One of Argument-Centered Education’s several new partner schools, heading into the 2017/18 school year, is Jones College Prep High School, in Chicago.  The year-long partnership will focus work with the English Department, and its objectives include building a scope and sequence for student acquisition of college-ready academic argument skills that integrates Jones English curriculum vertically, and enhancing the rigor and argument-centeredness of literary study at Jones.  Recently the Science Department has sought a place at the table and expects to be included in the ongoing services partnership this year, too. 

Argument-Centered Education was invited to present at the 2017 Annual Convention of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), and we will be presenting as part of a panel on close reading, literacy instruction, and argumentation.  The presentation will take place on Sunday, November 19th, at 12:45pm, in the convention center in St. Louis, Missouri.

We will take this opportunity to introduce to a wider audience a method that we have designed to enable students to apply close reading techniques to the harvesting and gathering of interpretive evidence, leading to the formulation of refined and nuanced interpretive arguments about texts. 

Argument-Centered Education has been asked to provide a two-day workshop at Homewood-Flossmoor High School (999 Kedzie Ave., Flossmoor, IL), in the suburbs of Chicago this summer.  Taking place all day on July 27th and 28th, and part of Homewood-Flossmoor University, high school teachers from across the Chicago area (and beyond), and from across disciplines, are invited to register for the course, entitled

Become an ACE Teacher with Argument-Centered Education: A Cross-Disciplinary Framework for Construction and Supporting Academic Assertions

Argument-Centered Education conducts periodic interviews with leading educator-practitioners of argument-centered instruction.  This short video interview of Donna Lawrenz, a veteran educator of 7th grade language and literature at Peirce International School, is linked to her photo, and edited and condensed in the excerpt underneath.  Ms. Lawrenz has been working with Argument-Centered Education for two years.

Excerpted Interview of Argument-Centered Educator Donna Lawrenz

Q.   How is Peirce International School using argument-centered instruction?

Peirce is using argument-centered instruction as part of its International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme.  Argument-centered instruction is inquiry-based, so it is a natural fit for IB.

The nation’s third largest school district, Chicago Public Schools, has endorsed Argument-Centered Education as an organization whose work helps schools authentically prepare their students for newly redesigned SAT college readiness and admissions exam.  In its 2017 guidebook, used by all 660 schools in the CPS system, Transitioning to the SAT Suite of Assessments, the CPS Office of Teaching and Learning singles out Argument-Centered Education as a national organization endorsed to support schools in their shift to greater emphasis on higher-order learning, critical thinking, and argumentation.