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Becoming Good American Schools

Becoming Good American Schools PDF Author: Jeannie Oakes
Publisher: Jossey-Bass
ISBN: 9780787962241
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 436

Book Description
"A convincing portrait of teachers actively engaged in educational reform...offering a hopeful yet realistic vision of revitalized democracy inspired by a passion for the public good. This book is an eloquent defense of civic virtue." —Jonathan Kozol, author of Amazing Grace and Savage Inequalities "Rich, realistic, invigorating, and scary. Any middle school educator who has been part of an effort to reform the educational process will see himself or herself in this book--as the brave risk taker, the naive visionary, the frightened frontline trooper, and the touched individual who can make a difference." —Judy Cunningham, principal, South Lake Middle School, Irvine, California This book tells the stories of sixteen schools in California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Texas, and Vermont that sought to alter their structures and practices and become places fostering innovative ideas, caring people, principles of social justice, and democratic processes. Based on longitudinal, comparative case-study research, these accounts attest to the power of committing to public virtue and the struggle of educators to transform that commitment into changed school practice. The authors argue that better schools will come only when policy makers, educators, and citizens move beyond technical and bureaucratic reforms to engage in the same educative, socially just, caring, and participatory processes they want for schoolchildren. Those processes constitute betterment--both the means and the ends of school reform. Becoming Good American Schools is for administrators, policy makers, practitioners, and citizens who are prepared to blend inspiration and caution, idealism and skepticism in their own pursuit of good schools.

Becoming Good American Schools

Becoming Good American Schools PDF Author: Jeannie Oakes
Publisher: Jossey-Bass
ISBN: 9780787962241
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 436

Book Description
"A convincing portrait of teachers actively engaged in educational reform...offering a hopeful yet realistic vision of revitalized democracy inspired by a passion for the public good. This book is an eloquent defense of civic virtue." —Jonathan Kozol, author of Amazing Grace and Savage Inequalities "Rich, realistic, invigorating, and scary. Any middle school educator who has been part of an effort to reform the educational process will see himself or herself in this book--as the brave risk taker, the naive visionary, the frightened frontline trooper, and the touched individual who can make a difference." —Judy Cunningham, principal, South Lake Middle School, Irvine, California This book tells the stories of sixteen schools in California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Texas, and Vermont that sought to alter their structures and practices and become places fostering innovative ideas, caring people, principles of social justice, and democratic processes. Based on longitudinal, comparative case-study research, these accounts attest to the power of committing to public virtue and the struggle of educators to transform that commitment into changed school practice. The authors argue that better schools will come only when policy makers, educators, and citizens move beyond technical and bureaucratic reforms to engage in the same educative, socially just, caring, and participatory processes they want for schoolchildren. Those processes constitute betterment--both the means and the ends of school reform. Becoming Good American Schools is for administrators, policy makers, practitioners, and citizens who are prepared to blend inspiration and caution, idealism and skepticism in their own pursuit of good schools.

The Death and Life of the Great American School System

The Death and Life of the Great American School System PDF Author: Diane Ravitch
Publisher: Basic Books (AZ)
ISBN: 0465014917
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 298

Book Description
Discusses how school choice, misapplied standards of accountability, the No Child Left Behind mandate, and the use of a corporate model have all led to a decline in public education and presents arguments for a return to strong neighborhood schools and quality teaching.

The Schools Our Children Deserve

The Schools Our Children Deserve PDF Author: Alfie Kohn
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780618083459
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 356

Book Description
Arguing against the tougher standards rhetoric that marks the current education debate, the author of No Contest and Punished by Rewards writes that such tactics squeeze the pleasure out of learning. Reprint.

Reinventing America's Schools

Reinventing America's Schools PDF Author: David Osborne
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1632869918
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 433

Book Description
From David Osborne, the author of Reinventing Government--a biting analysis of the failure of America's public schools and a comprehensive plan for revitalizing American education. In Reinventing America's Schools, David Osborne, one of the world's foremost experts on public sector reform, offers a comprehensive analysis of the charter school movements and presents a theory that will do for American schools what his New York Times bestseller Reinventing Government did for public governance in 1992. In 2005, when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, the city got an unexpected opportunity to recreate their school system from scratch. The state's Recovery School District (RSD), created to turn around failing schools, gradually transformed all of its New Orleans schools into charter schools, and the results are shaking the very foundations of American education. Test scores, school performance scores, graduation and dropout rates, ACT scores, college-going rates, and independent studies all tell the same story: the city's RSD schools have tripled their effectiveness in eight years. Now other cities are following suit, with state governments reinventing failing schools in Newark, Camden, Memphis, Denver, Indianapolis, Cleveland, and Oakland. In this book, Osborne uses compelling stories from cities like New Orleans and lays out the history and possible future of public education. Ultimately, he uses his extensive research to argue that in today's world, we should treat every public school like a charter school and grant them autonomy, accountability, diversity of school designs, and parental choice.

