The Business of Reforming American Schools PDF Download

Author: Denise Gelberg
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791435052
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
Focusing on the influence of the business community on schools, this book describes how popular business management theories and production processes have been imported into schools during periods of societal upheaval in order to create a sense of order and efficiency while meeting the objective of producing a workforce that meets the specifications set down by employers. Unlike other books that say why schools need to be reformed or how that reform should proceed, this study takes a critical look at the latest call to restructure schools in light of the economic, social, and political forces that affect the education establishment and the children of our nation.

Author: Denise Gelberg
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791435069
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
A critical look at the influence of the business community on the school reform movement, specifically how popular business management theories have been used as "tools" to produce a "workforce" for the 21st century.

Author: Mark Berends
Publisher: Rand Corporation
ISBN: 0833032240
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
About a decade ago, New American Schools (NAS) set out to address theperceived lagging performance of American students and the lacklusterresults of school reform efforts. As a private nonprofit organization,NAS's mission was-and is-to help schools and districts raise studentachievement levels by using whole-school designs and design team assistanceduring implementation. Since its inception, NAS has engaged in adevelopment phase (1992-1993), a demonstration phase (1993-1995), and ascale-up phase (1995-present). Over the last ten years, RAND has been monitoring the progress of the NASinitiative. This book is a retrospective on NAS and draws together thefindings from RAND research. The book underscores the significantcontributions made by NAS to comprehensive school reform but also highlightsthe challenges of trying to reform schools through whole-school designs.Divided into sections on each research phase, the book concludes with anafterword by NAS updating its own strategy for the future. This book willinterest those who want to better understand comprehensive school reform andits effects on teaching and learning within high-stakes accountabilityenvironments.

Author: Diane Ravitch
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0525655387
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
From one of the foremost authorities on education in the United States, Slaying Goliath is an impassioned, inspiring look at the ways in which parents, teachers, and activists are successfully fighting back to defeat the forces that are trying to privatize America’s public schools. Diane Ravitch writes of a true grassroots movement sweeping the country, from cities and towns across America, a movement dedicated to protecting public schools from those who are funding privatization and who believe that America’s schools should be run like businesses and that children should be treated like customers or products. Slaying Goliath is about the power of democracy, about the dangers of plutocracy, and about the potential of ordinary people—armed like David with only a slingshot of ideas, energy, and dedication—to prevail against those who are trying to divert funding away from our historic system of democratically governed, nonsectarian public schools. Among the lessons learned from the global pandemic of 2020 is the importance of our public schools and their teachers and the fact that distance learning can never replace human interaction, the pesonal connection between teachers and students.

Author: Diane Ravitch
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743203267
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 566

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Book Description
In this authoritative history of American education reforms in this century, a distinguished scholar makes a compelling case that our schools fail when they consistently ignore their central purpose--teaching knowledge.

Author: Joel I. Klein
Publisher: Council on Foreign Relations
ISBN: 087609521X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 120

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Book Description
The United States' failure to educate its students leaves them unprepared to compete and threatens the country's ability to thrive in a global economy and maintain its leadership role. This report notes that while the United States invests more in K-12 public education than many other developed countries, its students are ill prepared to compete with their global peers. According to the results of the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), an international assessment that measures the performance of 15-year-olds in reading, mathematics, and science every three years, U.S. students rank fourteenth in reading, twenty-fifth in math, and seventeenth in science compared to students in other industrialized countries. The lack of preparedness poses threats on five national security fronts: economic growth and competitiveness, physical safety, intellectual property, U.S. global awareness, and U.S. unity and cohesion, says the report. Too many young people are not employable in an increasingly high-skilled and global economy, and too many are not qualified to join the military because they are physically unfit, have criminal records, or have an inadequate level of education. The report proposes three overarching policy recommendations: implement educational expectations and assessments in subjects vital to protecting national security; make structural changes to provide students with good choices; and, launch a "national security readiness audit" to hold schools and policymakers accountable for results and to raise public awareness.

