To investigate powerful teaching and learning, we could inundate ourselves with stories and research about Coalition and other like-minded schools. Phone conversations, emails, books, magazines, web sites, conferences, videos: all add detail to the diverse and constantly evolving possibilities. But for all of us, time is limited and we need to make the best of the little time that we’ve
Affiliate with CES National If CES stands for what you believe in??”personalized, equitable, intellectually vibrant schools??”we invite you to affiliate with CES National as a school or as an individual. Stand up for schooling that is worthy of the name, join a network of passionate educators and innovative schools, and receive great benefits such as Horace subscriptions, Fall Forum facilitator
Activists and chroniclers of Chicago’s small schools movement, editors William Ayers, Michael Klonsky and Gabrielle Lyon have assembled fifteen uplifting, informative essays in A Simple Justice. Offering history, philosophy, cultural criticism, pedagogy and calls to action, the various contributors make explicit the connections among small schools, social justice and educational equality. Charles M. Payne’s examination of the socially progressive heritage
In 2001-2002, its first year of existence, the International Community School (ICS), which serves 300 kindergarten through fifth graders in the predominantly Latino Fruitvale neighborhood of Oakland, California, felt assessment pressure from several different directions. ICS had to demonstrate that students were learning to write well, and it needed to measure students’ Spanish and English literacy skills in its bilingual
“Let no one be discouraged by the belief there is nothing one person can do against the enormous array of the world’s ills, misery, ignorance, and violence. Few will have the greatness to bend history, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events. And in the total of all those acts will be written the
Can We Talk about Race? And Other Conversations in an Era of School Resegregation by Beverly Daniel Tatum (Beacon Press, 168 pages, $22.95) Beverly Daniel Tatum argues that we must talk about race in order to combat insidious school resegregation and make good on the promise of our nation’s diversity. Policies reinforcing residential segregation patterns and federal judicial decisions that
As this issue of Horace goes to press and with great sadness, we share the news that CES’s founder, Theodore R. Sizer, passed away on October 21, 2009 at home in Harvard, Massachusetts. Ted leaves his wife Nancy Faust Sizer, four children, 10 grandchildren, and a wide circle of loving family and friends. Please visit www.essentialschools.org to learn more about
By Richard Rothstein (Economic Policy Insitute, 210 pp., $17.95) BUY NOW! reviewed by Jill Davidson Many of us in the CES network, accustomed to focusing intently on what schools can do, create educational environments that support all children to learn, grow, and thrive. At the same time, we know that schools nationwide have not been able to close the “achievement
Collaborative Teacher Leadership: How Teachers Can Foster Equitable Schools, by Martin L. Krovetz and Gilberto Arriaza (Corwin Press, 216 pages, $29.95) While Collaborative Teacher Leadership would be a benefit to most schools and school systems that seek ways to improve and institutionalize distributed leadership practices, it seems a particularly good fit for schools that are already incorporating the Common Principles.
