Dream school?
Posted on January 22, 2014 by debmeier
I just finished reading “Banding Together,” by David Kirp in the latest issue of the American Educator. It’s all about how schools improve their test scores when labor and management work together, rather than battling each other. Facing, as we are, a “catastrophe”—that “puts United States’ future economic prosperity, global position, and physical safety at risk” according to a 2012 report published by the Council of Foreign Relations, (led by Joel Klein and Condoleeza Rice)—Kirp has some suggestions to make. Kirp mocks it lightly, with an aside on “physical safety?” but his main point is that the best answer is labor-management collaboration. He highlights the work going on in Union City, N.J. They have made a real turn around in test scores AND college graduation rates, he reports. He focuses on what he calls a “dream team” of 3rd grade teachers in one low-income school with lots of non-English speakers. In 25 years they went from one of the most “wretched” to shining stardom. He visited their school and judged it by his own Golden Rule (which I like), “I’d be happy if my own child went there.” The school as a whole, but the dream team in