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Blue Ribbon Story

AN ENTREPRENEUR'S SUCCESS IN EDUCATION

A voice of reason on the future of public education.

In his debut, a successful administrator judiciously applies business principles to the effort to improve public schools.

Kravitz is the principal of School No. 3 in Fort Lee, N.J., which was designated a National Blue Ribbon School in 2010. In this slim motivational book, he proposes a no-nonsense plan to change the state of the nation’s schools, in which “[t]est scores are low, spending is high, and we are stuck in the blame game.” The centerpiece of his approach is the Triangle Theory: All corners of the triangle—parents, teachers and administrators—must work together to support students, represented at the triangle’s center. Kravitz has considerable experience in all three roles, a perspective that allows him, in this book, to set reasonable expectations and make informed recommendations. To that end, he writes in a direct, conversational style, full of questions, exclamations and parenthetical asides, that readers will likely appreciate. Throughout, he suggests targeted business strategies that could make the educational system more effective. He criticizes the notion of innovation for innovation’s sake, and insists upon cost-benefit analyses to justify the expenses for programs that may or may not lead to significant improvement: new materials, teacher training through professional development seminars, outside consultants and so on. However, Kravitz is careful to point out that such a business model is not infallible; for example, he relates one particularly instructive anecdote, quoted from a book by author Jamie Robert Vollmer, that suggests that educators have little to no control over the initial quality of their students. The book’s only potential drawback may be its brevity, as some readers may want to read more about the author’s reservations about charter schools, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and standardized testing.

A voice of reason on the future of public education.

Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2012

ISBN: 978-1478297031

Page Count: 66

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2013

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INSIDE AMERICAN EDUCATION

THE DECLINE, THE DECEPTION, THE DOGMAS

American schools at every level, from kindergarten to postgraduate programs, have substituted ideological indoctrination for education, charges conservative think-tanker Sowell (Senior Fellow/Hoover Institution; Preferential Polices, 1990, etc.) in this aggressive attack on the contemporary educational establishment. Sowell's quarrel with "values clarification" programs (like sex education, death-sensitizing, and antiwar "brainwashing") isn't that he disagrees with their positions but, rather, that they divert time and resources from the kind of training in intellectual analysis that makes students capable of reasoning for themselves. Contending that the values clarification programs inspired by his archvillain, psychotherapist Carl Rogers, actually inculcate values confusion, Sowell argues that the universal demand for relevance and sensitivity to the whole student has led public schools to abdicate their responsibility to such educational ideals as experience and maturity. On the subject of higher education, Sowell moves to more familiar ground, ascribing the declining quality of classroom instruction to the insatiable appetite of tangentially related research budgets and bloated athletic programs (to which an entire chapter, largely irrelevant to the book's broader argument, is devoted). The evidence offered for these propositions isn't likely to change many minds, since it's so inveterately anecdotal (for example, a call for more stringent curriculum requirements is bolstered by the news that Brooke Shields graduated from Princeton without taking any courses in economics, math, biology, chemistry, history, sociology, or government) and injudiciously applied (Sowell's dismissal of student evaluations as responsible data in judging a professor's classroom performance immediately follows his use of comments from student evaluations to document the general inadequacy of college teaching). All in all, the details of Sowell's indictment—that not only can't Johnny think, but "Johnny doesn't know what thinking is"—are more entertaining than persuasive or new.

Pub Date: Jan. 4, 1993

ISBN: 0-02-930330-3

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Free Press

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1992

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THE ABOLITION OF MAN

The sub-title of this book is "Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools." But one finds in it little about education, and less about the teaching of English. Nor is this volume a defense of the Christian faith similar to other books from the pen of C. S. Lewis. The three lectures comprising the book are rather rambling talks about life and literature and philosophy. Those who have come to expect from Lewis penetrating satire and a subtle sense of humor, used to buttress a real Christian faith, will be disappointed.

Pub Date: April 8, 1947

ISBN: 1609421477

Page Count: -

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1947

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