Coalition of Essential Schools
The coalition expresses ten common principles:
- The school should focus on helping adolescents learn to use their minds well.
- The school's goals should be simple: that each student master a limited number of essential skills and areas of knowledge.
- The school's goals should apply to all students.
- Teaching and learning should be personalized to the maximum feasible extent.
- The governing practical metaphor of the school should be student-as-worker rather than the more familiar metaphor of teacher-as-deliver er-of instructionalservices.
- The diploma should be awareded upon a successful final demonstration of master for graduation -- an "Exhibition."
- The tone of the school should explicitly and self-consciously stress values of unanxious expectation, of trust and of decency.
- The principal and teachers should perceive themselves as generalists first and specialists second.
- Ultimate administrative and budget targets should include, in addition to total student loads per teacher of 80 or fewer pupils, substantial time for collective planning by teachers, competititve salaries for staff and an ultimate per pupil cost not to exceed that at traditional schools by more than 10 percent.
- Equity and Democracy
For more information on CES please examine the CES homepage.
