Chapter 1: A Decade Later

Reading this first chapter on School reform, I found Turning Point’s success with their program to be very interesting. The chapter mentioned that Schools in different states like Illinois and Massachusetts that have adapted Turning Point’s recommended practices showed that students were significantly improving and succeeding on assessment tests. I feel that this fact is extremely important to think about and understand what is causing these successes. The year I graduated, 2008, the news headlines were covered with the concerns of the very high failure rates around the country in middle and high schools. I am sure that failure rates are still higher than they should be, which means teachers aren’t doing something right if so many students everywhere are failing high school and dropping out. If Turning Point to have created a program that has helped many school increase their success rates due to effective instructional approaches, then this program must be working and I can’t wait to learn more about its processes. I also found it very interesting that this chapter defined a middle school student’s core values to be focused around “enabling every students to think creatively, to identify and solve meaningful problems, to communicate and work well with others…” pg 10-11 I don’t normally think of these as the focus of teaching, even at the middle school level. I think teachers are always caught up in the school work and what they need to teach, and yet I do agree with this chapter, that these are some core values that adolescents should be taught and practice. I think these skills would make school work become much easier to learn and complete.