Making Large Schools Work

Arthur Shapiro is a theoretically-based practitioner who is professor of education in the College of Education at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida.

Arthur Shapiro is eminently qualified to write a treatise on such an important and prescient subject as reforming the way we structure American high schools. Much of the literature on the topic is prescriptive without mindful attention to reasoned thinking and extant research. Shapiro provides both. Making Large Schools Work debunks widely held assumptions about the efficacy of large schools and will offer educators and policy makers alike with philosophical and scientific data needed to decentralize high schools into small learning communities. The book brilliantly combines theory and practice in its attempt to eschew complacency about such a critical topic. Detractors will point to the impracticality of such advocacy given the current economic climate. Don't allow such a subterfuge to derail our long-term efforts to improve our schools. The vision for high schools that Shapiro advocates, realistically, won't transform schools overnight, but this volume is necessarily to lay the groundwork necessary for the hard work ahead. Well written with many examples and case studies, this volume will contribute mightily to efforts to reform our high schools in the twenty-first century.

• Part 3 SECTION I: SIZE GENERATES SHOALS WHICH CAN WRECK USPart 4 SECTION II: HOW ORGANIZATIONS (READ SCHOOLS) WORK - THEIR DYNAMICSPart 5 SECTION III: STRATEGIES ON HOW TO GET THEREPart 6 SECTION IV: THREE CASE STUDIES TO DEMONSTRATE HOW TO PULL OFF IMPROVING SCHOOLS BY DECENTRALIZINGPart 7 SECTION V: WHAT DID WE DO? WHY DID IT WORK? HOW CAN I DO IT?: BY BUILDING AN INFRA-STRUCTURE AND CULTURE TO MAKE IT WORK - ABSOLUTELY CRUCIAL