Emerging Strategies for Public Education Reform PDF Download

Author: Grant, Marquis Carter
Publisher: IGI Global
ISBN: 1799856976
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 339

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Book Description
The adaptability of public education is essential for the success of students and education professionals alike. Comprehensive reform that promotes equality and equity in educational spheres can promote adaptability and allow educational institutions and education professionals better longevity. Emerging Strategies for Public Education Reform is a cutting-edge research publication that provides comprehensive research on merging topics that have a significant impact on teaching and learning, which may include educational policy and updating teacher education. Featuring a wide range of topics such as curriculum design, mental health, and religious education, this book is ideal for academicians, curriculum designers, education professionals, researchers, policymakers, and students.

Author: William J. Mathis
Publisher: IAP
ISBN: 1681235056
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 715

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Book Description
Over the past twenty years, educational policy has been characterized by top?down, market?focused policies combined with a push toward privatization and school choice. The new Every Student Succeeds Act continues along this path, though with decision?making authority now shifted toward the states. These market?based reforms have often been touted as the most promising response to the challenges of poverty and educational disenfranchisement. But has this approach been successful? Has learning improved? Have historically low?scoring schools “turned around” or have the reforms had little effect? Have these narrow conceptions of schooling harmed the civic and social purposes of education in a democracy? This book presents the evidence. Drawing on the work of the nation’s most prominent researchers, the book explores the major elements of these reforms, as well as the social, political, and educational contexts in which they take place. It examines the evidence supporting the most common school improvement strategies: school choice; reconstitutions, or massive personnel changes; and school closures. From there, it presents the research findings cutting across these strategies by addressing the evidence on test score trends, teacher evaluation, “miracle” schools, the Common Core State Standards, school choice, the newly emerging school improvement industry, and re?segregation, among others. The weight of the evidence indisputably shows little success and no promise for these reforms. Thus, the authors counsel strongly against continuing these failed policies. The book concludes with a review of more promising avenues for educational reform, including the necessity of broader societal investments for combatting poverty and adverse social conditions. While schools cannot single?handedly overcome societal inequalities, important work can take place within the public school system, with evidence?based interventions such as early childhood education, detracking, adequate funding and full?service community schools—all intended to renew our nation’s commitment to democracy and equal educational opportunity.

Author: Michael Fullan
Publisher: Burns & Oates
ISBN: 9780826449559
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
First published in 1982, this work revolutionized the theory and practice of education reform. Now 25 years later, the fourth edition of Fullans groundbreaking book continues to be the definitive compendium to all aspects of the management of educational change--a powerful resource for everyone involved in school reform.

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: Tewel
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 9781884015380
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Combining both the theory as well as the practice of the education reform process, this unique breakthrough volume focuses on every aspect of the change process in high school education today. Short- and long-term strategies for each phase of the process-provoking, creating, managing, supporting, and sustaining reform-are covered. Based on the real-life experiences of the author and others, this book recognizes that most high school reform is short-lived. It stresses the ways to create and maintain positive change, making the process a long-lasting, worthwhile mission for the school's leadership and ultimately the students. Short, useful summaries of high school reform provide true-life pictures of what really happens in the midst of changing the way educational institutions operate. These stories cover school-based management, collaborative or shared leadership, school-within-a-school groupings, interdisciplinary instruction, school-based budgeting, new models for professional development, and others. Through these examples, readers can understand how reform strategies work and how to apply and adapt them to their own situations. As an added feature, this book provides the names and locations of schools attempting each reform as well as the names and addresses of school reform networks that readers can contact in their own efforts.

Author: Mark Berends
Publisher: Rand Corporation
ISBN: 0833032259
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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Book Description
A decade ago, New American Schools (NAS) launched an ambitious effort forwhole-school reform to address the perceived lagging achievement of Americanstudents and the lackluster school reform attempts that have produced so fewmeaningful changes. As a private nonprofit organization, NAS set out tohelp schools and districts significantly raise the achievement of largenumbers of students by offering whole-school designs and design-basedassistance during the implementation process. NAS is currently in thescale-up phase of its effort, and its designs are being widely diffused toschools across the nation. During the 1997_1998 and 1998_1999 school years,RAND assessed the effects of NAS designs on classroom practice and studentachievement in a sample of schools in a high-poverty district. RAND foundthat high-poverty schools often have fragmented and conflicting environmentswith difficult and changing political currents and entrenched unions.Teachers in high-poverty schools tend to face new accountability systems andfluctuating reform agendas. These teachers generally lack sufficient timefor implementing reform efforts, often becoming demoralized and losing theirenthusiasm for the difficult task of improving student performance underdifficult conditions. RAND concluded that high-stakes tests may motivateschools to increase performance and to seek out new curricula andinstructional strategies associated with comprehensive school reforms.However, those same tests may provide disincentives to adopt richer, morein-depth curricula that can succeed in improving the learning opportunitiesof all students, particularly those in high-poverty settings.

