There is a quote referencing how hedgehogs are able to "see what is essential and ignore the rest." It is obvious that hedgehogs are what school leaders need to become according to Schmoker. The introduction emphasizes the importance of schools putting all of their focus on a select few essential things and ignoring all of the rest. The three essential things that Schmoker focuses on with this book are: a reasonably coherent curriculum (what we teach), sounds lessons (how we teach), and authentic literacy. He states that without these three essential things, any other initiative is destined for failure. Unfortunately, too often schools lose focus and continue to introduce new initiative after new initiative with each doomed for failure due to their complexity and lack of clarity.
Re-emphasized in chapter one is the need to be simple, be clear, and prioritize what we teach, how we teach, and authentic literacy in schools. Schmoker advocates for a reduction of the number of standards that are used to guide instruction, and he stresses the importance of all students learning the content of the lesson before moving to new material. These things are tied together with authentic literacy - purposeful reading, speaking, and writing. Beneficial results will be achieved in schools when "all teachers apply these three things consistently and reasonably well. Then, as teachers continue to work in teams to practice and refine their implementation," (Schmoker, 10) better results will follow. This work that teachers do in their teams should coincide with all of the professional development taking place, and it should focus on the select few things that are being prioritized within the building. The better results that will come with this work must not only be recognized, but celebrated in order to be used as effective motivation.
Schmoker uses Best Buy's company practice to illustrate how simplicity can lead to such a high level of effectiveness. The salespeople at Best Buy are required to be experts of the products that they sell. That is their number one priority. Best Buy continually declines to sell certain new products that could interfere with their priority of mastering the products that they do sell. Furthermore, whenever Best Buy does add a new product to sell they discard one of their existing products. Schools must adopt this philosophy. We need to focus on becoming excellent at a few essential things, as opposed to being above average at a variety of things.
Chapter two dives into the what we teach (curriculum). There is nothing additional or new that Schmoker says that we should be doing, if anything he says that we should be doing less (and he definitely de-values technology in the classroom). It is our job to make sure that ALL students are ready to pursue a college education IF that is the path that they chose to take. Time has always been a hindrance, but it is not; between kindergarten and 12th grade there is plenty of instructional time if it is used well.
In order to prepare all students for college, they must be introduced to essential subject area content, which can (and possibly should) be done with a textbook as well as other sources that will provide them with more current information. Students need to have their critical thinking skills developed, but content knowledge must be developed first; it is hard to think critically of something when you are not familiar with the topic that you are thinking of. The curriculum must connect to the students' lives; we must provide them with authentic literacy opportunities - listening, reading, speaking, and writing. Students should be writing papers and presenting those papers whenever possible. Through these efforts they will achieve verbal competence, which must be the number one goal for students.
The second chapter ends by analyzing what is wrong with the standards that are used in education, and suggesting how we can improve them. Schmoker is clear in his thinking that there are too many of them, they are unclear, and they were never field tested. He is convinced that we would be better off with less standards that allowed teachers to get more in-depth with the content that they covered.
