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School Choice Or Best Systems: What Improves Education?
by Margaret C. Wang Herbert J. WalbergThis book addresses one of the most urgent questions in American society today, one that is currently in the spotlight and hotly debated on all sides: Who shall rule the schools--parents or educators? School Choice or Best Systems: What Improves Education? presents an overview of research and practical applications of innovative--even radical--school reforms being implemented across the United States. These fall along a continuum ranging from "parental choice" to "best systems." At the one extreme are schools of choice, which allow parents to choose and even govern schools for their children. These include charter schools, traditional private and parochial schools, schools that are privately governed but publicly funded through vouchers, and those that are funded by private scholarships provided by both corporations and wealthy individuals. At the other extreme are centralized state or district systems, based on reform initiatives and new systems of education that have been developed in response to views of citizens and legislators that schools can do much better. These schools, which specify uniform goals, policies, and programs for each school, are highly innovative systems based on research or representing advanced thinking about "what works," and have attracted wide interest. Important questions related to schools of choice and best systems are addressed: How can we choose among schools of choice and best systems? Among the various approaches within each of these alternatives? How can we understand their guiding principles and operational practices? What results do they produce? How can we evaluate their claims? In choosing among the alternatives, how should issues of student achievement, accountability, costs, feasibility, and equity be factored in? This volume brings together leading researchers and education leaders who have carried out the latest studies and advances in the field, providing a forum for them to set forth the arguments and evidence that will be most helpful in making choices for tomorrow's schools. It does not provide a single "right" answer--values and preferences differ across parents, schools, districts, and states. However, there are benefits for all from seeing the rigorous research, challenging thinking, and alternate points of view this volume presents.
School Choices: True and False
by John MerrifieldThe school choice movement has gained political momentum in recent years, with programs having been established in Milwaukee, Florida, Texas, and elsewhere. But today&’s programs are nothing like the "free market in education" proposed four decades ago by the early proponents of school choice.Economist John Merrifield shows that the "school choice" movement has become mired in false alternatives, petty distinctions, and diminished vision. Yet, he argues that programs providing real educational choices must not be allowed to fail like so many government programs—a freely competitive market for education must remain the ultimate goal. School Choices: True and False charts a course for the achievement of this goal.
School Dropout and Completion
by Richard Teese John Polesel Stephen Lamb Eifred Markussen Nina SandbergSchool dropout remains a persistent and critical issue in many school systems, so much so that it is sometimes referred to as a crisis. Populations across the globe have come to depend on success at school for establishing careers and gaining access to post-school qualifications. Yet large numbers of young people are excluded from the advantages that successful completion of school brings and as a result are subjected to consequences such as higher likelihood of unemployment, lower earnings, greater dependence on welfare and poorer physical health and well-being. Over recent decades, most western nations have stepped up their efforts to reduce drop out and raise school completion rates while maintaining high standards. How school systems have approached this, and how successful they are, varies. This book compares the various approaches by evaluating their impact on rates of dropout and completion. Case studies of national systems are used to highlight the different approaches including institutional arrangements and the various alternative secondary school programs and their outcomes. The evaluation is based on several key questions: What are the main approaches? How do they work? For whom do they work? And, how successful are they in promoting high rates of completion and equivalent outcomes for all? This book examines the nature of the dropout problem in advanced industrialized countries with the goal of developing a broader, international understanding that can feed into public policy to help improve completion rates worldwide.
School Education in India: Market, State and Quality
by Manish Jain Archana Mehendale Rahul Mukhopadhyay Padma M. Sarangapani Christopher WinchThis volume examines how the public and private domains in school education in India are informed and mediated by current market realities. It moves beyond the simplistic dichotomy of pro-state versus promarket factors that define most current debates in the formulations of educational reform agendas to underline how they need to be interpreted in the larger context. The chapters in the volume present a series of conceptual and empirical investigations to understand the growth of private schools in India; investigate the largely uncontested claims made by the private sector regarding provision of superior quality of education; and their ability to address the educational needs of the poor. Further, the book looks at how the private–public dichotomy has been extended to professional identity of teachers and teaching practices as well. <P><P>Rich in primary data and supported by detailed case studies, this volume will be of interest to teachers, scholars and researchers dealing with education, educational policy, school education and public policy. It will also interest policy makers, think tanks and civil society organisations.
