Best Practice High School has three very improtant aspects that establish it as a fine academic instutition. The first is developing Powerful Teaching and Learning which establishes a collaborative approach between students and teachers making it easy for students to buy into their education. The more teachers and students communicate, the easier learning becomes. Second, is the aspect of Restructuring the School. They made sure the school stayed below 500 stduents ensuring that every student recieved the individual attention they need to be successful. Any more students and some of the student body may start to slip through academic crakes. Finnaly, Creating Curricular Paths to Success enables students to see connections between academic courses allowing them to get a full circle view of the "theme" they are studying.
Honestly, I found no practices that lead to any support of these topics at my first school. Everything was test based. Professionalism, ideals of themeatic units, powerful teaching, concepts outide the standardized tests were not even thought of beucase the test scores were all that mattered. In fact, teachers labeled students and limited them by profiling then established where they could or could not go beyond the boundries of high school. In fact, the school I was at is the model school used to establish why best practices was created.,
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I appreciate your summary of the text, and the lack of connection you saw at your previous school. Sadly, the lack of powerful teaching & learning, as you so characterized it, is what I have felt in many schools that become way to focused on test scores. Most of the highly successful schools--by test score--I have experienced focus on the student and that relationship, and know that good teaching will be seen on the tests.
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