In this book Peterson interprets the history of American schools by placing major educational reformers in the context of their times and relates their thinking to our own era by scrutinizing the often unanticipated consequences of their commitments and ideas. These extraordinary individuals provided the critical ideas and articulated the ideals that motivated many others to search for ways to save the schools from the limitations in which they were embedded: Horace Mann, John Dewey, Martin Luther King, Al Shanker, William Bennett, and James S. Coleman. The drive to centralize was pervasive despite repeatedly expressed reform desire to customize education. Peterson argues that education has become an increasingly labor intensive industry that must reverse direction and become more capital intensive or it will descend in quality. Fortunately, technological change is making it possible radically alter the way in which education services are delivered, providing a new chance to save our schools.

Praise for the First Edition: "Barr and Parrett have provided educators, policy makers, and parents with an outstanding resource. If you′re serious about leaving no child behind, this is the one book you need to read." —Bill Scott, Executive Director Kentucky School Boards Association Praise for the Second Edition: "We now have the tools to ensure that all our students are successful—what a glorious time for schools, thanks to Robert Barr and William Parrett!" —Nancy Golden, Superintendent Springfield Public Schools, OR Improve achievement for all students with winning strategies that respond to NCLB requirements! Demonstrating that both struggling students and low-performing schools can show dramatic improvement, the authors provide lessons learned from experienced teachers to help educators effectively instruct students who are disadvantaged, culturally diverse, or who may be at risk. Featuring the voices of students, teachers, and administrators, this field-tested guide reviews NCLB mandates and encourages educators to: Establish priorities that focus on student learning Create a school and classroom climate of respect Maintain high expectations for academic performance Rely on results-driven instructional and assessment practices Collaborate with parents and families Saving Our Students, Saving Our Schools, Second Edition, is a valuable resource for educators who want to ensure positive school change and support academic success for their students.

"A comprehensive look at how the arts (broadly conceived) can improve teaching, learning, and curriculum for all students, written in accessible language for non-academics and non-experts. It contains many evocative examples to illustrate the power of the arts to change education"--

"Saving Our Schools exposes the ugly side of President George Bush's "No Child Left Behind" mandate, which has threatened to close more than 6,000 public schools, to the detriment of dedicated teachers and disadvantaged children alike. Revealing how NCLB forces schools with strictly limited resources to teach its children test-taking skills in a desperate bid to pass high-stakes standardized testing, and how the government blacklists successful professors, institutions, and methods that balk the NCLB party line, and much more, Saving Our Schools warns of an immediate threat to the integrity of public education and urges the reader to take action. An eye-opening social commentary, of keen importance in determining the nation's future. -Midwest Book Review

Public schools are a vast money pit. Education officials seem to prefer inefficiency and mediocrity. We could have better schools at less cost. This book explains how. Bruce Deitrick Price is the country's most prolific and aggressive writer on education. He is good at explaining the root causes, the problems that typically occur, and the ideological obsessions that lead our Education Establishment astray. This book presents 65 articles divided into 10 themes: Reading; Math; Weird Theories and Methods; Common Core; Historical Background; Guilty as Charged; Where Are Our Leaders; and What to Do Now. You can read the articles in any order and dip in wherever you want. This is pleasant reading about grim topics. If we don't save the public schools, we're not going to save very much else.

From David Osborne, the author of Reinventing Government--a biting analysis of the failure of America's public schools and a comprehensive plan for revitalizing American education. In Reinventing America's Schools, David Osborne, one of the world's foremost experts on public sector reform, offers a comprehensive analysis of the charter school movements and presents a theory that will do for American schools what his New York Times bestseller Reinventing Government did for public governance in 1992. In 2005, when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, the city got an unexpected opportunity to recreate their school system from scratch. The state's Recovery School District (RSD), created to turn around failing schools, gradually transformed all of its New Orleans schools into charter schools, and the results are shaking the very foundations of American education. Test scores, school performance scores, graduation and dropout rates, ACT scores, college-going rates, and independent studies all tell the same story: the city's RSD schools have tripled their effectiveness in eight years. Now other cities are following suit, with state governments reinventing failing schools in Newark, Camden, Memphis, Denver, Indianapolis, Cleveland, and Oakland. In this book, Osborne uses compelling stories from cities like New Orleans and lays out the history and possible future of public education. Ultimately, he uses his extensive research to argue that in today's world, we should treat every public school like a charter school and grant them autonomy, accountability, diversity of school designs, and parental choice.

