"It's Being Done": Academic Success in Unexpected Schools

By Karin Chenoweth

This straightforward and inspiring book takes readers into schools where educators believe and prove that all children, even those considered hard-to-teach, can learn to high standards. Their teachers and principals refuse to write them off and instead show how thoughtful instruction, high expectations, stubborn commitment, and careful consideration of each child s needs can result in remarkable improvements in student achievement."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1891792393
• ISBN13: 9781891792397
• Release Date: April 2007
• Publisher: Harvard Education Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.82 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.8" x 0.8" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

An engineering solution to education reform

This book describes 15 remarkable schools where dedicated educators defy difficult demographics and close the achievement gap. All are regular district schools -- no charters, privates, magnets, or exam schools -- where students of color and poverty achieve at high levels. The concluding chapter lists practices and qualities that fuel their success. In my view, the attribute that floated to the top in virtually every chapter was strong leadership supporting quality teachers. The last three paragraphs are priceless. She likens these schools to the Wright brothers' first aircraft and says "Once Orville and Wilbur demonstrated how to answer the challenges of drag and gravity, getting from their experimental plane in Kitty Hawk to the Boeing 747 was no longer a theoretical challenge but an engineering one. In the same way, the schools profiled here demonstrate that the job of educating kids to high levels -- even kids traditionally considered 'hard to teach' -- is theoretically possible." This is a must-read for anyone involved or interested in education reform.

All children can learn

Reading "It's Being Done," made me want to cheer. Chenoweth documents well the success that "unexpected" schools around the country are achieving in their quest to educate the least advantaged children and close the achievement gap. Every school profiled benefited from a dynamic principal, a committed staff, and high expectations for ALL students. This book is inspiring.

A "Must-Read" for Educators Seeking Strategies, Not Lip Service, in How to Close the Achievement Gap

I am immersed in a detailed study of the achievement gaps in our local school district. Asian and White students in our high performing suburban schools are significantly out-pacing the African American and Hispanic students on all measures of performance and at all educational levels. In the aggregate, our district has much to celebrate. However, when disaggregated, our achievement data make it clear that our struggling minority students are not being well-served. Karin Chenoweth's book is inspirational and informative. Multiple case studies are presented in clear, unbiased, wonderfully readable prose. The schools' stories are filled with successful strategies that can be adapted and replicated locally. The summary of gap-closing, "it's-being done" school characteristics should be posted in every faculty room and school office where educators say they believe that all students can achieve at high levels. Talk is cheap. This book is about successful action.

Non-ideological look at successful schools for students with various disadvantages

The book, "It's Being Done", focuses on schools that are successful AND have high percentages of students with low incomes and students from diverse ethnic backgrounds. Success is judged based on both consistent high levels of test score performance, and by visits that suggest that these high test scores really do represent high levels of student skills. The bulk of the book is made up of profiles of individual schools based on test score data and Chenoweth's visits to each school and interviews with key stakeholders at the school. The author, Karin Chenoweth, is a former education writer for the Washington Post. She doesn't seem to really have an axe to grind. Compared to other books I have read about how to reform schools, she seems more focused on describing what is going on in these schools than in distorting reality to fit some ideological point. Many of the book's case studies of individual schools are available for free online, under "Success Stories" at http://www.achievementalliance.org/news/ . However, the book adds some updates on how the schools have done since they were visited, and the last chapter has a very useful summation of what the authors feels the lessons are from these case studies. This final chapter of the book does an outstanding job in summarizing the commonalities among these successful schools. These successful schools differ greatly in size, the school calendar and schedule they follow, their use of technology, whether they have uniforms or not, whether they use prepackaged school reform models or not, the extent of parent and community involvement, and many other features. But they do have some commonalities, which, according to Chenoweth, include the following: 1. Focus on making sure they really implement in a high quality way an alignment of teaching and the curriculum with high quality standards. 2. Using both aggregate data and data on individual students. 3. An openess to reexamining what they're doing. 4. Produtive use of school time they have, and efforts to expand educational time. 5. A focus on ensuring teacher quality.

For anyone who cares about American education

This is a terrific look at American schools that are succeeding. It gets well beyond the usual tales of charismatic principals to actually distill the methods and approaches that are common to these thriving schools. Educators may not like everything she has to say--but parents will.