Len Lipkin

Ignore Test Scores

The easiest thing to find when evaluating a school is the schools performance on standardized tests. How much weight should you put on those scores in your school decision?

Len Lipkin

No Room for PC in School Choice: Being Honest With Yourself

I was speaking to an ivy-educated friend (and parent) the other night about Philadelphia elementary school choices.  He halted the conversation when he said (I’m paraphrasing), ‘I don’t mean to be rude, but I essentially am looking at one thing in a school.  How likely is it that my child will be able to get into an ivy or near-ivy level college?’ The politically correct side of me was...

Len Lipkin

School Success Criteria Volume 4: Jerry Maguire Edition

“SHOW ME THE MONEY!” Perhaps one of the most memorable movie quotes from the 1990s, this line pretty much sums up the last and probably most obvious characteristic of a good school.  Money.  Financial resources are, in fact, key precursors to two of the other factors that I have already blogged about that make a school great, teachers and administrators, and there is likely a strong...

Len Lipkin

School Success Criteria Volume 3: Leadership

Who is at the helm, and how long have they been there?  When I talk to folks about schools, I often hear about teacher quality and parental involvement.  However, I have to believe that strong leadership within the school is also critical to a school’s success.  A principal/headmaster with a clear vision and the leadership skills to enact that vision must be critical to a successful school,...

Len Lipkin

Make Every School a Charter?

Mary Beth Hertz (a.k.a. mbteach on Twitter) over on the Philly Teacher blog recently posted a very thought provoking article–A New Model for School Reform: Could it Work?. With all the talk of Charters and Renaissance schools lately, it was great to read such a well thought out and well articulated model of school reform. Her idea in a nutshell–do away with catchments and let every...

Len Lipkin

School Success Criteria Vol 2: Teachers

In yesterday’s post, the first of a series outlining what makes a school successful, I started the article by stating that I was unhappy that teachers are disproportionately punished for bad performance in schools. Newsweek’s cover story this week is titled “Why We Must Fire Bad Teachers” tells the other side of the story–that teachers should be blamed when blame is due, What...

Len Lipkin

School Success Criteria Vol 1: Parents

In the news lately there has been a lot of talk of underperforming “Renaissance” schools who will forced to dismiss many of their teachers.  On the one hand, I applaud the attempt to shock our worst schools into improvement.  On the other hand, I am dismayed that the teachers are being disproportionately punished for the failures of their schools.  It occurred to me that so many factors...