Synopses & Reviews
& quot; A wise and beautiful book that elevates the level of debate on tests and school reform.& quot; < br=""> & mdash; Jonathan Kozol, author of Savage Inequalities< br=""> < br=""> A visionary look at trust and schools that takes on some of today& #39; s hottest education issues& mdash; from testing to small schools& mdash; all grounded in stories of the innovative and hugely successful public schools Deborah Meier has famously founded.< br=""> < br=""> & quot; A rich, nuanced reflection on trust and schooling that examines trust& #39; s many layers. . . . A terrific, important book.& quot; < br=""> & mdash; Mike Rose, author of Possible Lives< br=""> < br=""> & quot; A passionate, jargon-free plea for a rerouting of educational reform, sure to energize committed parents, progressive educators and maybe even a politician or two.& quot; < br=""> & mdash; Publishers Weekly< br=""> < br=""> & quot; Listen carefully to Deborah Meier& #39; s In Schools We Trust: She speaks to the heart of a school& mdash; and of democracy itself.& quot; < br=""> & mdash; Theodore R. Sizer, author of Horace& #39; s Compromise and founder of the Coalition of Essential Schools.< br=""> < br=""> MacArthur Award-winning educator Deborah Meier is author of The Power of Their Ideas (Beacon / 3113-5 / $14.00 pb) and Will Standards Save Public Education? (Beacon / 0441-3 / $12.00 pb). She lives in Hillsdale, New York, < br=""> and Boston, Massachusetts.
Synopsis
A visionary look at trust and schools that takes on some of today's hottest education issues-from testing to small schools-all grounded in stories of the innovative and hugely successful public schools Deborah Meier has famously founded.
Synopsis
MacArthur Award-winning educator Deborah Meier is author of The Power of Their Ideas and Will Standards Save Public Education?. She lives in Hillsdale, New York, and Boston, Massachusetts
Synopsis
We are in an era of radical distrust of public education. Increasingly, we turn to standardized tests and standardized curricula-now adopted by all fifty states-as our national surrogates for trust.
Legendary school founder and reformer Deborah Meier believes fiercely that schools have to win our faith by showing they can do their job. But she argues just as fiercely that standardized testing is precisely the wrong way to that end. The tests themselves, she argues, cannot give the results they claim. And in the meantime, they undermine the kind of education we actually want.
In this multilayered exploration of trust and schools, Meier critiques the ideology of testing and puts forward a different vision, forged in the success stories of small public schools she and her colleagues have created in Boston and New York. These nationally acclaimed schools are built, famously, around trusting teachers-and students and parents-to use their own judgment.
Meier traces the enormous educational value of trust; the crucial and complicated trust between parents and teachers; how teachers need to become better judges of each others' work; how race and class complicate trust at all levels; and how we can begin to 'scale up' from the kinds of successes she has created.
About the Author
MacArthur Award-winning educator Deborah Meier is author of The Power of Their Ideas and Will Standards Save Public Education?. She lives in Hillsdale, New York, and Boston, Massachusetts
Table of Contents
'contents
introduction 1
Part One: Trust and the Culture of Schools
1 Learning in the Company of Adults
2 Experiments in Trust: The Mission Hill School and Others
3 Parents and Schools
4 Teachers Trusting Teachers
5 Trusting Each Other's Agendas and Intentions: The Dynamics of Race
and Class
Part Two: Testing and Trust
6 Why Tests Don't Test What We Think They Do
7 Standardization versus Standards
8 The Achievement Gap
Part Three: A Broader Vision
9 Scaling Up: Stacking the Odds in Favor of the Best
10 Democracy and Public Education
suggested readings
acknowledgments\n
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