Horace's School

A plan for school reform that respects the best traditions of secondary schooling and urges us to do far more in preparing adolescents for the future.

This influential work on education policy provides a blueprint for change:

• Personalized Learning: Why the traditional model fails, and how restructuring teacher loads to eighty students or fewer is the key to knowing—and truly teaching—every child.
• Less Is More: A compelling argument for focusing the curriculum on essential skills and deep understanding, moving away from superficial “coverage” to genuine mastery.
• Performance-Based Assessment: Introducing “Exhibitions,” powerful and authentic tasks that require students to use their knowledge, replacing standardized tests with meaningful demonstrations of competence.
• Student as Worker: A shift in the central metaphor of schooling, from teacher as deliverer of services to student as the active worker and teacher as the coach who guides them.
• Thoughtful Schools: A vision for transforming schools from impersonal institutions into thoughtful, decent communities where intellectual habits are nurtured and respected.

Theodore R. Sizer, University Professor Emeritus at Brown University, is the chairman of the Coalition of Essential Schools. He lives in Harvard, Massachusetts.