“Confessions of a School Reformer” (Part 4)
This series of posts is called “Confessions of a School Reformer,” a book I am now writing. Parts 1, 2, and 3 describe my entry into classroom teaching beginning in 1955.
The Cardozo Project in Urban Teaching (1963-1967)
The pilot project, initially funded for one year, was a teacher-driven, school-based, neighborhood-oriented solution to the problem of low-performing students. It was an attempted reform of schools by creating a different model of preparing sharp, skilled teachers on-site and involved in the local community to turn around low-performing segregated schools. This school-based reform model rejected the traditional university-based teacher education programs wholly separated from impoverished neighborhoods that had failed for decades.[i]
Master teachers in academic subjects trained returned Peace Corps volunteers to teach while drawing from neighborhood resources. Once trained, the reform theory went, these ex-Peace Corps volunteers would become crackerjack teachers who could hook listless students through creative lessons drawing from their knowledge of ghetto neighborhoods and personal relationships with students and their families. As a result, more Cardozo students would go on to college, fewer would drop out. That was the reform model.
As luck would have it, the Project got funded each year in last-minute negotiations between federal and district agencies. I continued to teach at Cardozo High School, eventually directing the program until 1967. I recruited CONTINUE READING:
“Confessions of a School Reformer” (Part 4) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice