Common Sense School Reform [Paperback]

Forget everything you think you know about school reform. Cutting through the cant, sentiment, and obfuscation characterizing the current school reform debate, Frederick M. Hess lacerates the conventional status quo reform efforts and exposes the naivete underlying reform strategies that rest on solutions like class size reduction, small schools, and enhanced professional development. He explains that real improvement requires a bracing regime of common sense reforms that create a culture of competence by rewarding excellence, punishing failure, and giving educators the freedom and flexibility to do their work. He documents the scope of the challenges we face and then provides concrete recommendations for addressing them through reforms to promote accountability, competition, a 21st-century workforce, effective school leadership, and sensible reinvention. Engagingly written and drawing on real world experiences and examples,Common Sense School Reformwill generate debate and help set the agenda for the future.

Common Sense School Reformdelivers exactly what it promises: a no-holds-barred, sensible approach to school reform, stripped bare of the utopian rhetoric and pie-in-the-sky promises that so many school reformers prefer. School leaders should read this book! --Diane Ravitch, author ofThe Language Policeand Research Professor, New York University

This is a refreshingly direct and stimulating look at competing visions of educational reform and a passionate argument for radical change. Informed by Hess' experience as a teacher, teacher educator, and scholar, this book will help crystallize key disputes while it unapologetically calls some questionable assumptions out into the open for debate. --Andrew J. Rotherham, Director, 21st Century Schools Project, Progressive Policy Institute

In this book, Rick Hess performs a valuable public service. His analysis of school reform is both thoughtful and provocative. His ideas onlcC