17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A principal's triumph is an amazing story, September 16, 2009
This review is from: Crazy Like a Fox: One Principal's Triumph in the Inner City (Hardcover)
"Crazy Like a Fox" is a mesmerizing book. I expected a tedious account of an attempt to bring a school back from the edge, but after a page or two, I discovered I couldn't put it down. Carey Blakely's writing makes an interesting story even more captivating. What Ben Chavez accomplished, how he did it and how Blakely tells the story makes for one of the best books I've read this year. I won't ruin the fun by saying more about the story. I hope everyone in education, every parent and all the people who love to read will get this book.
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18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the three best books on education ever, September 30, 2009
This review is from: Crazy Like a Fox: One Principal's Triumph in the Inner City (Hardcover)
STOP THE PRESSES!!!!
Crazy Like A Fox is one of the three best books on education I've ever read. (My other two all-time favorite books are both by Jay Mathews: Escalante, the best book about an individual teacher, and Work Hard, Be Nice, the best book about entrepreneurship in education, building one school into a national network.)
Crazy Like A Fox rounds out the list. It is by far the best book I've ever read in explaining, in no uncertain terms, exactly what is the No Excuses educational philosophy, which is shared by nearly every school that successfully educates low-income, minority children. As such, this book should be required reading for every teacher and principal who is educating such kids.
The book is written by Dr. Ben Chavis, who turned around the worst school in Oakland, the American Indian Public Charter School, and has expanded it to five charter schools in the city, all of which are among the top 1% of public schools in California and three of which are in the top 10 schools statewide according to the state's Academic Performance Index scores. These results certainly aren't due to favorable demographics -- in fact, at the original AIPCS school, 97% of the students qualify for free and reduced-price lunch, 98% are minorities and 74% speak English as a second language.
Chavis has an amazing story, starting with his childhood of extreme poverty in rural North Carolina with a violent and largely absent father. He says that of all of the inner-city Oakland students who've ever attended one of his schools, not one of them had a childhood as bad as his -- and he's no doubt right. Chavis describes himself as "a country Indian from the South, who was a sharecropper with uneducated parents, who paid his way through college and sent his family money each semester, and who graduated from a state university..."
But what's most interesting to me is his version of the No Excuses philosophy of how to educate poor, minority children. It's similar to other comparable high-performing schools, but Chavis takes it to an extreme. It starts with his Golden Rule: "If you act like a fool, you'll be treated like a fool. If you act like a winner, you'll be treated like a winner." He lavishes praise and will do anything for kids who work hard and play by the rules -- but woe unto the student who acts like a fool. To them, Chavis turns into one of the craziest, scariest, meanest dudes on the planet. Ditto for parents and teachers who act like fools. He's borderline crazy (and proud of it), but it works!
There are two reasons why this is such a great book: A) It's filled with great advice and wisdom that any educator will find useful (even if one doesn't agree with all of it); and B) It's the most entertainingly politically incorrect book I've ever read -- by far! He speaks harsh truths and takes special joy in debunking left-wing dingbat liberal dogma.
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Academic Justice Leads to Social Justice, October 10, 2009
This review is from: Crazy Like a Fox: One Principal's Triumph in the Inner City (Hardcover)
I heartily recommend that you take time to get to know Dr. Ben Chavis, former principal of the inner-city, Oakland, CA, American Indian Charter Public School (AIPCS), by reading his book, Crazy like a Fox. This book is especially for all those who are concerned and saddened about the current abysmal performance of so many U.S. K-12 schools. This book will either confirm your belief that we can do better educating our children, or it will--if you keep an open mind--challenge your progressive beliefs about the ingredients required for a successful school. It will either confirm your belief that performance is about more than money, food, computers, empathy, self esteem, and politically correct nostrums; or it will hopefully shatter those progressive beliefs which have so clearly failed our failing children.
Ben Chavis has now taken his education model public, after turning around AIPCS, turning it around with family, good books, good teachers, a back-to-basics focus, structure, discipline, high expectations, a taste of free market capitalism, accountability and his unique disdain for educational orthodoxy: "Multicultural specialists, ultraliberal zealots, and college-tainted oppression liberators need not apply [for teaching jobs]." But success was not foreordained for his school. In fact, it was just one vote away--within days of Dr. Chavis taking over as principal--from being ordered closed by the school board. I invite you to follow his rescue and recovery, as he replaces a broken faculty, and fixes a dysfunctional curriculum, and imposes structure and discipline on a school without either. On his journey, Dr. Chavis will take away student computers and refuse to offer the federal school lunch program. He will take mirrors out of the student restrooms and require students and parents sign contracts. He will emphasize perfect attendance for all students, paying students at year end if they have zero unexcused absences, and his attendance rates will climb each year from around 65% to about 98%. He will require teachers focus on teaching language arts (reading, writing, grammar) and math each class day, allocating 90 minutes to each subject. He will adopt an educational model that focuses on the student, requiring approved texts, retaining only quality teachers, administering a program of accountability with an emphasis on rewards for achievement and punishment for misconduct.
And during that time, gradually building on success, his middle school's performance results will slowly climb from subterranean levels to the top of the performance charts, reaching the magic 800, the benchmark of excellence on the California Academic Performance Index, subsequently with breakneck speed the scores climb above 900, distinguishing the school as one of the top 10 in the state, garnering national recognition for his Oakland school. And along the way he sets Olympian goals for his students. Eventually, he expands his model, adding an AIPCS high school and a second middle school in Oakland: both schools continuing to excel.
It is a redemptive journey and there are now AIM-Ed (AIM to Educate) models of Dr. Chavis' program being replicated in CA and elsewhere in North America. Besides the story about turning around a troubled, dysfunctional school, this book is also an intriguing story about the life of Ben Chavis, a North Carolina Indian, a story about how he came to challenge just about every politically correct, educationally popular elixir in education today. Mr. Chavis learned from his own life lessons what works: focus on teachers in the classroom--eliminate the bureaucracy and ancillary staff positions; focus on teacher-student relationships--require that a teacher be assigned to the same middle school class for all three years and emphasize core subjects; and focus on discipline--breaking down students that are discipline problems and building them up again. And Dr. Chavis blends all of these ingredients into an educational philosophy that works--works with exceptional results, at both the middle school and high school level.
And when you read this book, you will cry the next time you read about the chaotic, inner-city schools with their 50% flunk-out rates, with students graduating who cannot read, and with the huge waste of so much talent. And when you think about what these youngsters from Indian, Asian, and Hispanic poor families in Oakland accomplished, you might just wonder if the education lobby--consisting of too many left wing fantasy ideologists--is so committed to its religious orthodoxy that it would prefer the current school model over academic justice for students? Would they really prefer a model that just keeps plodding along with more failure over a school system that is successful beyond their dreams? In fact, a model that is so successful that every child in the first high school graduating class takes AP calculus and AP literature, 100% of the 2008 - 2009 seniors are accepted to four-year colleges and universities, and every middle school gets test results placing the class in the top 10 in the Academic Performance Index in the State of CA. And if they would prefer dogma over academic justice, then finally we will know that for some: the schools exist for everyone but the students.
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