A Think Twice Review of:

Failure is Not an Option: How Principals, Teachers, Students, and Parents from Ohio’s High-Achieving, High Poverty Schools Explain Their Success

Think Twice - Jan 15, 2013

Publisher/Think Tank - Public Agenda

Author(s) -

The report attempts to explain how principals, teachers, students, and parents sustain effective practices and what helps them to weather tough times. The report was compiled through interviews with nine high-achieving, high-poverty schools in Ohio and offers a description of key attributes and possible recommendations.

Reviewer(s) - Mark Paige, UMass Dartmouth

Paige’s review finds that the report fails to make clear connections between the recommendations and key attributes of these high-achieving, high-poverty schools. The report fails to specify how these attributes were derived from the interviews. According to Paige, the report’s biggest deficiency is that the recommendations fail to propose remedies or explicitly address poverty and equity needs of schools. The recommendations are common sense, but the proposals are not sufficiently grounded in either the study’s own data or in the larger body of research.