Author: Michael Fullan
Publisher: Teachers College Press
ISBN: 0807772763
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
Big cities have struggled to improve public school systems. This book shows why—and offers a framework for achieving future success. Fullan and Boyle, internationally renowned thinkers on school change, demonstrate that while the educational challenges of big cities may be overwhelming, they are not insurmountable. They draw on ten years’ of research to identify six essential “push” and “pull” actions that enable big school systems to improve student achievement. Leaders must push to challenge the status quo, convey a high sense of urgency, and have the courage needed to intervene. But they need to also pull together to create a commonly-owned strategy, develop professional power, and attend to sustainability. Examining three major cities—New York, Toronto, and London—through the decade of 2002–2012, this book weaves case studies with careful analysis and recommendations to hone in on which policies and strategies work best to raise the bar for all students and reduce the gap for the disadvantaged. Big-City School Reforms offers invaluable advice to those leading the next phase of school reform in cities around the world. This is an eminently practical book that focuses on big problems and big solutions. “This encouraging book draws on the recent experiences of New York, London, and Toronto to identify what it takes to transform big-city school systems. It recognises their complexities without being overawed by them. By concentrating on the factors that seem to matter most, it offers real hope that we can now tackle some of the key issues that have frustrated reform efforts in the past.” —Geoff Whitty, director emeritus, Institute of Education, University of London, UK "Fullan and Boyle present a compelling framework for motivating and sustaining improvement in large urban school districts. The authors’ premise that system leaders must optimally balance push and pull strategies serves as an important lesson to school-level leaders as well.” —Sandra J. Stein, education and leadership consultant “In this important new book, Fullan and Boyle answer the most important question facing the leaders of the world's major cities: what will it take to significantly improve the quality of public education? Through a sophisticated analysis of the policies pursued in New York, Toronto, and London, the authors make it possible for us to see why some cities are making more progress than others. Their clear and compelling insights couldn't be more relevant and timely.” —Pedro A. Noguera, Peter L. Agnew Professor of Education, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Development, Executive Director, Metropolitan Center for Urban Education, New York University Michael Fullan, Order of Canada, is professor emeritus of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. Alan Boyle is director of Leannta Education Associates where he designs professional learning for education leaders.

Author: Paul T. Hill
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 0815716257
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 128

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Book Description
Every year, in one out of three big cities, the school superintendent leaves his or her job, sending local community leaders back to square one. Cleveland, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., are struggling to recreate their failed school systems, and many more cities are likely to follow. City leaders need more than new superintendents. They need stable reform strategies strong enough to move an entrenched system. Unfortunately, it is not clear where they can turn for help. Education experts are deeply divided about whether teacher retraining or new standards are enough to reform a struggling city system, or whether more fundamental changes, such as family choice and family-run schools, are needed. Based on new research, this book identifies the essential elements of reform strategies that can transform school performance in big cities beset by poverty, social instability, racial isolation, and labor unrest. It also suggests ways that local leaders can assemble the necessary funding and political support to make such strategies work.

Author: Richard K. Vedder
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 76

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Book Description
Despite more than 15 years of effort, it is widely acknowledged that internal reform of the public schools has produced little, if any, success. This has led to renewed interest in alternative forms of educational delivery to devolve decision-making through charter schools, public and private voucher plans, contracting out educational services, and home schooling. However, such reforms have largely been resisted by public school interest groups, including teacher unions, state departments of education, colleges of education, and school board and administrator organizations that have fought any but the most benign changes. Less attention has been given to another option that has been quietly growing in importance: private, for-profit schools. Firms in the private sector are typically more productive and responsive to consumer demands than their public sector counterparts. Can Teachers Own Their Own Schools? examines the economics, history, and politics of education and argues that public schools should be privatized. Privatized public schools would benefit from competition, market discipline, and the incentives essential to produce cost-effective educational quality, and attract the additional funding and expertise needed to revolutionize school systems. Drawing inspiration from Margaret Thatcher's privatization of government council housing in England, privatization reforms in Latin America, and the E.S.O.P. (Employee Stock Ownership Plan) movement in the United States, Vedder presents a bold plan in which teachers, administrators, and others involved in the educational process would become the owners of schools, acquiring an attractive financial stake in the process. Such privatization reforms could pave the way for new, cost-effective means of improving educational outcomes. As a result, schools in which teachers, administrators, and parents have a significant financial stake would foster vibrant school communities with increased parental involvement and the innovation and efficiency essential to produce educational excellence.

Author: Sarah Reckhow
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199937737
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
Some of the nation's wealthiest philanthropies, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and the Broad Foundation have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in education reform. With vast wealth and a political agenda, these foundations have helped to reshape the reform landscape in urban education. In Follow the Money, Sarah Reckhow shows where and how foundation investment in education is occurring and presents in-depth analysis of the effects of these investments within the two largest urban districts in the United States: New York City and Los Angeles. In New York City, centralized political control and the use of private resources have enabled rapid implementation of reform proposals. Yet this potent combination of top-down authority and outside funding also poses serious questions about transparency, responsiveness, and democratic accountability in New York. Furthermore, the sustainability of reform policies is closely linked to the political fortunes of the current mayor and his chosen school leader. While the media has highlighted the efforts of drastic reformers and dominating leaders such as Joel Klein in New York City and Michelle Rhee in Washington, D.C., a slower, but possibly more transformative, set of reforms have been taking place in Los Angeles. These reforms were also funded and shaped by major foundations, but they work from the bottom up, through charter school operators managing networks of schools. This strategy has built grassroots political momentum and demand for reform in Los Angeles that is unmatched in New York City and other districts with mayoral control. Reckhow's study of Los Angeles's education system shows how democratically responsive urban school reform could occur-pairing foundation investment with broad grassroots involvement. Bringing a sharp analytical eye and a wealth of evidence to one of the most politicized issues of our day, Follow the Money will reshape our thinking about educational reform in America.