Making schools work, with Hedrick Smith

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Description

Amidst a gloomy climate of failing schools and the stringent No Child Left Behind legislation, some communities have created a small revolution, achieving gains with children others had given up on - with implications for schools nationwide. In this penetrating documentary, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Hedrick Smith travels from inner city to rural town to observe how some districts and reform models are making a difference: the Success for All reading program; the Comer Process; KIPP, the Knowledge Is Power Program; and High Schools That Work, a program that links academics to work-oriented learning. The video also spotlights important district-wide reforms in New York City, San Diego, and Charlotte, North Carolina. The lesson? Learn from schools that work, spread their methods widely, and keep updating them for continuous improvement in student achievement. Interviews with Yale's James Comer, Johns Hopkins' Robert Slavin, and reformers Gene Bottoms and Anthony Alvarado, among others, help frame this cogent report.