Tom Luce and Lee Thompson, Ascent Education Press
2005
Luce founded, and Thompson's O'Donnell Foundation has helped to fund, Just for the Kids, a Texas-based organization that helps schools nationwide unleash the power of achievement test data. So while this book covers more territory, it focuses primarily on what's been learned from that work. It's fundamentally simple - to help a school improve, find other schools with similar demographics but better results, study those schools to see what they do differently, then adapt and adopt their best practices. This can, of course, be challenging to do properly, and the authors' hope is that others might learn from their work. They also highlight three other initiatives that "work": the Advanced Placement incentive programs, the Broad Prize for Urban Education, and the LEAP (Language Enrichment Activities Program) curriculum in preschool. Each of these relies on data - AP rewards students, teachers, and principals for high test scores; the Broad Prize uses achievement data in choosing the winner; and LEAP administers age-appropriate assessments to preschoolers to ensure they're learning. The book is an easy read and may be interesting to those wishing to improve schools in the brave new world of data-driven decision-making, a world that is here to stay, thanks to NCLB and the work of valuable organizations like Just for the Kids. You can buy it online for $23 at http://www.communitiesjust4kids.org/book.htm.
