Choosing Excellence

How do you evaluate a school? Today parents and teachers lean on standardized test scores - along with image, rumor, and reputation - to make vital decisions. However, a single number is inevitably misleading. Author John Merrow, host of PBS's premier documentary series on youth and learning, The Merrow Report, delves into the problem of school evaluation. He shows that there are really only three kinds of schools: bad, good enough, and excellent. Good enough is the kind of school that most people settle for, schools people want to believe are okay. Each of the chapters in Choosing Excellence explores some aspect of schooling: safety, academics, values, technology, and so on. He spotlights excellent practices and strategies, concluding each chapter with a list of evidence for visitors to look for.