Read Any Good Books on School Reform Lately?

Darling-Hammond, Linda. The Right to Learn, Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco, 1997.

There have always been extraordinary schools that accomplish extraordinary things with all kinds of students. But these have been the exception to the rule. In this important book, one of the nation's most respected educators describes learner-centered schools that work for all students in all kinds of communities and outlines the policies and practices needed to create these schools on a systemwide basis.

Meier, Deborah. The Power of Their Ideas, Beacon Press, Boston, Massachusetts, 1995.

"Meier pledges her faith 'in the extraordinary untapped capacities of all our children'; but, unlike so many radical reformers, she is also firmly rooted in the reality of the classroom...What as propelled people like Meier from the periphery to the center of the ongoing school debate is the recognition that a new and different kind of public school is no longer a luxury." -James Traub, The New Yorker

Sizer, Theodore. Horace's School-Redesigning the American High School, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1992.

This book responds to Horace, a composite of American teachers, and the painful compromises he has made by offering a process of redesign that respects the best of the rich traditions of secondary schooling and concurrently the imperative that we do far more in preparing our adolescents for their and our future. At its core, Horace's School continues the ongoing dialogue about what it means to be well-educated in this country, who the recipients of that education should be, and how best to provide that education.

Ted Sizer is the chairman of the Coalition of Essential Schools and the author of Horace's Compromise, and Horace's Hope, two other highly recommended books in this series.

Wood, George. A Time to Learn, The Story of One High School's Remarkable Transformation and the People Who Made It Happen, Dutton, New York, 1998.

In 1992 George Wood left the ivory tower of academia, where he'd been a professor of education for more than a decade, to become the principal of a poor and struggling high school in rural Ohio. In three short years Federal Hocking High became one of the top schools in the region-and a model for what can be accomplished when teachers, parents, students, and principal with a vision all put their minds to creating change. As a result of Wood's groundbreaking ideas, attendance, GPA's and college attendance rates at FHHS have soared to a high equal only to its students' newfound morale. In A Time to Learn, Wood offers guidelines, practical plans, and advice based on his observations and experiences at FHHS, as well as the results of his own trial and error. He focuses not on policy decisions or legislative debate but rather on the real lives of students and teachers.