About CES

The Coalition of Essential Schools
The Coalition of Essential Schools, founded in 1984 by Theodore Sizer, is an international educational reform organization dedicated to creating and sustaining equitable, intellectually vibrant, personalized schools and to making such schools the norm of American public education. The CES national office is in Oakland, California. There are currently 26 CES Centers across the country and hundreds of affiliated schools.

CES Schools
CES schools share a common set of beliefs about the purpose and practice of schooling, known as the CES Common Principles. Based on decades of research and practice, the principles call for all schools to offer:

Personalized instruction to address individual needs and interests
Small schools and classrooms, where teachers and students know each other well and work in an atmosphere of trust and high expectations
Multiple assessments based on performance of authentic tasks
The achievement of equitable outcomes for students
Democratic governance practices
Close partnerships with the school's community

Regional Centers
A CES regional center is an independent organization guided by the CES Principles, providing long-term professional development and technical assistance to schools. Centers are of a size and scale that allow members to know each other well. Each center has the autonomy to create policy appropriate for the schools it serves.

CES National
CES National supports the work done by CES regional centers and CES schools by providing national networking opportunities; by promoting public engagement in issues of school reform; by conducting research; and by providing professional development. CES National seeks to ensure that successes in one region of the country are shared in other areas of the country.

CES National is engaged in the following core projects:

CES Mentor School Network: We are in the process of designating approximately twenty schools as “CES Mentor Schools.” These schools, exemplary in their practice of CES principles, will help to support the creation of new CES high schools and the reconfiguration of large comprehensive high schools.
Creating new CES high schools: Over the next five years, we seek to launch ten new CES high schools, around the country.
CES ChangeLab: Soon to be launched, this new Web site will offer tools and best practices from our CES Mentor Schools.
CES Fall Forum: Our annual conference gathers educators, policy-makers, parents, and students from around the world to exchange strategies and practices. Fall Forum 2004 will be held in San Francisco, November 11-13.
Horace : The CES National journal provides “hands-on” resources and engages readers in examples of best practices from around the country.
www.essentialschools.org: Through the CES National Web site, CES practitioners share tools, resources, and dialogue, and collect and report on school data.
Research and Advocacy: CES National researches and publishes studies about the effectiveness of CES schools in promoting student achievement, advocates for the power of CES Principles, and builds partnerships to strengthen our advocacy.

For more information about CES, please visit the CES Web site at http://www.essentialschools.org/ .