Customer Reviews

In Schools We Trust: Creating Communities of Learning in an Era of Testing and Standardization

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As a veteran Boston public school teacher, I found Deborah Meier's new book refreshing and especially timely given the grave threats thoughtful schools and schoolteachers face in this era of testing. The absurd importance we give to testing puts intense pressure on teachers and schools to standardize the curriculum. But Meier, with her decades of innovative school-building experience, accompanied by considerable research, gives us what the media and politicians refuse--a peak into the making of tests and their history in schools. Meier also takes us into small schools that have a much higher standard of achievement. They're personalized schools organized around how we know kids learn, and they allow teachers to have a larger role in schools and kids' academic lives---in making decisions and frequently rethinking their practice, in its details, in community, in public. This is a challenging and fascinating book. Afraid I might miss a nugget of wisdom, I couldn't wait to read the book again!

As an educator (high school guidance counselor), union activist and progressive skeptic, I strongly urge folks far and wide to read Meier's book "In Schools We Trust." Not only is she easy to read but she makes sense out of difficult material.

Meier uses examples from her own experiences and links them to the weighty issues we face in public education. She uses humor as well as lofty research to back up her claims. In an early passage she challenges us to bring adults and children closer together ( a theme she returns to at the end), so that children can learn what it means to be an adult. In doing so she has us ponder our own adult culture. For instance, why don't we let children copy? since that's exactly what we urge adults to do (i.e. through best practices) and what would that mean if we did allow it?

All in all a good read, a refreshing look at schooling.

Progressive educator, Deborah Meier, a legendary school founder and reformer addresses the issue of mistrust in her book "IN SCHOOLS WE TRUST". Policy makers and communities across America feel that public schools are failing to meet our student's academic needs. The educational policy makers promote the notion that standarized tests are an effective tool to measure academic achievement in the nation's youth. Meier challenges this theory making the comparison between schools that rely upon standardized tests versus small, self-governed schools. Meier focuses on her theory that schools flourish when classes are smaller,intimate and when parents take an active role in their child's educational experience. Both parents and teachers can better assess learning in this educational setting as opposed to one that merely trains students to improve their test taking techniques. This plea for educational reform asks that parents and educators re-evaluate the complete learning process in our schools with the use of standardized tests.

Deborah Meier simply addresses the downfalls of standardized testing and its effects on student learning.

I chose this book as a class assignment. Our directive was to give a presentation on an Educational theorist, and Deborah Meier's name was on the list. Little did I know the choice of Mrs. Meier's book would be such an enlightening and enjoyable introduction to her as well as her thoughts about the most effective strategies for education in today's society. Meier's writes with incredible insight and clarity about the things that are most important to her in education: small classes, building relationships, active parent and community participation in the school life of children, and offering all children options in the type of public school education they receive. She uses examples of her work at Central Park East and Mission Hill schools to illustrate her ideas and successes. These examples were especially helpful to me as a novice in the area of elementary and secondary education. Never one to mince works, and using well placed humor, she offers her opinions on standardized testing and the dangers they present to students and education. Meier's offers an alternative to standardization - standards and also outlines a broader vision for education in the future. All of my children have completed elementary and secondary school. However, as a soon to be grandmother, this book will be one of those that I recommend to my daughter and son-in-law as they begins their new journey into parenthood.

David Blackburn
Director of the Educational Reform Group
www.educationalreformgroup.com

