Crash course : imagining a better future for public education / Chris Whittle.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Whittle, Chris.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Privatization in education--United States.

Privatization in education.

United States.

Public schools--United States.

Public schools.

Edison Schools Inc.

Physical Description:

xvii, 269 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Riverhead Books, 2005.

Summary:

Imagine that upon your arrival at an airline ticket counter, you are told that only 70 percent of the flights to your intended destination actually arrive. The remainder crash en route. And, if you are a child of color, or poor, you are required to fly on special, poorly maintained planes-of which a much smaller percentage make it.

Sounds crazy, right? But this is exactly the deal that, as a nation, we are serving up daily to millions of our children in thousands of our public schools. Nearly 15 million children in our schools today are below basic literacy levels.

Faced with a seemingly irremediable situation, fifteen years ago Chris Whittle decided to take action. The company he founded, Edison Schools, is now the country's largest partner of public schools-usually the toughest inner-city schools you can imagine. By connecting our schools to the engine of progress in every other sector of our society-continuous research and development-Whittle and his company have radically improved the performance of hundreds of schools, bettered the education of hundreds of thousands of students, and learned some fundamental lessons about how to help restore our schools-all of them-to the world-class status that we expect and deserve.

Crash Course draws directly from the lessons hardearned by Whittle in the trenches of America's schools. The book is packed with suggested innovations, and a vision of how the schools of the future should and will be different. Its chapters contain dozens of revolutionary ideas, such as: How to more than double teacher pay in America without raising taxes; How to create the educational equivalents of West Point and the Air Force Academy to prepare a new generation of school principals; How to empower and engage students so that they can play an important role in operating our schools, from becoming tutors to providing technology support; How students of the future will spend far less time in traditional classrooms and much more of their day in settings similar to today's work environments.

Inimitable and visionary in the tradition of the national bestseller Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol, this is an extraordinary, groundbreaking book that will change forever the way we think about public education.

Contents:

Foreword: Practical Revolutionary / Walter Isaacson ix

Foreword: A Larger Threat / Tom Ridge xiii

Part I The Problem, the Cause, and Failed Solutions

Chapter 1 15 Million Children Lost, Just Not Yours 9

Chapter 2 The Last Great Cottage Industry 25

Chapter 3 The Reefs of Reform 43

Part II A Path to Perspective

Chapter 4 My Very Public Education 63

Part III Imagining a Better Future for Public Education

Introduction: Changing the Education Paradigm 95

Chapter 5 Student Uprising 101

Chapter 6 Next-Level Educators 117

Chapter 7 Beyond Students and Staff 135

Chapter 8 School Systems and School Companies in 2030 155

Part IV Laws and Leadership

Chapter 9 Homeland Offense- The Next Wave of Reform Legislation 195

Epilogue: Letters to Leaders 231.

Notes:

Includes index.

ISBN:

1594489025

OCLC:

59223825