Author Description

Chancellor Joseph A. Fernandez is the most innovative and controversial figure in American education today. A high school dropout and former gang leader, he rose from the streets of Spanish Harlem to become the superintendent of the floundering Miami public school system, which he transformed into a mold-breaking, chance-taking, award-winning, and much-copied educational institution. He now commands the largest and most scrutinized school system in the country, New York. City's, and his reforms and regenerative efforts have made headlines coast to coast. Tales Out of School is Fernandez's compelling story of how he got where he is and what he sees as the cures for America's ailing schools. It is also the first book on educational reform written "from the trenches": Fernandez has been a teacher, a principal, and an administrator for thirty years. He provides candid assessments of the issues and the public figures he has encountered, and. Explains his determined drive to dispel decades of decline, from record-low reading scores to guns on the campuses and drugs in the halls. But most important, he presents his prescription for how to return American education to its role of international leadership. Some examples:. School-Based Management: SBM gives teachers, principals, and parents a large voice in the decision-making process at the school level and is at the core of Fernandez's revitalization program. It has worked wonders where it has been tried in Miami and New York. He plans to have SBM in place in all of New York's schools by 1996. Satellite Schools: These public schools, located in the workplace, allow single parents and two-income families to take their children to work with them, instead of leaving them unattended for several hours a day. The program saved Miami millions of dollars in construction costs and reduced absentee rates for children and parents. In. Addition to such innovative thinking, Fernandez has pushed reforms through the stagnant bureaucracy of the New York City school system that none had thought possible. But at the root of Fernandez's thinking are a concern for our children, and a belief that America's schools can put our neighborhoods and inner cities, and indeed our nation, back on track, not the other way around. His ideas are essential reading for policy makers, teachers, administrators, parents, and. Anyone interested in the future of our country.