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Tag Archives: relationships in schools
School Reform: College Counseling is “Elementary”
Summary: College counseling for low income students plays to a largely absent audience if interventions have not been going on since elementary school. I looked across the room of fifty or sixty seniors with a pride that had little to … Continue reading
Posted in At Risk Students, School Reform, Schools and Culture
Tagged at risk students, College Board, College Bound Scholars, college counseling, dropouts, KIPP charter schools, low-income students, relationships in schools, school reform, student motivation, teaching self control, Walter Mischel
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School Reform and the Suspension Trap; Charters Learn the Lesson
Summary: High profile charters in New Orleans learn the lesson good public high schools have known for a while. Suspension often has to take a back seat to more nuanced and humanly intensive interventions in the lives of the kids … Continue reading
Posted in School Reform, Schools and Culture
Tagged at risk students, charter schools, discipline for behavior in high school, dropouts, I-1351 Washington State, Kent School District, KIPP charters schools, low-income students, New Orleans charter schools, public high school counselor, relationships in schools, school reform, student discipline, Suspension
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Schools and Culture: The Death of Michael Brown
Summary: Prior to his encounter with Officer Wilson on the streets of Ferguson, Michael Brown in many respects was a relatively normal teenager on the cusp of adulthood. His death poses a challenge to the manner in which we empower … Continue reading
At-Risk Students: Follow the Money
Summary: Incentive systems for school districts to retrieve and hold dropouts are themselves dysfunctional. Yet, in committed communities dropout retrieval efforts are succeeding. “Follow the money.” Normally a line uttered on a TV crime show, a recent Education Week article … Continue reading
School Reform Via Targeted Hires and “Big Data”
Summary: The use of “big data” and derivative algorithms to predict which applicants will be successful hires in companies may prove useful in the identification of quality teacher candidates. The fact that 46% of new teachers leave the profession within … Continue reading
School Reform: Testing and Mistaking the Forest for the Trees
Summary: The struggles in our schools will not be won by resort to more standardized testing, but by a recommitment to the central role of the teacher in the classroom. The stories of impactful teachers are legion; the myth of … Continue reading
School Reform: Yes, Put the Principal in Charge, But That Ain’t All
Summary: Moves to give principals the authority to determine who will work in the school building for which they are responsible make sense, but to do so is but one of several interlocking changes that need to proceed together. One … Continue reading
School Reform: The Education of a Reformer
Summary: In an echo of assertions in recent posts that school district leaders need to listen deeply into the ranks in their effort to reform failing schools, we take a look at the current arrival point of the career of … Continue reading
Posted in School Bureaucracy, School Reform, Schools and Politics
Tagged administrative style, communication in schools, empowering teachers, flat oranizations, Michelle Rhee, relationships in schools, school leadership, school reform, StudentsFirst, superintendent style, teachers' unions
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At Risk Students: Can Willpower Be Taught? Part B
Summary: A book by the New York Times journalist Charles Duhigg tells the story of one individual and numerous researchers that suggest that willpower can be taught. See also Part A, last week’s post. As life has it, a book … Continue reading
Charter Schools: The Emerging Lessons
Summary: A review of lessons from charter schools so far unfortunately boils down to more money for staffing to reach at risk kids, and creative changes in the context through which kids approach school, also likely to require more funding. … Continue reading
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