Author: Ian C. Friedman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780816082384
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Praise for the previous edition: "...excellent...provide[s] timeless foundational information for those interested in the area of educational reform. Every academic library should have this volume."—American Reference Books Annual The effort to improve the quality, methods, and purpose of elementary and secondary schooling in the United States is known as education reform. This movement traces its origins to the inception of public schools—almost 150 years before the founding of the nation—and has both reflected and led social change in the United States. Americans widely agree that schools play an essential role in shaping the nation's future but disagree about education-related issues ranging from assimilation of immigrants and opportunity for the poor to the role of the federal government and the constitutional rights of parents and children. Today the debates on education reform center on teacher preparation and incentives, standardized testing, charter schools, homeschooling, school choice, class size, and discipline. As the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 reaches its 10-year anniversary, Americans are evaluating its nationwide impact on standards, accountability, curriculum, and failing schools. Education Reform, Revised Edition examines these and other complex issues surrounding this timely issue. Clear and logically organized, this revised volume helps students and researchers define, understand, and research this important topic. Coverage includes: Current developments regarding teacher incentives, curriculum standards, standardized tests, and homeschooling The goals and requirements of "Race to the Top," a $5 billion education grant program rolled out as part of the Obama administration's Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 Extracts from documents such as The Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education (1918), A Nation at Risk (1983), the 2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, and the U.S. Secretary of Education's overview of key policy provisions in the No Child Left Behind Act (2002) A concise survey of the events and major debates surrounding education reform in the United States, from earliest influences through the present Up-to-date statistics on charter school enrollment and operations.

Author: Esther Quintero
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781682530382
Category : Education and state
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Teaching in Context provides new evidence from a range of leading scholars showing that teachers become more effective when they work in organizations that support them in comprehensive and coordinated ways. The studies featured in the book suggest an alternative approach to enhancing teacher quality: creating conditions and school structures that facilitate the transmission and sharing of knowledge among teachers, allowing teachers to work together effectively, and capitalizing on what we know about how educators learn and improve. The chapters in this book point to the need to reevaluate current policies for assessing and ensuring teacher effectiveness, and establish the foundation for a more thoughtful, research-informed approach. "What a wonderful collection of diverse voices in this book, all sounding a similar message. Successful schools encourage and support purposeful collaboration among adults and they focus on students. In these schools, teachers feel more rewarded for their efforts and students learn more. Practitioners and researchers understand these findings. Now, let's build education policies that enable them." --John Q. Easton, vice president of programs, Spencer Foundation "Teaching in Context is a call to action--one to which Esther Quintero and her colleagues invite us to imagine, build, nurture, and protect a profession and culture fueled by supportive networks that produce more trust and less churn." --Ralph R. Smith, managing director, Campaign for Grade-Level Reading Esther Quintero is a senior fellow at the Albert Shanker Institute. Andy Hargreaves is the Brennan Chair in Education at Boston College.

Author: Andrea Gabor
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 162097200X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
“The education wars have been demoralizing for teachers. . . . After the Education Wars helps us to see a better way forward.” —Cathy N. Davidson, The New York Times Book Review “After the Education Wars is an important book that points the way to genuine reform.” —Diane Ravitch, author of Reign of Error and The Death and Life of the Great American School System A bestselling business journalist critiques the top-down approach of popular education reforms and profiles the unexpected success of schools embracing a nimbler, more democratic entrepreneurialism In an entirely fresh take on school reform, business journalist and bestselling author Andrea Gabor argues that Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and other leaders of the prevailing education-reform movement have borrowed all the wrong lessons from the business world. After the Education Wars explains how the market-based measures and carrot-and-stick incentives informing today’s reforms are out of sync with the nurturing culture that good schools foster and—contrary to popular belief—at odds with the best practices of thriving twenty-first-century companies as well. These rich, detailed stories of real reform in action illustrate how enduring change must be deeply collaborative and relentlessly focused on improvement from the grass roots up—lessons also learned from both the open-source software and quality movements. The good news is that solutions born of this philosophy are all around us: from Brockton, Massachusetts, where the state’s once-failing largest high school now sends most graduates to college, to Leander, Texas, a large district where school improvement, spurred by the ideas of quality guru W. Edwards Deming, has become a way of life. A welcome exception to the doom-and-gloom canon of education reform, After the Education Wars makes clear that what’s needed is not more grand ideas, but practical and informed ways to grow the best ones that are already transforming schools.

Author: Jennifer A. O'Day
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781934742839
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Written in an accessible style, the papers in this volume document and analyse particular components of the Children First reforms, including governance, community engagement, finance, accountability, and instruction. Aimed at instituting evidence-based practices to produce higher and more equitable outcomes for all students, the policies that comprise the Children First initiative represent an attempt at organisational improvement and systemic learning.