School Experience: Explorations in the Sociology of Education (Routledge Library Editions: Sociology of Education #60)
by Peter Woods Martyn HammersleyFirst published in 1977, this volume brings together a range of viewpoints, informed by reports of empirical research, which bear on the experience of school. Each chapter demonstrates the application of the ‘new sociology of education’ in its various guises to the world of teachers and pupils. In doing so, they exemplify the fields of investigation opened up by these theoretical developments, and also suggest directions ahead. The tensions in the articles reflect the tensions that existed in the sociology of education. By bringing them together, the aim of this volume is to contribute to a more soundly based sociology of education.
School, Family, and Community Partnerships
by Joyce L. EpsteinUpdated and revised throughout, Joyce EpsteinOCOs classic book provides a framework for thinking about, talking about, and actually building comprehensive programs for school and family partnerships.
The School I'd Like: Children and Young People's Reflections on an Education for the 21st Century
by Catherine Burke Ian Grosvenor‘Wonderfully illuminated by children's essays, stories, poems, pictures and plans, this ground-breaking book offers a unique snapshot of the perceptions of today's school pupils’. -French bookstore Lavoisier www.lavoisier.fr In 2001, The Guardian launched a ground-breaking competition called ‘The School I'd Like’, in which young people were asked to imagine their ideal school. This vibrant and compelling book presents material drawn from that competition, offering a unique snapshot of perceptions of schools by those who matter most - the pupils. In 2011, The Guardian re-launched the competition and this updated 2nd edition reflects upon the next generation of reflections and summarises, through the children’s insightful commentary, what has changed over the intervening decade. The book is wonderfully illustrated by children's essays, stories, poems, pictures and plans. Placing their views in the centre of the debate, it provides an evaluation of the democratic processes involved in teaching and learning by: • identifying consistencies in children's expressions of how they wish to learn • highlighting particular sites of 'disease' in the education system today • illustrating how the built environment is experienced by today's children • posing questions about the reconstruction of teaching and learning for the twenty-first century. The School I’d Like: Revisited offers a powerful perspective on school reform and is essential reading for all those involved in education and childhood studies, including teachers, advisors, policy-makers, academics, and anyone who believes that children's voices should not be ignored.
School Improvement: What's In It For Schools? (What's in it for schools?)
by Alma HarrisThis book aims to demystify the principles and practice of school improvement by demonstrating how successful classroom and school improvement occurs. It outlines the conditions, strategies and approaches that promote sustainable improvement and provides an overview of the main theoretical perspectives in this area. This accessible text will be useful for practitioners working within schools and with schools, offering clear guidance for those keen to raise standards and improve achievement. The What's In It For Schools? series aims to make educational policy issues relevant to practitioners. Each book in the series focuses on a major educational issue. The author sets the issue in context, looks at how it impacts on the daily lives of schools and teachers, and raises key questions. The books are grounded in sound theory, recent research evidence and best practice, and will make an excellent addition to any staffroom bookshelf.
School Knowledge for the Masses: World Models and National Primary Curricular Categories in the Twentieth Century (Routledge Library Editions: Sociology of Education #36)
by John W. Meyer David Kamens Aaron BenavotFirst published in 1992, this book presents unique quantitative data on the content coverage of primary education in a large number of countries since 1920. It demonstrates that these curricular outlines tend to be surprisingly similar across very disparate countries, and suggests the world processes that produced this result. Specifically, the study shows that the contemporary primary curriculum dates from changes in the late nineteenth century; that there has been a general shift towards a ‘social studies’ subject; that instruction in mathematics and sciences has tended to expand; that there have been substantial increases in foreign language instruction (and changes in the languages taught); and that instruction in the arts and physical education come to the standard world education model much later than other subjects. This work will be of particular interest to those studying primary curriculum, international education and the sociology of education.
School Leadership and Administration: The Cultural Context (Reference Books in International Education)
by Allan Walker Clive DimmockThis text calls for a broader approach to comparative educational administration: one which uses culture as the principle means of analysis. The articles collected by Allan Walker and Clive Dimmock detail the educational practices and outcomes of other systems while taking into account the mediating influence of culture. In this way, these essays stress the specific aspects of the cultures studied, and map out common ground for the study of administrators' values, beliefs, and actions.
