Common Principles for Uncommon Schools
What Students Say about Essential Schools: Voices students' ideas about the role that personalization plays in their learning and about how attending an Essential school affects their motivation and learning. Download PDF
Performance and Exhibitions: The Demonstration of Mastery: Examines performance-based assessment-what it looks like, what it measures, how it is graded, how standards can be applied; includes examples and ways to implement and evaluate them. Download PDF
Educational Policy and the Essential School: Explores how Essential schools have progressed in spite of apparent obstacles from state and district policies; includes a checklist for dealing with policies that conflict with Essential school principles. Download PDF
At the Five-Year Mark: The Challenge of Being Essential: An interview with Ted Sizer, the Coalition's founder, about what he and others at the Coalition learned the first five years' work with Essential schools. Download PDF
Asking the Essential Questions: Curriculum Development: Examines why curriculum should be organized around thoroughness instead of coverage, questions instead of answers; includes a guide for using essential questions in class. Download PDF
Scheduling the Essential School: Provides strategies schools have used to create new schedules to enhance learning; includes sample schedules from three schools. Download PDF
Getting Started in an Essential School Program: Describes school start-up experiences to address such questions as, What are the first steps? Must the whole school take part? How will we find and maintain support? Download PDF
Teaching in the Essential School: Addresses concerns about teaching in an Essential school, particularly about becoming a "generalist" and about designing interdisciplinary assignments. Download PDF
