Making the Grade: Reinventing America's Schools

by Tony Wagner, Thomas Vander Ark (Foreword)

This book provides a guide for a long-overdue public dialogue about why and how we need to reinvent our nation's schools. How has the world changed for our children; what do all students need to know in light of these changes; how do we hold students and schools accountable for results; what do good schools look like; and what must leaders do to create more of these schools? These are some of the questions that drive this book. The answers emerging to these questions may surprise many. The most successful public schools of the 21st century look a lot more like our 19th century village schools than our current factory model of schooling. This book describes these "new village schools" that have been created in the last decade and suggests that they are a prototype for the schools of the future.

Genres: Education, Teaching, Nonfiction

186 pages, Paperback

First published October 28, 2001

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Tony Wagner recently accepted a position as the first Innovation Education Fellow at the Technology & Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard. Prior to this, he was the founder and co-director of the Change Leadership Group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education for more than a decade.

Tony consults widely to schools, districts, and foundations around the country and internationally. His previous work experience includes twelve years as a high school teacher, K-8 principal, university professor in teacher education, and founding executive director of Educators for Social Responsibility.

Tony is also a frequent speaker at national and international conferences and a widely published author. His work includes numerous articles and five books. Tony’s latest, Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change The World, will be published in April by Simon & Schuster. His recent book, The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don’t Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need—and What We Can do About It has been a best seller and is being translated into Chinese. Tony’s other titles include: Change Leadership: A Practical Guide to Transforming Our Schools, Making the Grade: Reinventing America’s Schools, and How Schools Change: Lessons from Three Communities Revisited. He has also recently collaborated with noted filmmaker Robert Compton to create a 60 minute documentary, “The Finnish Phenomenon: Inside The World’s Most Surprising School System.”

Tony earned an M.A.T. and an Ed.D. at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education.

Reviews

[Jacob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whether you agree with Wagner's ideas or not, it is undeniably a thought-provoking book with plenty of relevancy despite being published 11 years ago.

I like the holistic approach he espouses (cross curriculum teaching, community service, "apprenticeships") and divorce of sports from school. I also partially agree with his focus on relating school to the "real world", however I think he places an over-emphasis on work place knowledge that can lead to some of the very rigidity he correctly identifies as impediments to learning. It also presumes that a job is the sole use of our mental capabilities, career as the pinnacle of achievement, if you will.

I disagree with local institutions completely developing their own curriculum. I think a happy medium between specific national curriculum points and a portion devoted to local curricula would achieve a greater balance of creating common cross-cultural understanding along with relevancy to a specific region.

Evaluations versus grades is a sticky wicket for sure. It presumes smaller class-sizes and a deeper knowledge based curriculum versus one focused on breadth. It also presumes that those institutions that are interested in a student's capabilities as they move on (colleges, employers) will take the time to read all of those evaluations. That said, I do like the idea, if disagreeing with the consequent thought that this can take the place of testing. Evaluations in life are a necessary evil. They allow us to develop organizations such that people can help that organization in the best way possible. Testing is a part of that concept and a world where everyone is okay and no one has to prove their abilities is not very realistic. Perhaps Wagner could have devoted a chapter to alternate methods/construction of tests instead eschewing them for the most part. Besides, the intellectual flexibility that Wagner espouses in education, by its very nature, will enable students to do well on tests, even when they don't know every specific detail they are being tested on.

Fairly well written without any overwhelming redundancies to get bogged down in, an unfortunately common characteristic of many books on education. Certainly makes you think and for that alone it should get 4 stars. If you have any interest in education in the US then you should definitely take this one of the shelf. Solid 4 stars.

[Gary · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is, unfortunately, outdated. Solutions recommended by the author have been proven not to work. The smaller schools program initiated by the Gates foundation was a flop, research has shown that--unless between 13-17 students--class size doesn't matter, and whole-language reading instruction has fallen to science-based reading instruction--except for the 5% who may need whole-language. These are just a few examples. That said, some of the author's recommendations stand, and the author does have some good ideas on how to implement school change.