“How The Other Half Learns”: A Review (Part 1) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

“How The Other Half Learns”: A Review (Part 1) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

“How The Other Half Learns”: A Review (Part 1)

Robert Pondiscio’s recent book about a New York City elementary school is an uncommon example of research and writing on school reform.

Why uncommon?

Few former teachers, journalists, and academic researchers have done what he did in spending a year at Bronx 1, part of the network of Success Academies in New York City that former city official Eva Moskowitz founded in 2006. Now a charter network of 47 schools in New York City enrolling 17,000 low-income children of color, Success Academies are both extolled and criticized (especially in the media). There is precious little middle ground when it comes to reformers, parents, teachers, and others when it comes to judging the network’s worth. Writing in 2014, a few years before Pondiscio became embedded in one Success Academy school, he wrote an op-ed in a New York newspaper asking: “Is Eva Moskowitz the Michael Jordan of Education Reform, or is she the Mark McGuire? (p. 10)”. One athlete, the finest of all basketball players in the 20th century and the other a disgraced steroid-filled home run hitter. He wasn’t sure. But two years later he wanted to find out.

Surprisingly, Moskowitz agreed to let Pondiscio to spend a year at Bronx 1 observing classes and teacher meetings, shadowing the principal and staff members, interviewing parents, teachers and administrators, meeting with children–“scholars” as they are called–in and out of school. He also attended CONTINUE READING: “How The Other Half Learns”: A Review (Part 1) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice