Gary Stager's "Must Read" List for School "Reform"

The esteemed Gary Stager, educational change advocate and a strong voice in the edublogosphere, last week posted a piece--on the new Huffington Post Education tab--which he, with characteristic aplomb, entitled, "Wanna be an School Reformer? You Better do your Homework!" I heartily encourage you to begin yours with a visit to that post and a thorough reading of Gary's careful and knowledgeable descriptions of the 18 books on his (though "admittedly subjective") list of essential required readings. I took a few minutes at the start of my work day to cull out just the titles with Gary's links to the books themselves, but only because I want a concise assignment sheet for myself in order to search my local public library (that "teacher's salary" issue ;).

[Posted later, a pic of my growing collection from the public library, shared with my colleagues at my cubby]:

Steve Hargadon, through whose Facebook post I became aware of Gary's article, suggests that "we need to do a book study of these." I concur. As I say, please do read the original post, but if you need the cheat sheet I submit it here, along with Gary's comment preceding his must-read list:

"The following books are appropriate for parents, teachers, administrators, politicians and plain old citizens committed to the ideal of sustaining a joyful, excellent and democratic public education for every child."

A Schoolmaster of the Great City: A Progressive Education Pioneer's Vision for Urban Schools, Angelo Patri

Dr. Seymour Sarason, The Skeptical Visionary: A Seymour Sarason Reader, The Predictable Failure of Educational Reform: Can We Change Course Before It's Too Late, And What do YOU Mean by Learning, Political Leadership and Educational Failure and Charter Schools: Another Flawed Educational Reform?

Seymour Papert, The Children's Machine: Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer

The Big Picture: Education Is Everyone's Business by Dennis Littky and Littky's biography, Doc: The Story Of Dennis Littky And His Fight For A Better School, by Susan Kammeraad-Campbell

Deborah Meier, In Schools We Trust: Creating Communities of Learning in an Era of Testing and Standardization

The Schools our Children Deserve: Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms and "Tougher Standards" and The Case Against Standardized Testing: Raising the Scores, Ruining the Schools by Alfie Kohn

Dr. Theodore Sizer, Horace's Compromise

Jonathan Kozol, Ordinary Resurrections: Children in the Years of Hope

Herbert Kohl, The Herb Kohl Reader: Awakening the Heart of Teaching

Susan Ohanian and Kathy Emery, Why is Corporate America Bashing Our Public Schools?

Gerald Bracey published, Education Hell: Rhetoric vs. Reality - Transforming the Fire Consuming America's Schools

Not With Our Kids You Don't! Ten Strategies to Save Our Schools by Juanita Doyon

Go for it! And let me know when you're ready to have that book study group!

Twitter #K12perfectschool to Contribute!

I started a project [hears the Bee Gees "I Started a Joke"] on twitter that I'm hoping gains some legs and provides some interesting diversion from the eternal discussions about "school reform."

Here's the gist: Assuming that prominent futurist/thinker Alvin Toffler was correct when he recently said in an interview:

Edutopia.org: You've been writing about our educational system for decades. What's the most pressing need in public education right now?

Alvin Toffler: Shut down the public education system. just how do we proceed to do that? Well, I don't know, but I do know that Twitter holds some interesting promise as a dialog facilitator, so I thought to myself, why not see?

The image below is the beginning of what will hopefully be a response to my call for educators on Twitter to contribute little pieces of how they envision a changed landscape of the way we teach and learn. Do you have ideas? Open up your Twitter, type the hashtag "#k12perfectschool" and have at it. I'll be noting my ideas along the way. The goal?

After we get 2010 tweets I'll dig in and summarize. Maybe we'll have something of a starting point. Maybe we won't. It'll be interesting, at least, and will be a valiant effort to end-run the timeless and endless talk about reforming a system that is so fundamentally wrong and so clearly failing to invent one that is fundamentally right and that works.

Teachers Prepared for Reform?

THE Journal comes through in the thought-provocation department again with its article entitled "Report Shows Teachers Not Adequately Prepared for Education Reform," By Scott Aronowitz.

Citing the report released in December by the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning (CFTL), the author reports that in California, despite top-down efforts to reform education into sync with the demands of 21st century living and working, though many teachers possess the skill set to function effectively, "many more are simply not up to the task."

Details are at the article, and I'm only here to point you to that, but when you go, please budget a few minutes in your busy day to scan the comments and to add your own. This is a discussion worthy of your attention and your contribution. It certainly got me on my soapbox:

"Education reform?" A buzzphrase so hackneyed it's beyond cliche. Alvin Toffler said it, echoing some of the other best minds amongst those focused on the future: "We don't need to reform the system; we need to replace the system." Is there any hope for doing so? A tad, and active administrators like Chris Lehmann, principal of the Science Leadership Academy in PA, are fighting the good fight. An essential issue that is seldom mentioned is the need for any realistic system of education to value and reward creative, scientific, literary, social, vocational, etc. learning outside of 8 to 4 schoolday instruction. Another is to flex around changing family work and play schedules, perhaps offering something like 20/7 availability of synchronous instructor time, face-to-face or online, with group meetings and their necessary experience with social skills offered the same way. Sit them in rows (or in circles--the "new rows") in classrooms from their least productive circadian hour to a time when a little more non-academic scheduling can keep them in line until their parents can pick them up and shuttle them home? No longer justified. Hope for those kinds of reform? Only a tad from a set of systems so entrenched by custom. The most destructive and inhibiting words in the English language? "We've always done it this way."

The complete report, "The Status of the Teaching Profession 2009," along with summary materials and recommendations, can be found here.