Failing at School: Lessons for Redesigning Urban High Schools (the series on school reform)

Synopsis

Roughly Half Of All Incoming Ninth Graders Across Urban Districts Will Fail Classes And Drop Out Of School Without A Diploma. Failing At School Starts With The Premise That Urban American High Schools Generate Such Widespread Student Failure Not Because Of Some Fault Of The Students Who Attend Them But Because High Schools Were Designed To Stratify Achievement And Let Only The Top Performers Advance To Higher Levels Of Education. This Design Is Particularly Detrimental For Low-income, Racial/ethnic Minority Students. To Get Different Results, Farrington Proposes Fundamental Changes Based On What We Now Know About How Students Learn, What Motivates Them To Engage In Learning, And What Kinds Of Educational Systems And Structures Would Best Support Their Learning. Offers Concrete Strategies For Redesigning High Schools Based On Four Dimensions Of Student Achievement--structural, Academic, Developmental, And Motivational; Highlights The Voices Of Students To Illustrate Fundamental Problems With The Way We Currently “do School.”; Addresses The New Common Core State Standards And The Potential Of This Major Reform Effort To Move Us Toward Equity And Excellence.--publisher Website. Part I. Reflecting -- Introduction : Failure In Urban American High Schools -- Ch. 1. What We See Versus What We Seek : Faces Of Failure In Urban High Schools -- Ch. 2. How We Got Here : Tracing The Origins Of High School Failure -- Ch. 3. What We Now Know About Learning -- Part Ii. Studying Failure -- Ch. 4. Looking Closely At Failure : Fourteen Students In Three Urban High Schools -- Ch. 5. 10,000 Ways That Won't Work : The Frustration Of Academic Failure -- Ch. 6. Falling Into An Abyss : The Role Of Grading In Student Failure -- Ch. 7. Credits Are No Joke : Remediation And Recovery Structures Across Three Schools -- Ch. 8. Teacher Practices That Support Student Effort -- Part Iii. Going Forward -- Ch. 9. Motivation, Capacity, Comopetence, Opportunity : Redesigning Urban High Schools For Student Success. Camille A. Farrington. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.