Robert J. Marzano, The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development
2003
Robert J. Marzano authored this pricey ($25.95) volume for the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD). He contends that U.S. public education is "at the dawn of the best of times" because research has provided a solid foundation for schools to "have a tremendous impact on student achievement." Indeed, he says, "The schools that are highly effective produce results that almost entirely overcome the effects of student background." If that's so, then nobody has an excuse for leaving any children behind - or for blaming kids, parents or nasty environments for weak academic performance. All that's needed is to assure that every school is "highly effective." And what would that take? Marzano starts by insisting that it "requires a powerful commitment to change the status quo," which is surely true. Then he outlines five school-level factors, three teacher-level factors and three student-level factors that, in combination, would assure highly effective schools with high achieving students. He develops each of these elements into a short chapter, most of which are careful rehashes of effective-schools and effective-teachers research. What's perplexing is his contention, that 80 percent of the variance in student achievement is accounted for by student factors and that what is arguably the most potent of these - home environment - is not very susceptible to intervention by the school. That's probably true but seems to undermine his claim that every school can become effective. Aside from that substantial puzzlement, this book is a pretty good, if somewhat too constructivist, recap of much research on school effectiveness. Unlike many such, it's also pretty specific about how to put these research findings into practice. The ISBN is 0871207176 and you can learn more at http://www.whatworksinschools.org/marzano.cfm.
