Mission High

Kristina Rizga talked about her book Mission High: One School, How Experts Tried to Fail It, and the Students and Teachers Who Made It Triumph, in which she examines alternative approaches one school was using to improve student performance and outcomes. Ms. Rizga spent four years at Mission High School in the classrooms and hallways and argues in her book that the qualities that matter the most in learning - critical thinking, intellectual engagement, curiosity, resilience, self-management and cultural flexibility - can’t be measured by multiple-choice questions designed by distant testing companies. According to its test scores, Mission High is a low performing school, but its college enrollment, graduation, and attendance rates are among some of the best in the country. close