Building Engaged Schools

Building Engaged Schools PDF Author: Gary Gordon
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1595620109
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Book Description
Facing greater challenges from increased expectations and global competition, America's public schools can pass the test by thinking and acting differently about selecting teachers and principals, nurturing the talents of students and teachers, and the importance of community involvement. Can America's public schools, long resistant to change, meet the challenges of globalization and new educational alternatives? Not by doing what they're doing today. So argues Building Engaged Schools, a book that challenges the faulty assumptions that guide American public education. In our efforts to create the best possible schools for America's kids, we've allowed process concerns such as standards, curriculum, and testing to overshadow the importance of people. But the fact is, what we've come to think of as the "soft" aspects of education are actually what make truly effective learning possible. Building relationships, nurturing student and teacher talents, fostering engagement...these are what motivate great teachers and inspire students. Indeed, if schools can learn anything from the business world, it's this: The "soft" stuff drives results. Corporate leaders have realized that the best way to improve productivity is to tap the talents and motivation of their human assets. This approach is even more critical in the classroom. An overemphasis on process reforms has set the education system at odds with both teachers and students. Too many students are lethargic or alienated, too many teachers have become disillusioned and cynical. We must find a way to bring public schools back to life, and to tap the enormous potential that exists in America's classrooms. Drawing on decades of Gallup research, Building Engaged Schools offers a fresh approach: Leverage student and teacher talent, on a school-by-school basis. Focusing on talent may lack the political appeal of process reforms, which can be implemented in broad strokes. This approach is surely more complex . But the return on the time and effort invested is far greater. In fact, that return is no less than a more fully engaged society, and a better future for America's children.

Color in the Classroom

Color in the Classroom PDF Author: Zoe Burkholder
Publisher: OUP USA
ISBN: 0199751722
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Book Description
Between the turn of the twentieth century and the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, the way that American schools taught about "race" changed dramatically. This transformation was engineered by the nation's most prominent anthropologists, including Franz Boas, Ruth Benedict, and Margaret Mead, during World War II. Inspired by scientific racism in Nazi Germany, these activist scholars decided that the best way to fight racial prejudice was to teach what they saw as the truth about race in the institution that had the power to do the most good-American schools. Anthropologists created lesson plans, lectures, courses, and pamphlets designed to revise what they called "the 'race' concept" in American education. They believed that if teachers presented race in scientific and egalitarian terms, conveying human diversity as learned habits of culture rather than innate characteristics, American citizens would become less racist. Although nearly forgotten today, this educational reform movement represents an important component of early civil rights activism that emerged alongside the domestic and global tensions of wartime.Drawing on hundreds of first-hand accounts written by teachers nationwide, Zoe Burkholder traces the influence of this anthropological activism on the way that teachers understood, spoke, and taught about race. She explains how and why teachers readily understood certain theoretical concepts, such as the division of race into three main categories, while they struggled to make sense of more complex models of cultural diversity and structural inequality. As they translated theories into practice, teachers crafted an educational discourse on race that differed significantly from the definition of race produced by scientists at mid-century.Schoolteachers and their approach to race were put into the spotlight with the Brown v. Board of Education case, but the belief that racially integrated schools would eradicate racism in the next generation and eliminate the need for discussion of racial inequality long predated this. Discussions of race in the classroom were silenced during the early Cold War until a new generation of antiracist, "multicultural" educators emerged in the 1970s.

