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From Standards to Success: A Guide for School Leaders By Mark R. O'Shea Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2005
In From Standards to Success: A Guide for School Leaders, Mark O'Shea, a Professor of Education at California State University, Monterey Bay and Founder and Executive Director of the Institute for the Achievement of Academic Standards, proposes a specific, prescriptive plan for implementing the standards in K-12 schools. The proposed implementation plan includes a focus on curriculum planning devoted to the standards alone, as well as professional development and teacher collaboration limited to the standards.
The lens from which this book is reviewed is that of a former school superintendent, a K-12 educator of over 30 years, and now an assistant professor of educational leadership. Having spent my life immersed in education, my goal has been to seek ways to engage students in learning; to avoid the swinging pendulum of school reform, and to make balanced decisions, guarding against extremes. Although I believe that school accountability and educational standards should have a prominent place in education, unlike O'Shea, I also am keenly aware of the areas of education that are not quantifiable, but, nevertheless, deserve equal attention. For example, we seek to prepare students to live in a democracy and to appreciate and delight in poetry, drama, and works of art, joyous areas of human experience that cannot be reduced to the testing of quantifiable knowledge. O'Shea appears to limit the implementation of the standards to the narrower view.
Teachers should be allowed some freedom in selecting the materials and pedagogy they will use in nurturing a passion for learning in their students. Teachers and the curriculum should facilitate the students' ability to make a contribution to their world. From a pragmatic point of view, it is impossible to meet the educational needs of society if all we give teachers is "one-size-fits-all" manuals and robotic pedagogy.
Some of O'Shea's recommendations are commendable, including: (1) collaborative teacher planning, (2) collaborative teacher review of student work, and (3) the involvement of all teachers in professional development. However, these are effective educational strategies the efficacy of which is not limited to the implementation of standards, as one might surmise from O'Shea's book. For example, teacher...