Ten Traits of Highly Successful Schools

Rating:
Summary: Education for the Right Wing
Review: The worst book on education I have read. Over-and-over through this book the author makes blanket statements about cooperative learning, bilingual education, whole language (I do agree with her some on this one) condemning them and stating that these can hurt students and especially at-risk students. Education is not that simple and to give exaggerated negative information about these practices is obnoxious and harmful to the thousands of educators who apply them successfully in the classroom.

Rating:
Summary: Education for the Right Wing
Review: We always say how important education is to us, but often times we fall down on the job as parents and community members by not following up. The author of this book arms parents with enough concrete information (and sources to find even more information) to evaluate schools. Though she focuses on public schools, much of the information would be applicable to private schools too. I thought she was spot on in her descriptions of good and bad principals as well as good/bad teachers. In short, as educators, we need to be accountable -- enough of throwing up our hands. It's time to realize that we are behind other countries, especially in math, and it's time to adopt strong standards, not fuzzy ones. Occassionally, the author overstates or overgeneralizes (or perhaps is just overopinionated), but I see that as a relatively small flaw in a very useful and pragmatic book. She did a good job on the annotated bibliography and web site description.

Rating:
Summary: an important book for parents
Review: We always say how important education is to us, but often times we fall down on the job as parents and community members by not following up. The author of this book arms parents with enough concrete information (and sources to find even more information) to evaluate schools. Though she focuses on public schools, much of the information would be applicable to private schools too. I thought she was spot on in her descriptions of good and bad principals as well as good/bad teachers. In short, as educators, we need to be accountable -- enough of throwing up our hands. It's time to realize that we are behind other countries, especially in math, and it's time to adopt strong standards, not fuzzy ones. Occassionally, the author overstates or overgeneralizes (or perhaps is just overopinionated), but I see that as a relatively small flaw in a very useful and pragmatic book. She did a good job on the annotated bibliography and web site description.