Wasting Minds Why our education system is failing and what we can do about it

APA citation:

Wolk, R. A. (2011). Wasting minds: why our education system is failing and what we can do about it. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Review of the first third of the book:

Author's views:

  • New practices and reforms to the existing education system won't work
  • Wolk believes that the "engine for a new schools strategy is personalized education anchored in the real world"

"With an idealist's heart and pragmatist's spine, [and] he shows how to build an education system centered on students and true to the ideals of freedom, rigor, and fairness" - author Ronald A. Wolk

Key Points:

  • Wolk promotes smaller, innovative schools
  • Individualized instruction, with various pathways for learning
  • Real-world context for learning

Review of the second third of the book:

The Dropout Epidemic:

  • The dropout rate is increasing constantly, specifically in urban districts among poor minority students
  • It is costly to our society and the US economy would grow significantly if the number of high school drop outs were cut in half
  • the "just say stay" policy rarely works- the get tough approach of NCLB has not worked; it hasn't closed the achievement rate or increased the graduation rate

Never Enough Money:

  • the funding is short even though the US spends more on public schools than any other nation in the world
  • the issue is that we can't figure out a successful education system and agree on it, so we can't determine how much it costs or how to achieve these funds

Many Paths to Success:

  • it is not the public schools' job to train specific students for specific jobs; it is their job to teach them the basics, how to read, how to write, how to do basic math
  • there are many pathways for students in high school such as traditional college prep, learning communities, career and technical academies, virtual schools, independent study

Third part of the book:

The Essential Role of Performance Assessments:

  • in a new schools strategy of education improvement, performance assessments are not only compatible with personalized education, they are inextricably linked
  • what teachers learn from performance assessments is whether the students have or have not learned the material and where further is most needed
  • performance assessments can produce significant benefits such as better student attendance, fewer dropouts, higher graduation rates, increased student motivation, high- quality student work, etc

Start them early:

  • an advocacy organization called Pre-K Now shows children who attend pre-k have higher graduation rates, were less likely to repeat a grade, were less likely to require special education services, and were more likely to be employed in the future
  • Research shows that children who engage in complex forms of socio-dramatic play have greater language skills than non players, better social skills, more empathy, more imagination, and more of the subtle capacity to know what others mean

Credits:

Created with images by umezy12 - "Classroom" • TeroVesalainen - "mindmap brainstorm idea" • jarmoluk - "apple education school"

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