Common Principles for Uncommon Schools

Horace Deborah Meier

Doing Something Real: Horace interviews with Debbie Meier on Community Service

Deborah Meier began her teaching career as a kindergarten and Head Start teacher in Chicago, Philadelphia and New York City. She was the founder and teacher-director of a network of highly successful public elementary schools in East Harlem. In 1985, she opened Central Park East Secondary School, one of the founding members of the Coalition of Essential Schools. She was

Horace: Deborah Meier Published: September 9, 2006 By: Deborah Meier, Jill Davidson Topics: Community Collaboration

How Much Is Learned When We’re Not Looking: The Promise of CES Elementary Schools

In the mid-1980s, I discovered the soon-to-be-Coalition of Essential Schools as I was contemplating starting a secondary school in East Harlem, a follow-up to our successful little network of progressive-minded elementary schools: Central Park East, Central Park East II, and River East. Through a series of lucky connections, we got Ted Sizer interested in our new venture, and thus was

Horace: Deborah Meier Published: February 22, 2008 By: Deborah Meier Topics: Instruction

In Schools We Trust: Creating Communities of Learning in an Era of Testing and Standardization

In her school leadership work and in her writing, Deborah Meier powerfully sweeps aside distractions and identiWes how schools work best for all students. In Schools We Trust focuses on three elements that create good conditions for teaching and learning: small size, self-governance and choice-that is, that students and teachers elect to be part of a school community. Schools with

Loud and Clear

It’s been over 25 years since I first I ran across Ted Sizer’s name. Harvard and Andover? Not in my “set.” Despite those affiliations, some friends of mine said I shouldn’t write him off, and my reverse snobbery was permanently disarmed when I read a piece he wrote for Education Week. My heart sang. Here was someone talking about secondary

Horace: Deborah Meier Published: December 2, 2009 By: Deborah Meier Topics: Ted Sizer

Sustaining Change: The Struggle to Maintain Identity at Central Park East Secondary School

Central Park East Secondary School (CPESS) in East Harlem was one of the most highly acclaimed and successful schools to come out of the period of school reform in the 1980s from which the Coalition of Essential Schools emerged. Noted progressive educator Deborah Meier founded CPESS in 1985 not as a reform model, but as a continuation of the specific

Horace: Deborah Meier Published: December 2, 2009 By: Deborah Meier, Dianne Suiter Topics: Sustainability
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