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Literature on school reform tends to concentrate on the initiation and implementation of reform. This work seeks to provide change agents, policy makers, and students of educational change with advice on the sustaining of change and the scaling up of change to more systemic reform.
With four simple truths as his framework, Charles Murray, the bestselling coauthor of The Bell Curve, sweeps away the hypocrisy, wishful thinking, and upside-down priorities that grip America’s educational establishment. Ability varies. Children differ in their ability to learn academic material. Doing our best for every child requires, above all else, that we embrace that simplest of truths. America’s educational system does its best to ignore it. Half of the children are below average. Many children cannot learn more than rudimentary reading and math. Real Education reviews what we know about the limits of what schools can do and the results of four decades of policies that require schools to divert huge resources to unattainable goals. Too many people are going to college. Almost everyone should get training beyond high school, but the number of students who want, need, or can profit from four years of residential education at the college level is a fraction of the number of young people who are struggling to get a degree. We have set up a standard known as the BA, stripped it of its traditional content, and made it an artificial job qualification. Then we stigmatize everyone who doesn’t get one. For most of America’s young people, today’s college system is a punishing anachronism. America’s future depends on how we educate the academically gifted. An elite already runs the country, whether we like it or not. Since everything we watch, hear, and read is produced by that elite, and since every business and government department is run by that elite, it is time to start thinking about the kind of education needed by the young people who will run the country. The task is not to give them more advanced technical training, but to give them an education that will make them into wiser adults; not to pamper them, but to hold their feet to the fire. The good news is that change is not only possible but already happening. Real Education describes the technological and economic trends that are creating options for parents who want the right education for their children, teachers who want to be free to teach again, and young people who want to find something they love doing and learn how to do it well. These are the people for whom Real Education was written. It is they, not the politicians or the educational establishment, who will bring American schools back to reality. Twenty-four years ago, Charles Murray’s Losing Ground changed the way the nation thought about welfare. Real Education is about to do the same thing for America’s schools.
Schools across the U.S. look very different today than they did a generation ago. Police officers, drug-sniffing dogs, surveillance cameras, and high suspension rates have become commonplace. The Real School Safety Problem uncovers the unintended but far-reaching effects of harsh school discipline climates. Evidence shows that current school security practices may do more harm than good by broadly affecting the entire family, encouraging less civic participation in adulthood, and garnering future financial costs in the form of high rates of arrests, incarceration, and unemployment. This text presents a blueprint for reform that emphasizes problem-solving and accountability while encouraging the need to implement smarter school policies.
Why are so many African American and Latino students performing less well than their Asian and White peers in classes and on exams? Researchers have argued that African American and Latino students who rebel against "acting white" doom themselves to lower levels of scholastic, economic, and social achievement. In Keepin' It Real: School Success beyond Black and White, Prudence Carter turns the conventional wisdom on its head arguing that what is needed is a broader recognition of the unique cultural styles and practices that non-white students bring to the classroom. Based on extensive interviews and surveys of students in New York, she demonstrates that the most successful negotiators of our school systems are the multicultural navigators, culturally savvy teens who draw from multiple traditions, whether it be knowledge of hip hop or of classical music, to achieve their high ambitions. Keepin' it Real refutes the common wisdom about teenage behavior and racial difference, and shows how intercultural communication, rather than assimilation, can help close the black-white gap.
Providing a strong counter voice to today's standards-based reform, this book features powerful ideas on teacher education, curriculum, and school administration in an accessible lecture style by Larry Cuban, an experienced teacher, administrator, and acclaimed author. Based on Cuban's Julius and Rosa Sachs Lectures for 2001-2002, this volume is a must-read for everyone interested in improving our schools.
About half of all incoming ninth graders in urban districts will fail classes and drop out of school without a diploma. Failing at School starts with the premise that urban American high schools generate such widespread student failure not because of some fault of the students who attend them but because high schools were designed to stratify achievement and let only the top performers advance to higher levels of education. This is particularly true for low-income, racial/ethnic minority students. To get different results, Farrington proposes fundamental changes based on what we now know about how students learn, what motivates them to engage in learning, and what kinds of educational systems and structures would best support their learning.
Building on extensive evidence that school-based teacher learning communities improve student outcomes, this book lays out an agenda to develop and sustain collaborative professional cultures. McLaughlin and Talbert—foremost scholars of school change and teaching contexts—provide an inside look at the processes, resources, and system strategies that are necessary to build vibrant school-based teacher learning communities. Offering a compelling, straightforward blueprint for action, this book: Takes a comprehensive look at the problem of improving the quality of teaching across the United States, based on evidence and examples from the authors’ nearly two decades of research.Demonstrates how and why school-based teacher learning communities are bottom-line requirements for improved instruction. Outlines the resources and supports needed to build and sustain a long-term school-based teacher professional community. Discusses the nature of high-quality professional development to support learning and changes in teaching.Details the roles and responsibilities of policymakers at all levels of the school system. “This book offers vivid examples of how teacher learning communities are formed and sustained. A must-read for educators at all levels who are serious about enacting change.” —Amy M. Hightower, Assistant Director, American Federation of Teachers
Highlighting the role of teachers in school change, Teacher Agency, Professional Development and School Improvement explores the important related issues of professional identity, teacher self-efficacy, leadership and autonomy in the context of contested improvement agendas. Providing analytical frameworks and practical models, this book: Offers examples of projects, programmes and narratives to illustrate the role of teachers in school change Invites readers to reconceptualise professional development and re-imagine school improvement Focuses on enabling teacher agency as the foundation for improvement Emphasises the importance of human agency to influence environments, lives and learning Provides strategies for improvement with integrity amidst powerful accountability requirements and external forces for change. At the heart of this book is a fresh perspective on schooling, in which teacher agency is considered a fundamental dimension of professional development and key to school improvement. This raises necessary and challenging questions about purposes and processes in education. With practical ideas and strategies that can be used to inform and evaluate practice and policy, Teacher Agency, Professional Development and School Improvement is essential reading for headteachers and teachers wishing to lead changes to improve their school and for teacher educators who support them.
The future of public education and democracy is at risk. Powerful forces are eroding commitment to public schools and weakening democratic resolve. Yet even in deeply troubling times, it is possible to broaden social imagination and empower effective advocacy for systemic progressive reform. Re-envisioning Education and Democracy explores challenges and opportunities for restructuring public education to establish and sustain more broadly inclusive, deeply democratic, and effectively transforming approaches to social inquiry and civic participation. Re-envisioning Education and Democracy adopts a non-traditional format to extend social awareness and imagination. Within each chapter, one episode of an evolving strategic narrative traces the life cycle of a systemic reform initiative. This is followed by an exploratory essay that draws from theory, research, criticism, and practice to prompt consideration of focal issues. Woven through each chapter is a poetically framed meditative stream informed by varied historical and cultural conceptions of oracles. A developmental sequence of social learning strategies (exploratory democratic practices), accompanied by thematic bibliographic references, are included to model democratic teaching and learning applicable in classroom and community settings.
