Improbable scholars
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15
Ratings1
Average rating4
"No school district can be all charismatic leaders and super-teachers. It can't start from scratch, and it can't fire all its teachers and principals when students do poorly. Great charter schools can only serve a tiny minority of students. Whether we like it or not, most of our youngsters will continue to be educated in mainstream public schools. The good news, as David L. Kirp reveals in Improbable Scholars, is that there's a sensible way to rebuild public education and close the achievement gap for all students. Indeed, this is precisely what's happening in a most unlikely place: Union City, New Jersey, a poor, crowded Latino community just across the Hudson from Manhattan. The school district--once one of the worst in the state--has ignored trendy reforms in favor of proven game-changers like quality early education, a word-soaked curriculum, and hands-on help for teachers. When beneficial new strategies have emerged, like using sophisticated data-crunching to generate pinpoint assessments to help individual students, they have been folded into the mix. The results demand that we take notice--from third grade through high school, Union City scores on the high-stakes state tests approximate the statewide average. In other words, these inner-city kids are achieving just as much as their suburban cousins in reading, writing, and math. What's even more impressive, nearly ninety percent of high school students are earning their diplomas and sixty percent of them are going to college. Top students are winning national science awards and full rides at Ivy League universities. These schools are not just good places for poor kids. They are good places for kids, period. Improbable Scholars offers a playbook--not a prayer book--for reform that will dramatically change our approach to reviving public education"--
"In Improbable Scholars, David L. Kirp challenges the conventional wisdom about public schools and education reform in America through an in-depth look at Union City, New Jersey's high-performing urban school district. In this compelling study, Kirp reveals Union's city's revolutionary secret: running an exemplary school system doesn't demand heroics, just hard and steady work"--
Reviews with the most likes.
It's all bad news out of American public schools these days. Tests scores are declining, we hear, students don't want to go to school, and the curriculum is more and more watered down.
But what about those schools that should be failing but are not? What are those teachers and administrators doing differently?
Kirp takes a close look at one such school district. It's in Union City, New Jersey and the students are predominantly poor and predominantly not native English speakers. Yet students are doing well on nationally normed tests. Why?
Kirp reveals the commitments that have helped Union City students do well despite the obstacles students in the city face. Instead of revising curriculum and bringing in new teachers and new methods, Union City staff has worked on strengthening the parts of their system that have always worked well. Kirp cites four key components: strong early childhood education, a word-rich environment, help for teachers, and a program known as abrazos which emphasizes connections in the school.
Great read.
