"Good Public Education Is Not an Impossible Dream"

books:

	• The Power of Their Ideas: Lessons for America from a Small School in Harlem Deborah Meier Beacon Press, 2002 - 208 pages average customer review:based on 16 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A strong argument in favor of small schools

I am a high school teacher who works in a big school that is transitioning into small schools this fall, so I read Deborah Meier's book with special interest. She is one of the gurus of the movement, and sure enough, she makes a powerful case for the advantages that small schools pose relative to the type of big, impersonal high school I've taught in for the past eight years. Aside from giving me further confidence that the small schools transition is the right move for our district, I can't say I got much practical information out of this book. Meier's basic message is that if you make schools small and give teachers the power to run them democratically, good things will come of it. The schools she has organized certainly seem to each have a track record of success, so one wants to have faith that this approach will work elsewhere.

What I was hoping for in the book, however, was more of a "how-to" for the classroom teacher. How do I convince kids that I care about them and create a sense of community in my small school? How do I deal effectively with student absenteeism, apathy, lack of parental support, violence in the home and neighborhoods, refusal to do homework, etc. etc. etc.? Meier seems to say that given the chance to really know my students and address these problems with my small-school colleagues, I'll be able to come up with the answers myself. I hope she's right, but I wish she'd given me a lot more examples of how she and her fellow teachers confronted and overcame these types of problems.

Overall, The Power of Their Ideas is a worthwhile book that tackles some big issues in education. Meier has some sacred cows to kick (e.g. standardized testing, pundits who long for the mythical "good old days" of education, and overly ambitious graduation requirements), and she does it convincingly and with good humor. Most importantly, she comes back again and again to the vital role of public education in democracy. Public school reform must not come at the cost of their being truly public institutions (as would happen under vouchers, charter schools, and corporate governance of schools), or we will lose one of the most powerful forces for democracy we have as a nation.

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Compelling Story Supporting Small Schools

Deborah Meier writes about her experiences restructuring a school in Harlem in this book, The Power of Their Ideas. She created small schools within a large school. Her successes in doing so are compelling evidence that all students can succeed. Schools today have countless obstacles. Meier demonstrates how size should not be an obstacle. Since the release of The Power of Their Ideas, many school districts across the country are attempting to restructure schools based on Meier's experiences.

I read this book for a doctorate level course at DePaul University and a graduate level course at Teachers College, Columbia University. I would recommend this book to all education students. It is an inspiring book for everyone in the field of education.

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Terrific, inspiring

This is a terrific book. Meier writes with the wisdom of experience and a life spent struggling for the best education for all of her students. An inspiring book, and one that deserves a close reading by all concerned with quality public education.

"Good Public Education Is Not an Impossible Dream"

I am a college student majoring in education and read this book for a class. I found the book very interesting and enlightening. It not only had many appealing profound statements, but several ideas that could actually be put to use. For the most part it wasn't a difficult to read. Sometimes I felt it was a bit dry and as if two people wrote it. From time to time, there were sections that I felt I needed to read twice to comprehend the thought behind the statements. This might have been due to me being a beginner in this field. However, it is a book I will suggest to others. I believe it should be required reading for my local board of education.

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Powerful Ideas from Deb Meier

The Power of Their Ideas, by Deborah Meier. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995

Long before the current school restructuring movement was born, Deborah Meier's heart and soul were already in it. She came out of the 1960s as a "movement" person who began teaching accidentally, without any grand plan. But in 1974, Meier and a small group of colleagues founded Central Park East Elementary School in one wing of P.S. 171 in East Harlem, as a school that was not just "child-centered, but community-centered as well."

Unlike the wave of small alternative schools that had sprung up during that turbulent period, Central Park East was born as a school inside, not outside, the system. Under the protection of a new risk-taking district superintendent, Anthony Alvarado, Meier and her band of determined educators won the right to engage in a most radical practice--good teaching. They wanted, says Meier, "to provide at public expense for the least advantaged what the most advantaged bought privately for their own children."

The Power of Their Ideas refers to the ideas of those who were at the center of this small- schools movement: the teachers, parents, and students who created what Alternative Schools Director Sy Fliegel would later call, in the title of his book, Miracle in East Harlem. These ideas led to the success of four small schools of choice, working under all the constraints of the public school system. Meier, a radical critic of the system and at the same time a staunch defender of public education, wanted no part of vouchers or privatization. Her philosophy emerges from the telling of her story. Good teaching, she insists, is fostered by "small schools, schools of choice, school autonomy over the critical dimensions of teaching and learning, lots of time for building relationships...."

In journal notes, she finds meaning for small schools in the death of Carmela, one of her students:

The school's steady attention to Carmela and her family as she lay dying for nearly a year can't happen in a school five times our size. Yet death surrounds our kids. If death doesn't count, does life?
While the population of Central Park East still reflects a cross section of New York City, with the majority coming from low-income, African-American and Latino families, nearly all of its students graduate, go on to college, and do well there. Is this really a "miracle"? If all children can learn, why should Central Park East be equated with Lourdes?

It shouldn't. Central Park East and the 50 or so New York City schools modeled on it were not handed down from heaven. As Meier tells it, they were the product of hard work done by groups of teachers coming together voluntarily around a common philosophy:

a small crew of teachers who were ready to take the risks and seize the opportunities; and a group of families either desperate enough or eager enough to give it a chance.
The Power of Their Ideas is part journal, part handbook for the next generation of caring, innovative teachers who aren't sure if or how it can be done, and part treatise on democracy and education, taking on the why's, not just the how's of schooling. "For us," says Meier, "a democratic community was the nonnegotiable purpose of good schooling."

Available from Beacon Press, 25 Beacon St., Boston, MA 02108.

--Reviewed by Mike Klonsky, Small Schools Workshop

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

Deborah Meier's acclaimed first book, with a new preface

"The founder and principal of excellent small schools in East Harlem . . . Meier wants to make all students capable of participating in and sustaining a democracy. . . . Doubters must read Deborah Meier to take a look at that success up close, to watch it begin and grow and flourish."
?Lorene Cary, The New York Times Book Review

"Meier pledges her faith 'in the extraordinary untapped capacities of all our children'; but, unlike so many radical reformers, she is also firmly rooted in the reality of the classroom. . . .What has propelled people like Meier from the periphery to the center of the ongoing school debate is the recognition that a new and different form of public school is no longer a luxury."
?James Traub, The New Yorker

"Written in prose that runs like a clear stream past the sludge of educational discourse. . . .The fate of public education today depends on whether we listen to . . . the Deborah Meiers of the land."
?Joseph Featherstone, The Nation

"A fiery manifesto of Meier's plan for the salvation of public education."
?Los Angeles Times

"A book not of blueprints and slogans, but of essays-reflective and analytical. The Power of Their Ideas is the product of a lively mind."
?The Washington Post

"Anyone who wants to get insight into the current waves of endless 'reform' debate should read it."
?Philadelphia Inquirer

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