In 2009, influenced by the 100 anniversary of Harvard Business School and the global financial crisis, MBA students at HBS decided that MBAs needed an oath similar to the Hippocratic Oath that doctors take. They wrote
an oath, and now there is a fast growing number of MBA students at various business schools who have signed the oath.

CHALLENGE
Because 50% of inner city students drop out school and 30% of all students nation wide drop out, why not have a similar oath for school administrators and teachers?

Linda Mariotti, President of ASCD , an international association of 170,000 education leaders, tells us that It's "Time to Do What We Know Is Best for Our Students." In the article she says "What we need in K–12 education is not always more money; it is the willpower to do what we know works, despite pressures from the public, the unions, and the politicians. We need to commit to making effective instructional decisions that have proven they will reduce the achievement gap, and we need to do this without apology—even when resistance surfaces."

Powerful short video of India school empowering children with "I can." They then empower other children across India

An Idaho principal turns around an under performing school through servant leadership and collaboration

L.A.Teachers seek control at up-for-bid L.A. schools They know the children best and can build programs that will succeed.

How's this for a
school? Designed by Denmark's noted Bosch & Fjord Design Company/a>

NO GRADES + NO HOMEWORK= BETTER LEARNING (Alfie Kohn) I agree with Kohn. He shows how incentives are counterproductive to learning. I also feel that incentives for teachers undermine teaching. For a great TED talk that gives strong Scientific evidence of the harm of incentives see by Dan Pink.

I'll be taking a break from my blogging while I work on updating CRISIS IN SCHOOL MANAGEMENT . Please follow me on Twitter where I tend to post a daily tweet. Also, if you know of a public school that is managed democratically, please let me know about the school.And I'm open to any suggestions for the book as well as ideas for helping spread the word about the book. (It's a free download.)

WHY JOHNNY WON’T READ

by
Stephanie Hopkins Hughes
artist, noted researcher of Shakespeare Authorship and blogger on education and other topics
Years ago those of us who were concerned about the state of public education all read Jonathon Kozol’s book “Why Johnny Can’t Read.” I think the question of why he won't read is more to the point. Some can't, but far more simply won't. Oh sure, they can pick their way through a text when absolutely required to do so, but they resist reading, get nothing from it, and are certainly not about to do any reading on their own.

In early September, as a former writing teacher/writing coach, I addressed the elementary and middle school teachers of a nearby school district on teaching writing from a writer's perspective. To begin with, I honored them as teachers of writing, a task that becomes more and more challenging in our test driven school culture. Then, to honor some writers, I shared with the teachers a few key statements about writing and the teaching of writing from writers whose writing I respect.
Here's a sampling of what I shared. You might want to make a collection of your own:

1. From Alexander Pope, 18th century English poet and essayist:

"True ease in writing comes form art not chance,
as those who move easiest have learned to dance."

2. From Toni Bentley, author and former dancer:

There is a great editorial in the MN Star Tribune calling for teachers to help run schools. link

And here’s a school doing it: Minnesota’s New Country School where teachers collaboratively run the school and student’s learn through doing projects.

I am going to be blunt: schools have reached their highest level of incompetency. Think about it. How long would your business last if you consistently drove 30% of your paying customers away? That’s the national average of school dropouts. Even worse, in our large cities 50+ percent are driven away. And horror of horrors, schools are getting paid for doing this. No matter how poorly schools are doing,public funds keep flowing in. If we were to take away compulsory attendance and tax support, our schools would either shape up or get out of business.

Here's a link to my recent tweets on twitter