Common Principles for Uncommon Schools

Horace Volume 21 | 2005 | Issue 3

District Change to Support Essential Schools: This issue focuses on creating school districts that support Essential schools, with case studies of Boston, Indianapolis, Maplewood Public Schools, Colorado, and Humble, Texas. Also featured: interviews with school reform leaders Theodore R. Sizer, New York City Public Schools' Chief Academic Officer for New Schools Eric Nadelstern, and Warren Simmons, Executive Director of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform. Download PDF

An Excerpt from Choosing Small: The Essential Guide to High School Conversion

In October 2005, Jossey-Bass releases Choosing Small: The Essential Guide to High School Conversion by CES Director of Research Jay Feldman, and former CES staffers M. Lisette L?pez and Katherine G. Simon. In Choosing Small, CES draws on its longtime experience in school design and research on completed school conversions to provide strategic and practical guidance, offering those creating new

Horace: Volume 21 | 2005 | Issue 3 Published: September 9, 2005 By: Topics: Decision Making Processes

Book Reviews: Teachers Have it Easy and What It Takes to Pull Me Through

Teachers Have It Easy: the Big Sacrifices and Small Salaries of America’s Teachers by Daniel Moulthrop, Ninive Clements Calegari, and Dave Eggers (New Press, 355 pages, $25.95) BUY NOW! What It Takes to Pull Me Through: Why Teenagers Get in Trouble and How Four of Them Got Out by David L. Marcus (Houghton Mifflin, 352 pages, $25.00) BUY NOW! Reviewed

Horace: Volume 21 | 2005 | Issue 3 Published: September 9, 2005 By: Sarah Mayper Topics:

Conditions for Small School Success in Boston: Lessons from the Pilot Schools

When the Boston Public Schools (BPS) open for business in the fall of 2005, 25 out of 34 Boston high schools each will enroll fewer than 500 students. Seven of those schools will be brand new, the results of the conversions of Hyde Park High School and West Roxbury High School. And the momentum to establish small schools in Boston

Horace: Volume 21 | 2005 | Issue 3 Published: September 9, 2005 By: Topics: Democratic Practice, Keeping The Vision

GO TO THE SOURCE: More about the Schools and Other Organizations Featured in this Issue

Center for Collaborative Education Dan French, Executive Director Renaissance Park 1135 Tremont Street, Suite 490 Boston, MA 02120 617/421-0134 info@ccebos.org www.ccebos.org   Humble, Texas Humble Independent School District Dr. Guy Sconzo, Superintendent 20200 Eastway Village Drive P.O. Box 2000 Humble, TX 77347-2000 281/641-1000 www.humble.k12.tx.us The Houston A+ Challenge Michelle Pola, Executive Director 1415 Louisiana Box 9 Suite 3250 Houston, TX

Horace: Volume 21 | 2005 | Issue 3 Published: September 9, 2005 By: Topics:

Horace Talks with Eric Nadelstern: New York City’s Autonomy Zone

To learn more from a uniquely informed perspective on how Essential schools can thrive in large urban districts, Jill Davidson, Horace‘s editor, interviewed Eric Nadelstern, the Chief Academic Officer for New Schools at the New York City Department of Education in charge of the city’s thirty-school Autonomy Zone. The founding principal of the International High School at LaGuardia Community College,

Horace: Volume 21 | 2005 | Issue 3 Published: September 9, 2005 By: Eric Nadelstern Topics: Democratic Practice, Developing Leaders

Horace Talks with Ted Sizer: The History, Limitations, and Possibilities of School Districts

Ted Sizer, founder of the Coalition of Essential Schools and now its Chair Emeritus, discussed his frustrations with school districts as they typically operate with Jill Davidson, Horace‘s editor. Horace: Do you believe that schools work better within systems than as islands? Ted Sizer: Schools came before districts. Formal education in this country started in somebody’s kitchen, then somebody’s church,

Horace: Volume 21 | 2005 | Issue 3 Published: September 9, 2005 By: Theodore Sizer Topics: Decision Making Processes, Democratic Practice, Ted Sizer

Horace Talks with Warren Simmons: “Smart Districts”

Horace editor Jill Davidson spoke with Dr. Warren Simmons, Executive Director of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform. Established at Brown University in 1993 as an outgrowth of the work of the Coalition of Essential Schools, the Institute’s current mission is to generate, share, and act on knowledge that improves conditions and outcomes in American schools, particularly in urban areas

Horace: Volume 21 | 2005 | Issue 3 Published: September 9, 2005 By: Jill Davidson Topics: Democratic Practice, Keeping The Vision

Indianapolis’ Commitment to Small High Schools: Finding New Ways to Say Yes

“Indianapolis Public Schools operates some of the worst dropout factories in the nation. Hundreds of students each year quit school, most landing in dead-end jobs or prisons. In some families, dropping out has become a way of life with neither parents nor children completing high school,” begins the first paragraph of a May 2005 eight-part editorial series published in the

Sidebar: Indianapolis Conversion and Start-up Schools and Arlington High School’s Small Schools

2005 Conversions (these 5 sites will become 21 small schools): Arlington High School Arsenal Technical High School Broad Ripple High School Emmerich Manual High School Northwest High School Start-ups opening in 2004, 2005, and 2006 Archdiocese of Indianapolis (to-be-named urban preparatory school) Charles A. Tindley Accelerated School (Mayor-sponsored charter school) Decatur Discovery Academy (Metropolitan School District – Decatur Township) Fairbanks

Horace: Volume 21 | 2005 | Issue 3 Published: September 9, 2005 By: Topics:

Sidebar: Skyview High School and College Summit: Change Now for Students Now

For many Mapleton Public School students – and many low income students nationwide – college readiness is connected to expectations. High school graduates who come from families that have the know-how and skills to get them through the college admissions and financial processes have a cultural advantage that College Summit founder J.B. Schramm identified while working with students at a

Horace: Volume 21 | 2005 | Issue 3 Published: September 9, 2005 By: Topics:

The Stars Aligned: A Study of System Change in Colorado’s Mapleton Public Schools

By 2007, Skyview High School, which educates nearly all secondary students in Mapleton Public Schools, a 5,700 student district serving several communities on the northern urban fringe of Denver, Colorado, will no longer exist. And by 2007, the district will offer its students the choice of seven distinctly different small high schools. But this is not, despite what it may

Horace: Volume 21 | 2005 | Issue 3 Published: September 9, 2005 By: Jill Davidson Topics: Keeping The Vision

When We Know Better, We Do Better: A Study of System Change in Humble, Texas

In the Humble Independent School District, the road to restructuring has become Highway 59, a refurbished highway running north from Houston. Connecting suburban Humble, Texas to Houston, it has encouraged significant growth in the affordable housing sector and corresponding demographic change for Humble, according to Assistant Superintendent for Learning Cecilia Hawkins. Highway 59 delivered sheer numerical expansion and a new

Horace: Volume 21 | 2005 | Issue 3 Published: September 9, 2005 By: Jill Davidson Topics: Democratic Practice, Keeping The Vision

Where to Go for More: Resources for District Transformation that Supports Essential Schools

Cross City Campaign for Urban School Reform Based in Baltimore, Denver, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Oakland, Philadelphia, and Seattle, the Cross City Campaign gathers educators, community activists, union and civic officials, students, district personnel, funders, and others to focus on urban school transformation based on remaking school districts so that school and student needs drive district agendas. Cross

Horace: Volume 21 | 2005 | Issue 3 Published: September 9, 2005 By: Topics:
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