Acknowledgments
I am forever grateful to SREB presidents Winfred Godwin, Mark Musick, and David Spence for their encouragement and support, spanning more than 30 years, and for giving me the opportunity to pursue a continuous improvement learning journey that made writing this book possible.
I'd like to offer a special thanks to the many staff at the Southern Regional Education Board who worked with me in leading the nation's largest network of high schools, middle schools, and career and technology centers implementing comprehensive school reform. Working alongside these educators and learning from them made it possible to present a vision of Tomorrow's High Schools: Creating Pathways for Preparing Students for College and Careers.
I am fortunate to have two coauthors who worked with me in writing Chapter 6. Monique Whorton served as an English teacher for 27 years at a majority-minority high school in Georgia. After retiring, she worked in multiple districts across the nation, helping academic and CTE teachers design and implement literacy-based assignments in their discipline area. For almost two decades, Jamie Lee Korns worked as an English teacher and a teacher trainer in both K–12 and higher education. She is passionate about using literacy-based assignments to bridge achievement gaps in support of a mission of social justice.
Thank you to Emily Kagey, whose transformation of my wordy dictated drafts led to a coherent and more concise set of chapters; John Norton, whose tireless effort to comb through the entire book added clarity, sharpness, and consistency to my ideas; and staff at ASCD, whose constant guidance helped make this book a presentable product in which I take great satisfaction.
This book would not have been possible without the lessons learned from school and teacher leaders who were part of the network of schools we worked with over the past 31 years. Their willingness to have students complete biannual surveys enabled the Educational Testing Service to connect students' school experiences reported in the surveys to their performance on National Assessment of Educational Progress exams in reading, math, and science. This provided a database that validates that schools that were willing to implement the vision set forth in this book witness significant improvements in student achievement, especially for disenfranchised students.
Thank you to the many school and teacher leaders who have taken ideas in this book as a framework for comprehensive school improvement and have shown that when you teach all students as if they were our best students, many become high-performers.
I want to thank states, foundations, and national governmental agencies for financially supporting our comprehensive school reform work for more than three decades, without which this book would not be possible.
I owe a debt of gratitude to those professionals who have been willing for me to interview them and include their statements in this book to provide validity that achieving bold goals is possible for all students.
Thank you to Beth Andrews, my administrative assistant for more than 25 years. During the writing of this book, she has constantly answered the phone to instruct me on some computer functions I had not mastered, and she typed up my heavily edited drafts of each chapter.
Finally, and most important, I'm eternally grateful to Helen, my wife of more than 60 years, who has supported me every step of this long journey in pursuit of a higher quality of education for every student in our high schools.
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