I just taught my daughter to ride her bike this week. I just taught my son to swim. Interesting lessons were gleaned from these familial experiences. Both events were preceded by literally years of work. The events happened in a minute, a fraction of the time invested. Yet, there was one crucial element that pervaded the entire process. That element was trust. Trust is the facet of education that is critical to set children free to explore the possibilities. The fascinating results from my children arrived after the event of learning. When my daughter finally learned to trust me to catch her then she was able to focus on balancing her moving bike. Within a minute she fully committed to her task, my hands came off the bike, and she was off. She learned; then she left me behind and figured out how to self-start, stop, and turn. My son finally trusted I would be there beside him and wouldn't let him drown. He then swam a pool length. He then left me behind and jumped off the diving board, then began to flip and to dive. If we are seeking an educational system that empowers and equips students to independently explore their possibilities, then we must pursue a school culture of trust.
Deborah Meier's book, In Schools We Trust, delves into this critical issue as paramount to doing what is best for kids. Her book is arranged in three sections. The first section tackles how trust must be nurtured between all stakeholders. The second section dismantles the idea that standardized tests can achieve what we hope they will. The third section returns to the larger picture of how we can and must develop a culture that allows the messiness of humanity within accountability and trust.
The middle section is crucial to reference for anyone researching standardized testing on learning. Yet, no school teacher needs convincing that such tests fail to help students achieve their best. So, we will not focus upon Meier's excellent historical analysis. Instead it is the larger picture of what real trust requires and what real accountability must account for that is worthy of frontline teachers' time.
If you have time to read only a portion of this book, then read what Meier describes as "Learning in the company of Adults." Meier correctly criticizes our failure as a society to raise democratic citizens by reducing their time with adults. "We are--in short--perhaps the only civilization in history that organizes its youth so that the nearer they get to being adults the less and less likely they are to know any adults" (p.23). She uses the analogy of learning to drive a car. "Think how efficiently virtually all young people learn to drive a car if they have lived for years in a family of drivers, have ridden in the front seat, have imitated (both in their head and in their bodies) the motions of a driver, have gotten a feel for where the sides of the car are and how close the outside world is. When my mother finally suggested I should move into the driver's seat, I like so many of my friends, already knew how to drive--except I was surprised when I tried to restart the car on a hill, plus there were the mysteries of parallel parking.... Keep in mind that despite the cost we almost never try to teach anyone how to drive except one-on-one." (p.17). Think about it. Would you trust new drivers if you knew they had passed a minimum competency pen and paper test? Would that build trust? Would that be sufficient accountability? Yet, what do we do? We place teachers in classes where they do not model the skills, they talk about them to large groups of kids and then give them a paper test and claim they will be excellent citizens. Is it working? No, and definitely not in the new world that has arrived.
We expect children to become adults and model adult democracy; but when have they actually seen it? When have they seen two adults sit down in front of them and have a difficult discussion around an issue that has no easy answer? When have they seen adults ask other adults for their source of information before accepting an idea? When have they seen adults disagree on a topic and still be civil? On TV? At their family dinner? They don't see it and their teachers are not modeling exploration, innovation, and creativity, the skills that experts agree are critical for children of the 21st century. As Meier explains, " There is no way to get around it; the willingness to take risks, ask questions, and make mistakes is a requirement for the development of expertise. We can learn secretly, but at a price" (p.14). How many front line teachers work within a system that encourages them to explore, allowing them to make public mistakes without punishment? I would suggest very few.
What I love about Meier's work is that is embraces the "messiness" of raising children. There is no silver bullet program or test that will eradicate the need for simple trust in other human beings. If we are going to raise a democratic society to step into our shoes when they come of age we must begin that work now. "For me the most important answer to the question "Why save public education?" is this: It is in schools that we learn the art of living together as citizens, and it is in public schools that we are obliged to defend the idea of a public, not only a private, interest" (p. 176). Meier's provides her priorities and recipies for how she did it at the Mission Hill School in Boston, but her recipe is general enough to be tweaked by any good cook, I mean educator. "What doesn't work are schools that think we can be made uniform, that the messy business of learning to deal with each other can be bypassed by rules imposed by people who don't know us in all our particularities" (p.40).
I end with this, "Like the learning of all important things, the learning of these democratic habits of mind happens only when children are in the real company of adults they trust and when adults have sufficient powers--and the leisure--to be good company. On the largest political scale, this is why I worry so much about--and work so hard to change--the way children are growing up without adult company, a community of elders. In some ways we accept our children's adulthood long before we once did, and in other ways we continue to treat them as children for far longer" (pp.177-178). It was interesting that the week before my daughter learned to ride her bike she watched her mom take a horrible bike wreck. A few weeks before my son swam he watched dad take pointers from mom on how to swim better. Maybe it was circumstances that had no bearing on their world; maybe it was the key to building their trust. "...never in the history of the species did one think of raising the young to become adults in the absence of the company of adults. And, above all, in the absence of adults whom children imagine becoming, or--and here was the key--whom children even knew well enough to imagine trusting" (p. 179).

This book is extremely helpful in thinking about the various relationships that support good education. It candidly addresses the complexities of the distributions of power in an educational organization, including making these challenges visible to all constituencies so that others can learn from observing the process. It explores the impact of what individuals bring to the table on success for that child, family and/or staff member. Whether it be race, socio-economic background, or personal history, each "history" plays a role in the evaluation of his/her work. The field of Education needs more like Deborah Meier.

Deborah Meier does it agian with her new book on the importance of buidling trudting realitonships among all the parties in schools. A must read for those interested in truly democratic public education. She discusses the iomperative for studenss, especially teenagers, of having important adults who care about them and know them well in theri lives, and how a school can be organziaed around that pricnipal.

A major theme of the book is how trust built on relatinships is a much better and stronger form of accountability than the standardization that is currently in vogue -- which actually buiilds distrust. Techer-Student, teacher parent, teacher-teacher are among those discussed.

She then spends some time illustrating the weaknesses and dangers of relying on standardized tests. Lastly she lays out her broader vision of what could be.

Written in plain, but no less elegant and eloquent language, In Schools We Trust should be read by anyone interested in children and schools, and especially, in the conditions needed to foster the kind of learning we value. It contains the kind of wisdom, based on decades of experience, that we have come to expect from author Deborah Meier. The first chapter alone is worth the price of the book, and more!

I chose this book as a class assignment. Our directive was to give a presentation on an Educational theorist, and Deborah Meier's name was on the list. Little did I know the choice of Mrs. Meier's book would be such an enlightening and enjoyable introduction to her as well as her thoughts about the most effective strategies for education in today's society. Meier's writes with incredible insight and clarity about the things that are most important to her in education: small classes, building relationships, active parent and community participation in the school life of children, and offering all children options in the type of public school education they receive. She uses examples of her work at Central Park East and Mission Hill schools to illustrate her ideas and successes. These examples were especially helpful to me as a novice in the area of elementary and secondary education. Never one to mince works, and using well placed humor, she offers her opinions on standardized testing and the dangers they present to students and education. Meier's offers an alternative to standardization - standards and also outlines a broader vision for education in the future. All of my children have completed elementary and secondary school. However, as a soon to be grandmother, this book will be one of those that I recommend to my daughter and son-in-law as they begins their new journey into parenthood.

Is a very good material for educators, administrator and universities; can help for school or institution on improve their achivement.