Schooling for the Real World The Essential Guide to Rigorous and Relevant Learning

"The melding of reform approaches by the Coalition of Essential Schools and of the 'school-to-work' movement has been inevitable as well as sensible. In Schooling for the Real World, Adria Steinberg, Kathleen Cushman, and Robert Riordan outline how these reform initiatives have effectively coiled together and put their collective experience into an accessible and usable form. Given its complexity, the practical reshaping of America's high schools will surely be a messy business. The authors bring some order from their experience and thereby provide all of us a big boost ahead."--Theodore R. Sizer, chairman, Coalition of Essential Schools "Schooling for the Real World offers many practical ways for teachers and schools to provide young people a genuine education that gives them experience in the world. Such experience adds considerable value to what is studied in school and helps young people see themselves as citizens of their places, persons who are highly valued for their seriousness of purpose and hard work by adults in their communities."--Vito Perrone, director of Programs in Teaching, Harvard Graduate School of Education In today's workplace, the "knowledge worker" has become key to high performance. This person must have not only multiple talents and skills, but a sound understanding of what works in the real world. This incisive book argues for schooling that combines rigorous academic instruction with learning in real-world settings. It offers practical strategies for designing effective learning programs, developing a strong curriculum, setting standards and goals, assessing student work, supporting rewarding internships, and much more. In clear and straightforward language, the authors present inspiring examples of successful schools from such organizations as the Coalition of Essential Schools, Jobs for the Future, and New Urban High Schools to show how work-based learning can become a schoolwide effort--and not simply a specialized program. Throughout the book, there are examples offering important lessons and tools to administrators, teachers, policymakers, and community leaders. Schooling for the Real World heralds a future in which the knowledge worker is not the exception, but the rule.

ADRIA STEINBERG is a program director of Jobs for the Future, a national nonprofit organization working to strengthen the transitions and links between learning and work. She has worked in and written about high schools for over thirty years and is the author of several books, including Real Learning, Real Work (1997). For five years, she was a writer for and editor of The Harvard Education Letter. KATHLEEN CUSHMAN has written for more than a decade about education reform, describing the Coalition of Essential Schools in the journal Horace and the schools of the Annenberg Challenge in Challenge Journal. She is editor of The Collected Horace: Theory in Practice in Essential Schools, a five-volume work published in 1998. ROBERT RIORDAN is a longtime teacher, administrator, and teacher trainer. He was named National School-to-Work Practitioner of the Year in 1994. He is currently project director for Changing the Subject: The New Urban High School, a joint initiative of the Big Picture Company and the U.S. Department of Education.