Reviews for Local Control and Accountability: How to Get It, Keep It, and Improve School Performance

The average rating for Local Control and Accountability: How to Get It, Keep It, and Improve School Performance based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-02-01 00:00:00 Dineen Yuknis This is an important read...copyright 2006, it is still highly relevant today. Especially Barnett Berry's essay about teachers...he predicted so many of the difficulties we see ourselves in now. Jones' final essay is scathing as well... Because there are different contributors, the quality is uneven, but when it's strong, this is awesome. The strength here is the fierceness of the support and defense of public schools: Schools are about people and human development, not about manufacturing objects A fair determination about a person's learning can only be made by other people, most preferably by those who best know the person in his or her own context. The easier it is for someone to enter teaching and be called a teacher, then the less policymakers have to make investments in teacher prep. and salaries and improved working conditions. Teachers cannot cause learning to happen for their students. The current law and school accountability approach is undemocratic in design if not intent. We must not just hold schools accountable, but must enact a system of reciprocal accountability that holds all levels of government -- local, state and national -- responsible for our schools.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-01-22 00:00:00 Peggy Jenkins So, it read like a textbook. But it wasn't too bad, because I was actually interested in what they had to say. I skipped around a lot, and sometimes skimmed entire pages in minutes, but I got the gist of the book. Education is a humane enterprise, not a factory to produce the same product over and over again. In order to create successful schools, we need to take the focus off of national standardized, high-stakes testing and keep accountability local. There are lots of ideas in there for school improvement, each which probably deserves its own book. A must-read for legislators, although they wouldn't spend the time on it.