Writing Put to the Test: Teaching for the High Stakes Essay: Teaching for the High Stakes Essay Book

Reading "The Good High School" by Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot. It is an ethnographic portrait of six high schools - two urban, two suburban, two elite prep schools. The schools are widely considered "good", or were in 1982, and she uses a clear lens and a narrative voice to portray the contexts of these schools.

As someone who wasn't born yet in 1982, the book serves as a reminder that the formula for successful schools - and the debates about schooling - have largely stayed the same and the context hasn't changed very much at all. The "school reform" debates of today have a genesis in the exact same concerns and anxieties that were taking place in the early 80s (and led to the much-lauded and much-panned "A Nation At Risk" report by the Reagan administration.)

Not sure where I'm going with this. It's just a helpful reminder - as a new educator and someone who is considering academia - that "the more things change, the more they stay the same." Cliched? Perhaps - but important to remember in the contentious ed-reform landscape.