After having our first son, my husband and I were already talking about his education. I know that's very early considering the fact at the time he was less than a year old, but a lot of big decisions come into play when thinking of where your child is going to school. It can affect where you live or how you save money. Would we send him to public or private school? Of course we know that we are already paying out money for public school with our tax dollars, but are those schools what we want for him? Don't we want to be able to make a decision on where he goes based on something besides where our property is zoned? Soon after this discussion, we saw a show about charter schools. I was amazed at what I was hearing...it was talking about how these charter schools were successful no matter what area they were in---even in very poor areas where these schools historically had the worst test scores and drop out rates. This show continued to tell me how no matter what the child's race or gender that these students were excelling and loving school. Kids loving school, isn't that unheard of in this day and age?
I had the opportunity to expand my knowledge on the subject when I was able to read the book, "
Mission Possible: How the Secrets of the Success Academies Can Work in Any School." In this book, Eva Moskowitz the founder and CEO of the Success Charter Network in Harlem and Arin Lavinia, designer of THINK Literacy, a common sense approach to balanced literacy, lay out the ground work on how they developed the highly successful and effective Success Academy charter school system and how the program could change the American education system. Within 3 years the schools were producing results that were comparable to public schools with gifted students and elite private schools. One might think the success is due to cherry picking their students but the Success Academies students are chosen by random lottery.
"Success Academies are not screened or specialized schools for the gifted and talented. We admit by random lottery, with a preference for kids living in the surrounding area and for those currently attending a failing school or whose native language is not English."
Author Eva Moskowitz
Author Arin Lavinia
One of the main focuses of the Success Academies is that they believe the success of the scholars is all about the adults. The are constantly training and developing their teachers pushing them to be the best and encouraging them to challenge the status quo. These teachers are constantly attending training sessions and receiving feedback from their peers and the principal. A principal's sole job is to continuously improve the teachers so much so that a separate building manager handles all the administrative duties. This allows the principal to focus primarily on the role of being the school's instructional leader.
The book addresses the issue that many teachers struggle with stagnation, being unable to accomplish one's job at a high level. Why is the teaching profession treated differently than any other profession? The Success Academies have a belief that teachers need constant training and support so that they can lead these young scholars to success and a college graduation. In other professions, this training and accountability is standard but many times is measured much differently in the teaching profession. The principals at the Success Academies have the belief that they have moral obligation to improve teachers fast or they are failing the students and their families. New teachers to the Success Academies attend a four-week-long training session called the Teacher Success Academy, the principals attend eight weeks of Principal Success Academy, and throughout the school year teachers also receive nine more weeks of training. This intense focus on adult learning is what they believe is the key to their success and the way to dramatically improve public education.
Are you concerned about your children's future and education? If you are like me, I know that you are and want to do something about it. That's why I'm excited to let you know that one lucky reader will be receiving their very own copy of this book!
Here are the ways you can enter this giveaway to receive your very own free copy:
---Be a follower of From Corporate to Domestic by GFC or RSS feed
---Be a follower
on Twitter
---Tweet about this giveaway and use the hashtag #readmissionpossible
---Leave a comment on what you would like to see change in our current education system.
---Like the author
Eva Moskowitz's page on Facebook
---Be a follower of the author
Please leave a comment for every separate entry and good luck!
Giveaway will end on Monday, August 6th at 10pm EST.
I was compensated for this post, however all opinions about this book and charter schools are all my own.
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