Don McAdams, one of a small group of activists elected to the Houston Independent School District Board of Education in 1989, provides a fast moving first-person account of successful reform in the nation’s seventh largest school district. With tact and wisdom, the author shows that school reform is seldom about reading, writing, and arithmetic. Rather, it is mostly about power, status, and money. This is a great story filled with conflict and surprising turns of fate. No one interested in politics, governance, and management of urban school districts can afford to miss Fighting to Save Our Urban Schools . . . and Winning!

Saving Schools traces the story of the rise, decline, and potential resurrection of American public schools through the lives and ideas of six mission-driven reformers: Horace Mann, John Dewey, Martin Luther King Jr., Albert Shanker, William Bennett, and James Coleman. Yet schools did not become the efficient, egalitarian, and high-quality educational institutions these reformers envisioned. Indeed, the unintended consequences of their legacies shaped today’s flawed educational system, in which political control of stagnant American schools has shifted away from families and communities to larger, more centralized entities—initially to bigger districts and eventually to control by states, courts, and the federal government. Peterson’s tales help to explain how nation building, progressive education, the civil rights movement, unionization, legalization, special education, bilingual teaching, accountability, vouchers, charters, and homeschooling have, each in a different way, set the stage for a new era in American education. Now, under the impact of rising cost, coupled with the possibilities unleashed by technological innovation, schooling may be transformed through virtual learning. The result could be a personalized, customized system of education in which families have greater choice and control over their children’s education than at any time since our nation was founded.

Somewhere. . . there is a place of sanity where education is intense and substantive. . . . It's in that place that Deborah Meier has been working all these years. Her voice conveys a life of struggle in the front lines-victories and losses, hopes and disappointments. . . . It's a voice our nation needs to hear. --Jonathan Kozol, from the Foreword Acclaimed educator Deborah Meier offers a fresh take on standardized tests. While others have criticized standards and what they measure, Meier rejects the very idea of a centralized authority that dictates how and what teachers teach. Standardization, she argues, prevents citizens-including teachers-from emerging as thoughtful, responsible adults, seriously engaged with shaping their own schools, classrooms, and communities. As a result, young people can't learn from them how to be thoughtful, responsible adults and good citizens, the primary goal of public education in a democracy. The New Democracy Forum is a series of short paperback originals exploring creative solutions to our most urgent national concerns. "A civic treasure. . . . A truly good idea, carried out with intelligence and panache." --Robert Pinsky

Noted educator Tom Little and Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Katherine Ellison reveal the home-grown solution to turning American students into life-long learners. The longtime head of Park Day School, Tom Little embarked on a tour of 43 progressive schools across the country. In this book, his life’s work, he interweaves his teaching experience, the knowledge he gleaned from his trip, and the history of Progressive Education. As Little and Katherine Ellison reveal, these educators and schools invigorate learning and promote inquisitiveness by allowing the curriculum to grow organically out of children's questions—whether they lead to studying the senses, working on a farm, or re-creating a desert ecosystem in the classroom. We see curious students draw on information across disciplines to think in imaginative yet practical ways, like in a "Mini-Maker Faire" or designing and building a chair from scratch. Becoming good citizens was another of Little's goals. He believed in the need for students to learn how to become advocates for themselves, from setting rules on the playground to engaging in issues of social justice in the wider community. Using the philosophy of Progressive Education, schools can prepare students to shape a vibrant future in the arts and sciences for themselves and the nation.