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.