Public Schools That Work: Creating Community

Public Schools That Workdiscusses the efforts of teachers, administrators, and parents to develop alternative educational models capable of overcoming the alienation and intellectual disengagement that have become so common in American schools. Educators working in some of the best alternative elementary and secondary schools across the country recount their attempts to create systems which will educate diverse populations in their customs and heritages, involve parents and community leaders in decisions related to the life of their schools, and involve students in their communities by encouraging participation in a variety of civic projects. By being rooted in their local social environment, these schools demonstrate the transformative potential of education to return power and authority to those individuals attempting to reconstruct and humanize the institutions within which they must learn and teach. Public Schools That Workincludescontributions from: Gregory A. Smith, Mary Anne Raywid, Robert Peterson, David Magstrom, Dave Lehman, Tom Gregory, Mary Ellen Sweeney, Arnold Langberg, Larry F. Guthrie, Grace Pung Guthrie, Terrill Bush, Robert B. Everhart, and Toni Haas. Their accounts will inform policymakers, school administrators, teachers and parents who are concerned with making schools into places characterized by intellectual vitality, personal support and strong connections to the broader environment in which they are embedded.