The Ambitious Elementary School - by Elizabeth McGhee Hassrick (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The challenge of overcoming educational inequality in the United States can sometimes appear overwhelming, and great controversy exists as to whether or not elementary schools are up to the task, whether they can ameliorate existing social inequalities and initiate opportunities for economic and civic flourishing for all children. This book shows what can happen when you rethink schools from the ground up with precisely these goals in mind, approaching educational inequality and its entrenched causes head on, student by student.

Drawing on an in-depth study of real schools on the South Side of Chicago, Elizabeth McGhee Hassrick, Stephen W. Raudenbush, and Lisa Rosen argue that effectively meeting the challenge of educational inequality requires a complete reorganization of institutional structures as well as wholly new norms, values, and practices that are animated by a relentless commitment to student learning. They examine a model that pulls teachers out of their isolated classrooms and places them into collaborative environments where they can share their curricula, teaching methods, and assessments of student progress with a school-based network of peers, parents, and other professionals. Within this structure, teachers, school leaders, social workers, and parents collaborate to ensure that every child receives instruction tailored to his or her developing skills. Cooperating schools share new tools for assessment and instruction and become sites for the training of new teachers. Parents become respected partners, and expert practitioners work with researchers to evaluate their work and refine their models for educational organization and practice. The authors show not only what such a model looks like but the dramatic results it produces for student learning and achievement.

The result is a fresh, deeply informed, and remarkably clear portrait of school reform that directly addresses the real problems of educational inequality.

Review Quotes

"The Ambitious Elementary School provides a compelling model for school improvement centered on personalized instructional procedures, school-community collaboration, and greatly expanded instructional time. It also illustrates how innovation in charter schools may generate strategies that can be tested by district schools. Readers who are interested in the operations of high-performing charter schools or concerned with school improvement broadly will find much to value in the book."-- "EducationNext"

"A good book presenting the design, development, and results of a five-year, intensive study of school change in two charter elementary schools in Chicago serving mainly struggling African American students. The book is well written and well organized with a preview, details, and summary for each chapter."-- "Contemporary Sociology"

"A particularly instructive addition to this literature. . . . Studies like this should push our sense of what is possible with some disadvantaged youth when schools are expertly organized and resourced to support their student population. It also warns us against looking at instructional interventions in isolation, without considering the social, technical, and material supports for the intervention. . . . [T]his research should make it clear that schools can do something meaningful for a significant number of disadvantaged youngsters. Maybe broad statements about the impotence of schooling were plausible in the past, but they are increasingly at odds with a growing body of evidence."-- "Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science"

"For readers who want a sophisticated look at one university's attempt to use research to correct flaws in educational organizations."-- "Library Journal"

"Theoretical in practical terms, this book demonstrates the best of applied sociology to make a real impact on social life. . . . the book provides solid evidence that what can be accomplished by schools in poor neighborhoods should not be underestimated. The details are in this book, and it deserves a very wide audience."-- "American Journal of Sociology"

"The Ambitious Elementary School is an important book. It has already affected my thinking and my work. I am a practitioner, working with public schools every day, so I come to works like these as a searcher, as someone always looking for convincing presentations of a better way forward. This book absolutely offers one. I recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone who believes in the mission of public education."--Ellen Guiney, executive director emeritus, Boston Plan for Excellence

"A great school is much more than a collection of excellent teachers laboring in their separate classrooms. This wonderfully clearheaded book describes how one school achieved success by building a highly collaborative culture and organization that supports teachers learning from one another and from evidence on every student's progress, and it shows readers what it will take to make that success spread."--Michael S. McPherson, coauthor of Lesson Plan: An Agenda for Change in Higher Education

About the Author

Elizabeth McGhee Hassrick is assistant professor at Drexel University in the Life Course Outcomes Research Program of the A. J. Drexel Autism Institute, with a secondary appointment in the Department of Sociology at the College of Arts and Sciences. Stephen W. Raudenbush is the Lewis-Sebring Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago. He is the coauthor of several books, including, most recently, Developmental Cognitive Science Goes to School. Lisa Rosen is the executive director of the UChicago Science of Learning Center and the research program director for its initiative, Successful Pathways from School to Work.