Standards for Our Schools How to Set Them, Measure Them, and Reach Them [Paperback]

A must read for those seeking high standards for all students. With unusual insight, the authors address the major issues, offering inspirational examples of schools that succeed. --Jerome T. Murphy, professor and dean, Harvard Graduate School of Education

This timely, tough-minded book shows how American public schools can be saved by instituting high standards for academic achievement. It explains not just what the standards movement is about and why it is important, but also what it will take to bring every student up to high standards, no matter where that student starts.

Tucker and Codding focus on empowering both students and adults by giving students the gift of high expectations and by giving school professionals the information, skills, authority and resources needed to do the job. They advocate building a standards-based instructional system, creating a results-oriented culture devoted to continuous improvement, and making the institution and the people in it accountable for reaching the goals set by the standards.

Acknowledgments

The Authors

Prologue: The View from the Plains 1

Introduction: Failure Is Not an Option 17

Interlude: What Do You Mean, Tiffany Won't Get Credit for Algebra I? 25

1 Setting High Standards for Everyone 31

Interlude: But How Will We Actually Get These Kids to Algebra II? 65

2 Teaching to the Standards 73

Interlude: Upset Victory: Student Achievement 1, Everything Else 0 101

3 Leading and Managing for Success 107

Interlude: The School Nobody Wanted 133

4 Rethinking the Elementary and Middle Schools 139

Interlude: The Graphic Arts Academy 169

5 Beyond the Comprehensive High School 175

Interlude: Accountability, Chilã%