Walk Away in the Sunshine

Everyone wants to improve schooling. We are going to tell you some real-life war stories about one high school principals journey through the maze of secondary education. You will meet students, parents, teachers, principals, superintendents, and school boards, all trying hard but often working at cross-purposes and getting in one anothers way. In these stories the good guys win some and lose some, and some get rained out. But they all shed light on the murky world of educational theory and the way it works out in the real world.

The author, a former teacher and high school principal, has some strong, well-documented opinions about what real education ought to look like. Her purpose is not to increase polarization but to figure out what went wrong and is still going wrong, and why these things sometimes work. Finally, she offers a prescription that trumps the Back-to-Basics movement by exploring what the real basics are and offering a vision of what schools could be.