The Lights of El Milagro: How One Charter School's Revolt Could Transform Public Education - Softcover

Riley EdD, Kevin W.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1419670018 ISBN 13: 9781419670015

Publisher: BookSurge Publishing, 2008

Synopsis

“Imagine Mueller Charter School. Imagine a mission so righteous that it promises to define the career of every employee. Imagine cultivating the talent you need to achieve what others can only imagine. Imagine teachers so intrinsically driven that they will walk through fire to help children blossom. Imagine a culture, balanced by some internal gyroscope, that keeps kids and their teachers whole. Imagine a spiritual center that hums. Invisible. Hypnotic. Transformational. Imagine El Milagro. “ From “The Lights of El Milagro”

About this title

About the Author

Kevin W. Riley, Ed.D., has been an educator in San Diego County for thirty years. He has worked in six different school districts as a coach, teacher, facilitator, and administrator. He has served in unique and varied settings: from a one room schoolhouse on top of Palomar Mountain to the 7th largest school district in America; from an upscale elementary school in affluent Solana Beach to a facility for incarcerated youth at Rancho Del Campo High School. He has been a race relations consultant for San Diego Unified School District and the director for San Diego County's Juvenile Court and Community Schools. In addition, he has served on the adjunct faculty for the School of Education at the University of San Diego since 1996. Since 2000, he has been the principal of Mueller Charter School. Dr. Riley has written extensively on a wide range of topics in education, always advocating for children, educational equity and compassionate service to high risk youth. His expertise in organizational change and entrepreneurial leadership has been in high demand at workshops and conferences for public schools as well as at staff development trainings for private organizations. Dr. Riley and his wife, Anne, live in Tierrasanta with their two teen-aged children.

From the Back Cover

On the strength of their commitment to a near impossible mission of producing children who will "one day change the world", the amazing educators of Mueller Charter School have defied the odds. In spite of their demographics, paralyzingly low industry expectations and external forces bent on preserving the status quo-- they have become "El Milagro"... the miracle.

Mueller Charter School is located in a working class neighborhood of Chula Vista in southern San Diego County, within miles of the Mexican border. Transformations are rare in schools like Mueller, where

• 90% are children of color;
• 75% qualify for free or reduced lunch; and
• 60% are learning English as a second language.

Nevertheless, with the full authority of California's charter law and with a rare genius for creating continuous and innovative change, the high energy staff at Mueller has turned their school into a national model. If it takes a revolution to transform public education, the first shot may have been fired at El Milagro.

Told by their principal, Kevin W. Riley, this is a mesmerizing chronicle of how one school steeled its resolve and rose defiantly against its own history of underachievement. Riley's writing style eloquently captures the mood from within America's troubled schools. His voice is alternately irreverent and lyrical, poignant and humorous, agitated, and always profoundly insightful.

At a time when America's leaders in education, government, business, and law enforcement desperately search for promising school designs, "The Lights of El Milagro" offers innovative solutions and systems that work. The passion is unmistakable, the focus on children unwavering, and the demand for excellence unrelenting.

This may well be the most important book to emerge from within the front lines of public schools since Jonathan Kozol wrote "Death At an Early Age" in 1967.

Edition details

• Publisher: BookSurge Publishing
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1419670018
• ISBN 13: 9781419670015
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 356