests in ways that enrich the larger community? How can schools be turned into places where everyone is learning from each other? These are the big questions that guide the work of teachers at the well-known Mission Hill School in Boston and that are addressed in this book. Teaching in Themes will help schools incorporate a whole-school, theme-based curriculum that engages students across grade levels K-8. The authors provide detailed descriptions of four thematic units: What's Baking in Kathy's Classroom?, The Impact of Nature and Play, The Struggle for Justice: U.S. History Through the Eyes of African-Americans, and Astronomical Inquiries. Readers will see how teachers and students design "emergent inquiries" within the themes and create artwork, music, presentations, and a variety of hands-on learning experiences that support differentiated instruction across the curriculum. Book Features: Examples of whole-school projects designed to create a deep sense of immersion in a curricular theme and to build a multi-age learning community. Details of how teachers developed rich curriculum tailored to their unique students. The insights of legendary educator Deborah Meier on how whole-school thematic units were used to encourage collaboration among teachers. An afterword by teachers (and film makers) about the thinking behind their work featured in the widely-viewed film series "A Year at Mission Hill."

Chronicles the ups-and-downs of two young, first-grade teachers in an urban public school. Through rich, detailed portraits, excerpts from teacher journals, student work, and lived memories and recollections, Daniel Meier shows that the heart of teaching and learning in our culturally diverse urban schools is tied to the overall quality of human interaction in the classroom.