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Thursday, December 6, 2012

How Can We Make Schools a Center of Community Life? - Bridging Differences - Education Week

How Can We Make Schools a Center of Community Life? - Bridging Differences - Education Week:


How Can We Make Schools a Center of Community Life?

Dear Pedro,
I love it! Brockton makes a good story, and while I'm a perennial skeptic about schools that beat the odds so convincingly, I'm willing to suspend belief. I hope I can visit there sometime this coming year. What's your sense of the incoming 9th grade? What are their literacy skills at that point? In order to focus on literacy, did the school do less of something else—and if so, what?
A good 4th grade grader is actually a pretty good reader, as long as the reading matter isn't too sophisticated. They lack often mostly in "subject matter," so to speak.
Anyway, I don't see the polarities as between those at Brockton and those at Mission Hill, etc.
Moving on, I'm thinking about my opponents, who come in varied types. Let me name at least three: