
Entrepreneurial
Educators
Q. Every profession
has innovators and geniuses who improve things for the rest of us. Who are the
much-admired people in education today?
Here are a few who have gone the extra mile to create
or contribute to new schools, and new philosophies of schooling:
n Marva Collins, Westside
Preparatory School, inner-city Chicago; she started a prep school for the
poorest kids in town - with fantastic results. www.marvacollins.com
n The late John Saxon,
Saxon Publishing Co., in Austin, Texas, was a frustrated teacher who wrote his
own series of textbooks. They're simple, systematic, with lots of repetitions,
and they work. www.saxonpub.com
n E.D. Hirsch, whose Core
Knowledge series woke up a generation of parents and teachers to the classic
elements of a solid curriculum that are missing from most public schools'
lineups. See www.coreknowledge.com
n Romalda Spalding, Oma
Riggs and Myrna McCullough kept the flames of phonics instruction alive: www.spalding.org and www.riggsinst.org
n The Russian School of
Mathematics is doing awesome work in "afterschooling" of math in the Boston
area: www.russianschool.com
n Some of the best private
schools which are being copied nationwide include Michigan's Hillsdale Academy,
www.hillsdale.edu/academy and
New Jersey's The Lawrenceville School, www.lawrenceville.org
n Some of the best charter
schools include Portland's www.ArthurAcademy.org;
www.RogerBacon.net near Wilmington,
N.C.; Seattle's "catch-up" school, www.MorningsideAcademy.org and
the academically marvelous www.pacificcollegiate.com
n Successful strategies
for inner-city, disadvantaged and non-English speaking schools have been
developed by the schools included in the www.noexcuses.org
list.
n The Calvert School in
Baltimore, www.calvertschool.org,
has developed a partner school package and homeschooling curriculum to transfer
its time-tested system into other schools or for-home use.
n Dunham Academy in San
Rafael, Calif., has a year-round, all-day, K-8 school for academically gifted
children, www.giftedschool.org
n Interesting hybrids
between private schools and homeschools are being developed by University Model
Schools, www.naums.net
n Classical Christian day
schools are launched with the help of www.acsi.org
Homework: Private schools and homeschools are
the original entrepreneurs, of course. Send a donation today and encourage an
educational entrepreneur near you.