No Excuses: 21 High-Performing, High-Poverty Schools by Samuel Casey Carter

Sponsored by the Heritage Foundation, Carter advocates running schools like businesses: concentrate on fundamentals, hire productive people, and cull the slackers. How they selected the 21 high-performing schools remains a secret; perhaps they listed the highest-performing poor-neighborhood schools and selected the ones that were ideologically sound?

Providing better feedback more often to students meshes well with the computational theory of the mind. However, how do we know that we're giving feedback suboptimally or optimally given the competing concerns for a brain's attention?

Teaching inabilities are as prevalent as learning disabilities.

-- Marva Collins, Effective Practices

The more you test, the better the students do. Regardless of which teaching style you use, there has to be a constant assessment in place that demonstrates real mastery of what you are teaching.

-- David Levin, Effective Practices

No one needs to leave the building for staff development. I have a staff of veterans who teach each other.

-- Alyson Barillari, The 21 Schools