On the final day of a month-long unit on heritage in a Division Two (ninth and tenth grade) English class at North Central Charter Essential School in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, I overheard total, wrenching discouragement. “I hate art. I’m so terrible at this! Why can’t we just read and write in English class?” groaned a student struggling to complete a map
Collateral Damage: How High-Stakes Testing Corrupts America’s Schools by Sharon L. Nichols and David C. Berliner (Harvard Education Press, 250 pages, $24.95) Collateral Damage will recommit you to the Common Principles like a drowning person recommits to respiration. Nichols and Berliner provide a satisfyingly reasoned critique of high-stakes standardized tests, a tight, research-based, evidence-rich argument that creates urgency for the
Maureen Benson, principal of the Fremont Federation’s Youth Empowerment School (YES), talked with Laura Flaxman and Horace editor Jill Davidson about YES’s early successes and challenges as a small, autonomous, interconnected school. On Professional Development and Staffing Academically and instructionally, we are nowhere near where I would like us to be. But creating a cohesive staff takes time, patience, resilience
In Creating New Schools’s introduction, Evans Clinchy-Senior Consultant at the Institute for Responsive Education at Northeastern University -questions the possibilities of autonomy within large districts, specifically Boston and New York. Linda Nathan and Larry Myatt’s chapter on the history and trajectory of Fenway Middle College High School compellingly describes that autonomy, specific challenges to it and the exhilarating and exhausting
Multicultural education isn’t a specialty; it’s how teaching and learning should happen in all schools, with all students. Gloria Ladson-Billings, education professor at the University of Wisconsin, studies the habits of mind required of beginning teachers who are prepared to support diverse classrooms. Drawing on her own memories of her start in teaching and the experiences of eight students participating
Nancy Sizer examines the kaleidoscopic forces active in high school seniors’ lives to describe their particular opportunities and pressures. She moves beyond sympathy, reminding us that this transitional year, exciting and terrifying to many students, is often consumed by the frenzy of college admission or other post-high school role pursuit followed by the crash of senioritis, compounded by unique family
The Coalition of Essential Schools (CES) is entering its 25th year as an organization and a network of schools dedicated transforming the experience of schools and education for young people, their teachers, and their communities nationwide. The practice of educators to engage in cycles of inquiry and actions that address challenges and improve outcomes evolved directly from the “conversation among
Data Wise: A Step-by-Step Guide to Using Assessment Results to Improve Teaching and Learning, edited by Kathryn Parker Boudett, Elizabeth A. City, and Richard J. Murnane (Harvard Educational Publishing Group, 212 pages, $29.95) Demystify that data! A powerful asset to data driven inquiry and improvement, Data Wise comes out of a work group of Boston Public School leaders and Harvard
No individual has all the skills–and certainly not the time–to carry out all the complex tasks of contemporary leadership. –John Gardner, On Leadership Coalition principles assert that teaching and learning should be personalized to the maximum feasible extent and that “to capitalize on this personalization, decisions about the details of the course of study, the use of students’ and teachers’
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
Don’t Forget to Write: 54 Enthralling and Effective Writing Lessons for Students 6-18 (826 Valencia, 224 pages, $25.00) 826 Valencia provides drop-in tutoring centers, writing workshops, and support for teaching writing in local schools nationwide. Don’t Forget to Write gathers some of the best of what’s been taught, often by “real” writers—the published, recognizable, New York Times Book Review sort.
Horace editor Jill Davidson met with four Bay Area educators—Michelle Lau, math teacher at Fremont’s Irvington High School, David Montes de Oca, educational strategist at Oakland’s Urban Promise Academy, Monica Vaughan, teacher-leader at Oakland’s Street Academy, and Michele Dawson, technology coordinator at Daly City’s Jefferson Elementary School District—for a roundtable discussion on leading for equity. All four are current or
Since not all small school restructuring outcomes are equal, care must be taken to insure that these resources and efforts will be truly productive. The last thing small school proponents want to see is a future in which school downsizing ends up on the dead fad pile, with students reaping few benefits from it, funding agencies declaring it a bust,
We recognize the fact that no two of our students are exactly the same, and that each changes over time. All this bubbling variety is inconvenient. It would be handy if each thirteen year old was a standardized being, pumping no more or fewer hormones than any other thirteen year old and speaking no language other than formal English. Life
All learning communities contain a multidimensional spectrum of strengths and weaknesses. By embracing this truth in their values and practices, Essential schools are well poised to respond effectively to the challenge of inclusion. Students in inclusive educational settings take many paths toward the achievement of meaningful educational and personal goals. Inclusion reorganizes a school’s environment: it opens to all students
Misha Lesley, founding principal of Empowerment College Preparatory High School in Houston, Texas, currently serves on the CES National Executive Board and is a Program Director at Prepared 4 Life, a Houston-based organization that develops asset-based experiential after-school programs for middle school students. Through participation in the CES Small Schools Network, Misha has worked with many new and veteran CES