Against School Reform (And in Praise of Great Teaching)

Against School Reform (And in Praise of Great Teaching) PDF Author: Peter S. Temes
Publisher: Ivan R. Dee
ISBN: 1461662338
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 222

Book Description
In the midst of the continuing controversy over the right ways to bring change to American schools, Peter Temes’s book is a firebell in the night. In Against School Reform Mr. Temes sets out a straightforward prescription for our schools which centers on the life of the individual teacher and rejects the billion-dollar school reform industry. He argues that enormous monies and millions of hours of effort have gone into reforming American schools in the past ten years, and we have precious little to show for it. As we enter a critical period in American history—a growing population, an uncompromising demand for well-educated workers, and the complexities of world politics impacting ordinary people every day—there is not more time or money to waste. In Mr. Temes’s view, great teachers are the secret to making better schools. Forget the macro issues of school reform, he advises, and focus on recruiting, retaining, and supporting the very best teachers. Teaching will once again become an elite profession, and school problems will go the way of the trolley car. Against School Reform digs deep into the qualities of great teaching, with stories from real schools and with practical advice for parents, teachers, and students who want to celebrate and support great teachers. It also takes a serious look at what our schools must do to recruit and reward the best teachers in the coming era of teacher shortages. Finally, the book celebrates the power of individual teachers to make a difference in their schools and communities, as forces for bottom-up change. More tests won’t fix our schools, Mr. Temes writes. Bigger, better ideas about education won't fix things either. But great teachers can fix our schools, one classroom at a time.

Improbable Scholars

Improbable Scholars PDF Author: David L. Kirp
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199391092
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 271

Book Description
In Improbable Scholars, David L. Kirp challenges the conventional wisdom about public schools and education reform in America through an in-depth look at Union City, New Jersey's high-performing urban school district. In this compelling study, Kirp reveals Union's city's revolutionary secret: running an exemplary school system doesn't demand heroics, just hard and steady work.

All American Boys

All American Boys PDF Author: Jason Reynolds
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1481463357
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 229

Book Description
A 2016 Coretta Scott King Author Honor book, and recipient of the Walter Dean Myers Award for Outstanding Children’s Literature. In this New York Times bestselling novel, two teens—one black, one white—grapple with the repercussions of a single violent act that leaves their school, their community, and, ultimately, the country bitterly divided by racial tension. A bag of chips. That’s all sixteen-year-old Rashad is looking for at the corner bodega. What he finds instead is a fist-happy cop, Paul Galluzzo, who mistakes Rashad for a shoplifter, mistakes Rashad’s pleadings that he’s stolen nothing for belligerence, mistakes Rashad’s resistance to leave the bodega as resisting arrest, mistakes Rashad’s every flinch at every punch the cop throws as further resistance and refusal to STAY STILL as ordered. But how can you stay still when someone is pounding your face into the concrete pavement? There were witnesses: Quinn Collins—a varsity basketball player and Rashad’s classmate who has been raised by Paul since his own father died in Afghanistan—and a video camera. Soon the beating is all over the news and Paul is getting threatened with accusations of prejudice and racial brutality. Quinn refuses to believe that the man who has basically been his savior could possibly be guilty. But then Rashad is absent. And absent again. And again. And the basketball team—half of whom are Rashad’s best friends—start to take sides. As does the school. And the town. Simmering tensions threaten to explode as Rashad and Quinn are forced to face decisions and consequences they had never considered before. Written in tandem by two award-winning authors, this four-starred reviewed tour de force shares the alternating perspectives of Rashad and Quinn as the complications from that single violent moment, the type taken directly from today’s headlines, unfold and reverberate to highlight an unwelcome truth.

Education for Empire

Education for Empire PDF Author: Clif Stratton
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520285662
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 296

Book Description
"Education for Empire examines how American public schools created and placed children on multiple and uneven paths to "good citizenship." These paths offered varying kinds of subordination and degrees of exclusion closely tied to race, national origin, and US imperial ambitions. Public school administrators, teachers, and textbook authors grappled with how to promote and share in the potential benefits of commercial and territorial expansion, and in both territories and states, how to apply colonial forms of governance to the young populations they professed to prepare for varying future citizenships. The book brings together subjects in American history usually treated separately--in particular the formation and expansion of public schools and empire building both at home and abroad. Temporally framed by the 1882 Chinese Exclusion and 1924 National Origins Acts, two pivotal immigration laws deeply entangled in and telling of US quests for empire, case studies in California, Hawaii, Georgia, New York, the Southwest, and Puerto Rico reveal that marginalized people contested, resisted, and blazed alternative paths to citizenship, in effect destabilizing the boundaries that white nationalists, including many public school officials, in the United States and other self-described "white men's countries" worked so hard to create and maintain"--Provided by publisher.