No Game Plan: How Leaders at Each Educational Level Operate on Their Own and Together Fail Students

No Game Plan: How Leaders at Each Educational Level Operate on Their Own and Together Fail Students shows how illogical and disjointed decisions by educators at the federal, state, college, corporate, superintendent, and teachers union levels have combined to perpetuate underachievement and failure for millions of students. To best meet students' intellectual and academic needs, educators should play complementary roles that ultimately result in outstanding curricula and instruction offered in local schools.
No Game Plan describes how school district leaders abruptly replaced long-successful elementary school reading programs that were based on substantial evidence with a fad that had no credible research to recommend it. Heavily influenced by educators in colleges and state education departments, district leaders adopted the fad without sufficient input from their own veteran elementary school teachers. Almost immediately, the uncontrolled experiment led to academic disarray and lower student achievement.
The book draws on the work of educators who have written about fundamental goals we should have for our students and ways educators at different levels can help meet those goals. As John Dewey understood over 100 years ago, genuine freedom - intellectual freedom - comes when teachers develop a scientific attitude among students, one that "rests in the trained power of thought, in the ability to 'turn things over,' to look at matters deliberately, to judge whether the amount and kind of evidence requisite for decision is at hand, and if not, to tell where and how to seek such evidence." No Game Plan illustrates why educators need to remain focused on these principles, and what students lose when they don't.
Jason Aronoff was a school psychologist for 28 years in a large suburban school district, where he observed hundreds of teachers and thousands of students in their classrooms. Prior to that, he taught at the college level. He received his BA from Kent State University, his MA and PhD from The Ohio State University, and his school psychologist certification at Alfred University.