Harnessing The Dynamics of Public Education: Preparing for a Return to Greatness

Harnessing the Dynamics of Public Education: Preparing for a Return to Greatness is a comprehensive look at the American public education system. Building on the current system, the book takes on the War on Education in an effort to rethink, redesign and develop a new state-of-the-art system of learning that will regain international competiveness and be the “best choice” for parents in a growing system of choice. The authors provide critical analysis of the current system while also offering specific solutions and hope for one of the greatest institutions in America…..as it Return’s to Greatness!

Table of Contents:
Dedication Foreword Acknowledgements About the Authors Introduction: Harnessing the Dynamics of Public Education: Preparing for a Return to Greatness! Chapter 1. Building a Naturally Great School Chapter 2. Fostering a New Mindset for the Future Chapter 3. The War on American Public Education Chapter 4. Comprehensive Accountability Chapter 5. Overcoming Pedagogical Paralysis Chapter 6. Authentic Leadership Chapter 7. The Price of Safety Chapter 8. Our Return to Greatness

About the Author :
Dr. Timothy B. Jones is a leading consultant for school improvement initiatives and a former full time doctoral professor and now adjunct professor. Dr. David C. Barrett is a Senior Field Trainer and Analyst for the Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk (MCPER) at The University of Texas at Austin. He also serves as the Assistant Director for the Middle School Matters Institute.

Review :
We love this book. It calls for an approach to education that is quite different from what is now the norm while simultaneously recognizing and celebrating much of what is great and inspiring about American education. That call for change is grounded in an understanding of leading edge developments in how the brain/mind learns naturally, as illustrated by the power of play. It explores the corresponding need for a more complex yet authentic approach to teaching that matches how people learn. It grasps and illustrates the power of context. And it has a deep appreciation of the immense importance of physical and emotional safety, and the crucial importance of great leadership. The book is well researched, beautifully written, elegantly colored with metaphors that bring the message to light, and is both practical and inspirational. It deserves to be very widely read. Harnessing the Dynamics of Public Education: Preparing for a Return to Greatness is insightful, forward thinking and riveting. An absolute must read to anyone involved in education! Schools evolve to meet the demands placed upon them by laws, legislatures, and culture. The result has been the unimaginative standardized educational processes that punish innovation and creativity. Drs. Timothy B. Jones and David C. Barrett’s new book, Harnessing the Dynamics of Public Education: Preparing for a Return to Greatness, provides an important, and often critical, view of education. We must face what we have become before we can get better, but fortunately, there is a path to the schools we want. In their book, Harnessing the Dynamics of Public Education: Preparing for a Return to Greatness, Timothy Jones and David Barrett draw attention, critically and importantly, to the deleterious nature of standardization in American education. The authors are instructive in their argument that America as a democratic society is witnessing the slow erosion of intellectual excellence that has been the hallmark of American’s educational system, and a mainstay of America’s democratic way of life. The authors focus on the need to transform, rightly so, old patterns that have contributed to the destruction of public education. Argued in this book is the need to create America’s schools anew, taking a new path to greatness for public education, shattering outdated and constrictive notions of traditions in favor of a new paradigm that permeates and gives way to thinking and necessary actions. In Harnessing the Dynamics of Public Education: Preparing for a Return to Greatness, the reader is immediately drawn into this book’s story and premise. The authors skillfully establish not only the need for change in American education, they do so with bold words. Their use of seven drivers to return public education to greatness is clever and intellectually provocative. The reader cannot help but become motivated to join Drs. Jones and Barrett’s call to return American public schools to their greatness. Inspiring and spot on! Drs. Jones and Barrett’s new book provides hope and strategy for one of America’s most important institutions returning to the prominence it deserves. In Harnessing the Dynamics of Public Education: Preparing for a Return to Greatness, Drs. Jones and Barrett emphasize the importance of school improvement efforts in order to empower stakeholders to initiate needed school change. They stress the critical nature of saving public education and the vital role authentic leaders play in creating and maintaining effective and competitive campuses for the future. This should be a required read for practicing school leaders and those who prepare and certify them. Harnessing the Dynamics of Public Education: Preparing for a Return to Greatness is a wide angle take on, and prescription for, the current state of America's school system. With great clarity and insight, the authors make a persuasive argument that in order for there to be authentic learning in schools, there must be authentic teaching. This requires a journey toward authentic leadership-that finding and pursuing your own authentic leadership in teaching--is the key to regaining quality education in our school systems. The future belongs to leaders who want to win, without ever losing track of their own values. We live in a day when the best people can work or learn anywhere. They will follow authenticity-a person who leads with passion and purpose. As educators it is easy to get caught up in the, “it was good enough in the past/it is good enough for the present,” mentality. The students of today express their ideas in a different manner than students of the past…i.e. the way we did. Dr. Jones and Dr. Barrett skillfully articulates to the reader the importance of evolving as an educational system and making learning relevant for todays (and tomorrow’s) learners. As a business owner I think this book offers hope for providing a future full of creative individuals and thinkers on a global scale through a personalized education versus a standardized process that doesn’t address businesses needs for 21st century skills.