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ERIC Number: ED527544
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 2009-Jul
Pages: 160
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: ISBN-0-8077-4987-7
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Going to Scale with New School Designs: Reinventing High School. The Series on School Reform
McDonald, Joseph P.; Klein, Emily J.; Riordan, Meg
Teachers College Press
Americans have been trying to redesign the American high school since it was first invented. One of the latest approaches--funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation--is to find inventive high school designs that work well in one location and can be replicated in others. The authors of this book followed a design team from Big Picture Learning, recording the challenges it faced and the strategies it employed in pursuit of this goal. Their accessible and entertaining account of Big Picture's work is laced with stories about "scaling up" by other school design teams and in other enterprises beyond high school, and includes commentary throughout by Greg Farrell, founder of Expeditionary Learning Schools Outward Bound and Howard Wollner, formerly senior vice president of Starbucks. Based on careful research, the book is both a practical guide to a new dimension of school reform and an engaging read for anyone interested in school change. The book is organized according to the eight challenges of going to scale with new school designs, complete with advice for how to address them: (1) Fidelity Challenge. Balancing fidelity and adaptation; (2) Teaching Challenge. Teaching and learning the design; (3) Ownership Challenge. Instilling shared ownership of the design; (4) Communication Challenge. Communicating effectively across contexts; (5) Feedback Challenge. Using experience in new settings to improve the design; (6) Resource Challenge. Obtaining and managing resources; (7) Political Challenge. Negotiating the politics of local adoption; and (8) Mindset Challenge. Coping with the difference that difference makes.
Teachers College Press. 1234 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10027. Tel: 800-575-6566; Fax: 802-864-7626; e-mail: tcp.orders@aidcvt.com; Web site: http://www.tcpress.com
Publication Type: Books; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: High Schools; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A