Bøker av Jack Schneider

Schooling has become less about learning and more about the scramble for good grades, high test scores, and spotless transcripts. No one is happy about this, least of all students. But what can be done? Off the Mark explains how we got into this predicament, why our reforms haven¿t worked, and how we can reorient our system to advance learning.

A trenchant analysis of how public education is being destroyed in overt and deceptive waysand how to fight back';There's no more time for tinkering around the edges.' Betsy DeVos, 2018 ';Rethink School' tourBetsy DeVos may be the most prominent face of the push to dismantle public education, but she is in fact part of a large movement that's been steadily gaining power and notching progress for decadesamassing funds, honing their messaging, and crafting policies. While support for public education today is stronger than ever, the movement to save our schools remains fragmented, variable, and voluntary. Meanwhile, those set on destroying this beloved institution are unified, patient, and well-resourced.In A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door, Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider, co-hosts of the popular education podcast Have You Heard, lay out the increasingly potent network of conservative elected officials, advocacy groups, funders, and think tanks that have aligned behind a radical vision to unmake public education. They describe the dogma underpinning the work of the dismantlers and how it fits into the current political context, giving readers an up-close look at the policiesschool vouchers, the war on teachers' unions, tax credit scholarships, virtual schools, and moredriving the movement's agenda. Finally they look forward, surveying the world the dismantlers threaten to build.As teachers from coast to coast mobilize with renewed vigor, this smart, essential book sounds an alarm, one that should incite a public reckoning on behalf of the millions of families served by the American educational systemand many more who stand to suffer from its unmaking.

Test scores are the go-to metric of policy makers and anxious parents looking to place their children in the best schools. Yet standardized tests are a poor way to measure school performance. Using the diverse urban school district of Somerville MA as a case study, Jack Schneider's team developed a new framework to assess educational effectiveness.

Back in the days of the lumberjack and the river drive, supplies and equipment were moved up Maine's most remote river by towboats--wooden barge-like structures--which were towed upriver by horses or oxen on the shore. In this charming book for younger re

By the early twentyfirst century, a startling consensus had emerged about the overall aim of American school reform. In an era of political discord, and in a field historically known for contentiousness, the notion of promoting educational excellence for all students was a distinct point of bipartisan agreement. Shaped by a corps of entrepreneurial reformers intent on finding "e;what works"e; and taking it to scale, this hybrid vision won over the nation's most ambitious and wellresourced policy leaders at foundations and nonprofits, in state and federal government, and in urban school districts from coast to coast. "e;Excellence for all"e; might, at first glance, appear to be nothing more than a rhetorical flourish. Who, after all, would oppose the idea of a great education for every student? Yet it is hardly a throwaway phrase. Rather, it represents a surprising fusion of educational policy approaches that had been in tense opposition throughout the twentieth centurythose on the right favoring social efficiency, and those on the left supporting social justice. This book seeks to understand why the "e;excellence for all"e; vision took hold at the time it did, unpacks the particular beliefs and assumptions embedded in it, and details the often informal coalition building that produced this period of consensus. Examining the nation's largest urban school districts (Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York), the author details three major reform efforts in chapters titled "e;The Right Space: The Small Schools Movement"e;; "e;The Right Teachers: Teach for America"e;; and "e;The Right Curriculum: Expanding Advanced Placement."e;