School Leadership between Community and the State: The Changing Civic Role of Schooling (Palgrave Studies in Global Citizenship Education and Democracy)
by David LundieThis book presents changes in UK and global educational governance in the context of a radical shift in the operating logics of politics and its interaction with education. Beginning from the colonial origins of political interest in education, the author traces a fundamental shift in the patterns of governance of schools in England in the opening decades of the 21st century. Operating through the logics of public choice economics involving both real markets and quasi-markets, policy reforms have increasingly framed school values, and the value of schooling, in line with a politically determined and nostalgic discourse of ‘British values’. This stands in contrast to a previous focus on ‘community cohesion’ which foregrounded school partnership with the parent community and wider society. Tracing the processes and mid-level actors mediating between government and school leaders, the author identifies processes of recontextualisation through which policy can be reinscribed and resisted.
The School of Alexius Meinong (Western Philosophy Series)
by Liliana Albertazzi Dale JacquetteThis book presents an historical and conceptual reconstruction of the theories developed by Meinong and a group of philosophers and experimental psychologists in Graz at the turn of the 19th century. Adhering closely to original texts, the contributors explore Meinong's roots in the school of Brentano, complex theories such as the theory of intentional reference and direct reference, and ways of developing philosophy which are closely bound up with the sciences, particularly psychology. Providing a faithful reconstruction of both Meinong's contributions to science and the school that arose from his thought, this book shows how the theories of the Graz school raise the possibility of engaging in the scientific metaphysics and ontology that for so long have been considered off limits.
The School of History: Athens in the Age of Socrates
by Mark H. MunnHistory, political philosophy, and constitutional law were born in Athens in the space of a single generation--the generation that lived through the Peloponnesian War (431-404 b.c.e.). This remarkable age produced such luminaries as Socrates, Herodotus, Thucydides, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and the sophists, and set the stage for the education and early careers of Plato and Xenophon, among others. The School of History provides the fullest and most detailed intellectual and political history available of Athens during the late fifth century b.c.e., as it examines the background, the context, and the decisive events shaping this society in the throes of war. This expansive, readable narrative ultimately leads to a new understanding of Athenian democratic culture, showing why and how it yielded such extraordinary intellectual productivity. As both a source and a subject, Thucydides' history of the Peloponnesian War is the central text around which the narrative and thematic issues of the book revolve. Munn re-evaluates the formation of the Greek historiographical tradition itself as he identifies the conditions that prompted Thucydides to write--specifically the historian's desire to guide the Athenian democracy as it struggled to comprehend its future. The School of History fully encompasses recent scholarship in history, literature, and archaeology. Munn's impressive mastery of the huge number of sources and publications informs his substantial contributions to our understanding of this democracy transformed by war. Immersing us fully in the intellectual foment of Athenian society, The School of History traces the history of Athens at the peak of its influence, both as a political and military power in its own time and as a source of intellectual inspiration for the centuries to come.A Main Selection of the History Book Club
School Organisation: A Sociological Perspective (Routledge Library Editions: Education)
by William TylerThe internal organisation of the school touches on many areas of contemporary debate. Is there such a thing as a ‘good school’? Are large urban comprehensives necessarily impersonal? Are the charges of indiscipline, conflict and declining standards in modern schools based on a failure to understand schools as institutions? At the time this book was first published sociological analysis had neglected to consider schools as organisational entities, preferring to see them as either the sites for negotiated encounters between teachers and pupils or else as agencies of class reproduction. The author redresses this imbalance and by relating the various literatures on the school to the constitutive patterns of its internal organisation he demonstrates the need for a more intensive sociological study of this embattled institution.
School Organisation and Pupil Involvement: A study of secondary schools (Routledge Library Editions: Sociology of Education #31)
by Ronald KingFirst published in 1973, this book is based on research carried about by Ronald King on integral parts of school organisation, including the assembly, uniform, rewards and punishments, games and out-of-school activities, curriculum, prefectorial system and school councils, in a sample of seventy-two schools. It measures and explores the level of pupils’ involvement in the school, in terms in their evaluations and effective dispositions, in relation to pupil age, sex and social background. This book will be a valuable resource for those studying the sociology and history of education, as well as educational research and school organisation.
School Segregation and Social Cohesion in Santiago: Perspectives from the Chilean Experience (International Study of City Youth Education #3)
by Andres MolinaThis book examines the consequences of educational segregation from the perspective of social cohesion. It investigates the impact of separating students along socioeconomic lines on student attitudes, dispositions and outlooks considered important for social cohesion as well as on achievement, opening the discussion about the social costs of school segregation. The separation of students based on their social background is a common feature of schooling in many modern systems. This is not only due to the influence of residential segregation but also to the effects of policies promoting educational privatisation, parental choice and student academic selection. By recognising the importance of schooling for citizenship and social integration, the chapters in this book explore how the separation of students throughout their school lives can contribute to the division of citizens beyond school, and how social segregation in school systems affect social cohesion more broadly.By exploring the case of Santiago, Chile, the study is a timely contribution to the understanding of the roots of social division and the role that schools play in creating cohesive societies. The originality of the approach and the evidence presented draw on implications that should be of interest to a wider audience concerned with contemporary discussions on solidarity and its erosion by educational segregation in urban environments.
