Common Knowledge^™
The Newsletter of the Core Knowledge Foundation

Kudos for Core Knowledge Schools

Ascension School received some very favorable notice in an article by Katherine Kersten in the Minneapolis Star Tribune (12/4/05). The article suggested that money is not necessarily the cure for ailing schools and used Ascension School as proof of this thesis.

Ascension is a private Catholic school that charges only $1,400 tuition. Extra grants supplement this amount, making the total spending per pupil about $5,000 as compared with $11,000 spent per pupil in Minneapolis public schools. Yet Ascension eighth graders, despite meeting nearly every qualification for at-risk students, scored near the top of the Minnesota Basic Skills tests. The reporter quotes Principal Dorwatha Woods as crediting their success to a “rigorous, content-rich curriculum.” Woods reports that since the school started using Saxon Math and Core Knowledge for literature, history, and science, they have been able to raise their skills scores dramatically.

Kersten ended her story with a moving end-of-school-year vignette told to her by volunteer library aide Mickey Pula:

At the end of the school year, a little girl was on her last visit to Ascension’s library, and realized with dismay that she wouldn’t see it again until the next year. “Goodbye, library,” she cried, throwing her arms wide. Then she ran up and embraced a circular display rack. “Goodbye, books!”

Ellie Gaines’s first graders at Grayhawk Elementary School took a star turn in the East Valley-Scottsdale Tribune. Visiting reporter Andrea Falkenhagen was most impressed when one six-year-old student traced the course of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in Iraq and another discussed not only pyramids but similar structures called ziggurats — similar but “without points” noted her first grade guide. The article included many tips for parents — books and websites that Ms. Gaines recommends for teaching geography and cultural studies, including the Arizona Geographic alliance web site http://alliance.la.asu.edu and What Your First Grader Needs to Know and other books in this Core Knowledge series.

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