Raising the Curve
Teachers, Students-a True Portrayal of Classroom Life
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
Brookside Elementary in Norwalk, Connecticut, is preparing for a new school year and another chance to improve its failing scores on the statewide standardized test known as the CMT. The challenges are many, and for the faculty—whose jobs may depend on their students’ ability to improve on the test—the stakes are high.
Ten-year-old Hydea is about to start fifth grade with second-grade reading skills. Her friend Marbella is only a little further along. In past years, these students would have received help from the literacy specialist Mrs. Schaefer. But this year, due to cutbacks and a change in job description, she will have to select the few students whom she and the teachers can bet on—the ones who are close to passing the exams. And, for added measure, Principal Hay has already asked his faculty to teach to the test.
Journalist Ron Berler spent a full year at Brookside. In Raising the Curve, he offers a nuanced and personal portrait of the students, teachers, and staff who make up the Brookside community, capturing their struggles as well as their pride, resilience, and spirited faith.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Brookside Elementary School in Norwalk, Conn., is one of over 28,000 schools labeled "failing" because of low scores on annual mandatory state tests. Yet, according to journalist Berler's inspiring story of one year in the life of the school, Brookside is hardly a failure. In a compulsively readable and fast-paced chronicle of the lives of administrators, teachers, and students, Berler captures the deep love the teachers have for their students and the teachers' struggles to teach to the test while hoping to instill a love of learning. Among other students, we meet Marabella, who has great potential but who is not an especially dedicated student, and Hydea, a shy but deeply imaginative girl with great, though untapped, reading ability, who is performing below her grade level at the start of her fifth-grade year. Both girls find themselves in Mr. Morey's class. Morey is a committed teacher who "spends his days instilling in his students an eagerness to learn" and watching them blossom. With Morey's efforts, and the leadership of the school's principal, Mr. Hay, and the school's reading specialist, Mrs. Schaefer, Marabella, Hydea, and a number of other students show significant academic improvement and blossom when they enter middle school, a truer measure of the school's success than the statewide test.
