Crisis in Our Schools

This website presents the key elements of a new book by Dr. David Locke titled Crisis in Our Schools. The different pages of the website loosely follow the course of the book, which focuses on the following themes:

  • American schools and teachers are the best in the world

  • Achievement tests are highly biased, miss most of what students learn in school, provide inaccurate data, and unfairly label countless students, teachers, and schools as failing.

  • The No Child Left Behind law, which mandated high-stakes testing with the threat of firing teachers and closing schools that could not bring all students to grade level, failed completely and is the worst educational law ever enacted.

  • America’s students and teachers are in crisis. Students have seen a huge increase in emotional health problems, and teachers are feeling overwhelmed, unsupported, and burned out. Many are leaving the profession.

  • To support our students and teachers, we need to end high-stakes testing and focus on creating safe, equitable, and engaging schools where students and teachers are excited to be.

A New Approach

Taking Back Our Schools provides extensive evidence in support of each of these claims and proposes that there are six things we need to do to improve our schools:

  1. End high-stakes testing

  2. Make schools safer

  3. Increase student engagement

  4. Make school learning more social

  5. Celebrate diversity

  6. Support our teachers

If we can do these things, it will go a long way to creating safe and supportive environments where both students and teachers can thrive.

Building a Community

Our goal at TakingBackOurSchools.org is to build a community of educators and parents who share our outlook and want to join us in bringing about change. We are looking for people to give feedback and reviews on the book before it is released on Amazon at the end of the summer. If you are willing, please read some or all of the book and send your comments to Info@TakingBackOurSchools.org. Just click on the link to download a pdf version of the book. You will be taken to the Dropbox download page, where you can click the Download link to download the book to your device. We also invite you to join our mailing list by filling out the form below or email us at Info@TakingBackOurSchools.org with questions, reviews, or comments.

The Website

The website is laid out with the following seven pages:

  1. Home: This page

  2. Testing: Describes the failure of standardized testing

  3. Students: Describes the emotional crisis students are going through and how schools can support them.

  4. Teachers: Describes the stresses, lack of support, and declining job satisfaction that teachers are feeling and what we can do to support our teachers.

  5. A New Approach: Descibes the steps we need to take to create safe, equitable, and engaging schools that support the needs of students and teachers.

  6. About: Describes what the team at TakingBackOurSchools.org is trying to accomplish.

  7. Contact: Describes how to contact us or download the book.

Please explore the website and, if you are interested, download the book and provide us feedback. If you would like to be on our mailing list, please fill out the form below.