Get educated about education
- Published: February 19, 2011
The community will get a double dose of education-inspired talk this week with a presentation by Miami University education professor Michael Dantley on Tuesday, Feb. 22, and a screening of the film No Textbook Answer: Communities Confront the Achievement Gap the following Saturday.
Dantley will talk about his research on how the moral development of school principals affects education, while the film documents troubled school systems that are being healed by their communities. Both events are part of The Future of Education series sponsored by the village school district and the Antioch College Morgan Fellows to enrich the dialogue around the school’s Class of 2020 10-year strategic planning initiative.
No Textbook Answer documents eight schools around the country whose struggle with failing students is being addressed by the communities that surround them. Several years ago the National Issues Forum initiated hundreds of community forums around the country on the topic Too Many Children Left Behind: Communities Confront the Achievement Gap. Some of the communities developed powerful solutions to address the problems in their school systems. The film, produced by The Kettering Foundation in Dayton, documents the solutions that eight of these communities are implementing to overcome issues that typically plague low-performing school districts, such as lack of parent involvement, lack of resources, lack of opportunities, and bad influences.
The solutions range from providing meals to hungry families and setting up mentoring programs or after-school activities, to holding a school board candidates’ forum moderated by district schoolchildren. And the film documents that the empowerment these communities build through the process engaged, involved community that can create its own solutions is also best able to demand change from schools.
No Textbook Answer airs on public television stations around the country this year.
Dantley will speak at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 22, at Herndon Gallery in Antioch College’s South Hall.
No Textbook Answer shows at 1 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 26, at The Little Art Theatre. The film will be followed by a discussion moderated by a Yellow Springs Community Youth Facilitator.
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