School, Society, & State: A New Education to Govern Modern America,1890-1940
by Steffes Tracy L."Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife," wrote John Dewey in his classic work The School and Society. In School, Society, and State, Tracy Steffes places that idea at the center of her exploration of the connections between public school reform in the early twentieth century and American political development from 1890 to 1940. American public schooling, Steffes shows, was not merely another reform project of the Progressive Era, but a central one. She addresses why Americans invested in public education and explains how an array of reformers subtly transformed schooling into a tool of social governance to address the consequences of industrialization and urbanization. By extending the reach of schools, broadening their mandate, and expanding their authority over the well-being of children, the state assumed a defining role in the education--and in the lives--of American families. In School, Society, and State, Steffes returns the state to the study of the history of education and brings the schools back into our discussion of state power during a pivotal moment in American political development.
School Trouble: Identity, Power and Politics in Education (Foundations and Futures of Education)
by Deborah YoudellWhat is the trouble with schools and why should we want to make ‘school trouble’? Schooling is implicated in the making of educational and social exclusions and inequalities as well as the making of particular sorts of students and teachers. For this reason schools are important sites of counter- or radical- politics. In this book, Deborah Youdell brings together theories of counter-politics and radical traditions in education to make sense of the politics of daily life inside schools and explores a range of resources for thinking about and enacting political practices that make ‘school trouble’. The book offers a solid introduction to the much-debated issues of ‘intersectionality’ and the limits of identity politics and the relationship between schooling and the wider policy and political context. It pieces together a series of tools and tactics that might destabilize educational inequalities by unsettling the knowledges, meanings, practices, subjectivities and feelings that are normalized and privileged in the ‘business as usual’ of school life. Engaging with curriculum materials, teachers’ lesson plans and accounts of their pedagogy, and ethnographic observations of school practices, the book investigates a range of empirical examples of critical action in school, from overt political action pursued by educators to day-to-day pedagogic encounters between teachers and students. The book draws on the work of Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau and Chantel Mouffe, and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari to make sense of these practices and identify the political possibilities for educators who refuse to accept the everyday injustices and wide-reaching social inequalities that face us. School Trouble appears at a moment of political and economic flux and uncertainty, and when the policy moves that have promoted markets and private sector involvement in education around the globe have been subject to intense scrutiny and critique. Against this backdrop, renewed attention is being paid to the questions of how politics might be rejuvenated, how societies might be made fair, and what role education might have in pursing this. This book makes an important intervention into this terrain. By exploring a politics of discourse, an anti-identity politics, a politics of feeling, and a politics of becoming, it shows how the education assemblage can be unsettled and education can be re-imagined. The book will be of interest to advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students and scholars in the fields of education, sociology, cultural studies, and social and political science as well as to critical educators looking for new tools for thinking about their practice.
School Turnaround Policies and Practices in the US: Learning From Failed School Reform (Education, Equity, Economy Ser. #6)
by Joseph F. Murphy Joshua F. BleibergThis volume provides an analysis of what we know about turning around "failing" schools in the United States. It starts with an in-depth examination of the barriers that hinder action on turnaround work.The book analyses the reasons why some schools that find themselves in serious academic trouble fail in their efforts to turn themselves around. Beginning with a discussion of what may best be described as "lethal" reasons or the most powerful explanation for failed reform initiatives, which include an absence of attention to student care and support; a near absence of attention to curriculum and instruction; the firing of the wrong people. Covered in this volume are "critical" explanations for failed turnaround efforts such as failure to attend to issues of sustainability, and "significant" explanations for failed turnaround efforts such as the misuse of test data. The volume concludes by examining what can be done to overcome problems that cause failure for turnaround schools and reviewing ideas in the core technology of schooling: curriculum, instruction, and assessment. As well as exploring problems associated with the leadership and management of schools to see where improvement is possible and an analysis of opportunities found in relationships between schools and their external partners such as parents and community members.
