Early in the 2000s, a high-school principal in Minnesota, Dr. Bob Perdaems, faced a complex challenge. The demographics of his school were shifting, political tensions in the surrounding communities were rising, and, thanks to the No Child Left Behind Act's new testing and accountability requirements, his school's performance was soon to be scrutinized more intensely and more publicly than ever before. While he had several visions of how his school could continuously improve through these realities, however, he had no additional budget to bring his ideas to life.Undaunted, Dr. Bob set to creating school improvements the best way he knew how--and that, of course, he could afford: he prioritized his school's areas for growth, found teachers who would lend minds and hands, and gathered them to look at the blueprints. What the Academy Taught Us is a book about the collaborative school-improvement culture Dr. Bob created in his Minnesota high school: the principles that initiated it, the collective effort that kept it running, and the lasting effects it had on its teachers and students. The book also brilliantly explores how bottom-up approaches like Dr. Bob's fare in the current era, which seeks to transform schools through more top-down and 'disruptive' means. Ultimately, What the Academy Taught Us offers today's educators a way forward. While largely viewing the difficult work of school improvement through the prism of a single school, it presents abundant recommendations about how schools everywhere can build effective and continuous improvement from the bottom up.

Education Is Upside Down cuts through adjustments being made at technical levels of educational practice and accountability, challenging ideals and philosophies that have powered American Education for most of the last century. This book explains how and why long-standing approaches generate flawed instructional practices, flawed systemic reform efforts, and a fundamental misalignment between the educational institution and the society it is missioned to serve. Education Is Upside Down urges readers wishing to improve American Education to more carefully consider the institution s central mission, challenge long-accepted truths of practice, and question current reform efforts and actions. In full, Education Is Upside Down resists the practitioner-vs.-reformer blame game, seeking ultimately to carefully untangle not tighten by yanking on any single strand the long-complicated knot of American Education."

Education Is Upside Down cuts through adjustments being made at technical levels of educational practice and accountability, challenging ideals and philosophies that have powered American Education for most of the last century. This book explains how and why long-standing approaches generate flawed instructional practices, flawed systemic reform efforts, and a fundamental misalignment between the educational institution and the society it is missioned to serve. Education Is Upside Down urges readers wishing to improve American Education to more carefully consider the institution s central mission, challenge long-accepted truths of practice, and question current reform efforts and actions. In full, Education Is Upside Down resists the practitioner-vs.-reformer blame game, seeking ultimately to carefully untangle not tighten by yanking on any single strand the long-complicated knot of American Education."