School Uniforms: New Materialist Perspectives (The Cultural and Social Foundations of Education)
by Rachel Shanks Julie Ovington Beth Cross Ainsley CarnarvonThis edited volume brings together a new materialist approach to understanding the various legacies and controls being exercised through school uniforms. Through examining school uniform policies, the editors and their authors highlight the embodied choices that contribute to a socio-materialist understanding of democracy and social justice. Uniform policy plays a distinct role in setting the culture of compulsory school education and as such it constitutes a set of under-theorised school practices. This work thus brings together critical perspectives from education, sociology, cultural and postcolonial studies within an overarching analysis of how uniform imposes performances that have a formative effect on young people’s identities and economic positionality.
School-University Partnerships in English Language Teacher Education
by Cheri ChanThis book addresses the complex issues that arise in school-university collaborative action research projects. Employing sociocultural perspectives on examining professional practices of in-service teachers, it examines the complexities of negotiating beliefs, identities and interpersonal relations when educators from two different institutional cultures collaborate. Specifically, the book explores issues such as the discourses that are operative in school-university collaboration for English language teacher education; the way in which beliefs, interpersonal relations and identities are negotiated in school-university partnership; what tensions and complexities operate in collaborative action research discourse in an educational context; and how school-university collaboration can be achieved. The book adopts a critical perspective and provides arguments from a non-Western sociocultural perspective.
School Violence in South Korea: International Comparative Analysis
by Seunghee HanThis book examines school violence in South Korea from an international comparative perspective. It analyses nationally representative samples and provides extensive literature reviews based on academic journals, various social and educational magazines and major media articles on school violence in South Korea. This book includes major data sets for the analysis such as Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study and Nation Youth Policy Institute. These data show frequency, patterns and associated factors of school violence in South Korea and comparison of those in Japan and the United States.
School Was Our Life: Remembering Progressive Education (Counterpoints: Music and Education)
by Jane Roland MartinPersonal accounts of the early days of New York City’s Little Red School House, analysis of its success, and a look at the future of education.The late 1930s and early 1940s were the peak of progressive education in the United States, and Elisabeth Irwin’s Little Red School House in New York City was iconic in that movement. For the first time, stories and recollections from students who attended Little Red during this era have been collected by author Jane Roland Martin. Now in their late eighties, these classmates can still sing the songs they learned in elementary school and credit the progressive education they loved with shaping their outlooks and life trajectories. Martin frames these stories from the former students “tell it like it was” point of view with philosophical commentary, bringing to light the underpinnings of the kind of progressive education employed at Little Red and commenting critically on the endeavor. In a time when the role of the arts in education and public schooling itself are under attack in the United States, Martin makes a case for a different style of education designed for the defense of democracy and expresses hope that an education like hers can become an opportunity for all.“This sparkling, intimate, and delightfully written memoir demonstrates conclusively how and why elementary education should be designed to fit the natural growth of the human mind.” —E.O. Wilson author of The Social Conquest of Earth“Drawing on her own experiences 75 years ago and those of her classmates, researchers and many others, [Jane Roland Martin] has made it clear why we, even though she and the rest of us privileged to have gone through Little Red can’t write cursive and never had to memorize facts and figures, are “The Lucky Ones.” She draws on memories of everything from class trips, to writing poetry, to group singing to explain why much of the conventional literature about progressive education has missed the story. If it’s too late for you to apply (or send your children and/or grandchildren) to Little Red, read School Was Our Life: Remembering Progressive Education. It’s the next best thing.” —Victor S. Navasky, publisher emeritus of The Nation
School Was Our Life: Remembering Progressive Education (Counterpoints: Music and Education)
by Jane Roland Martin Estelle R. JorgensenThe late 1930s and early 1940s were the peak of progressive education in the United States, and Elisabeth Irwin's Little Red School House in New York City was iconic in that movement. For the first time, stories and recollections from students who attended Little Red during this era have been collected by author Jane Roland Martin. Now in their late eighties, these classmates can still sing the songs they learned in elementary school and credit the progressive education they loved with shaping their outlooks and life trajectories. Martin frames these stories from the former students "tell it like it was" point of view with philosophical commentary, bringing to light the underpinnings of the kind of progressive education employed at Little Red and commenting critically on the endeavor. In a time when the role of the arts in education and public schooling itself are under attack in the United States, Martin makes a case for a different style of education designed for the defense of democracy and expresses hope that an education like hers can become an opportunity for all.
Schooled and Sorted: How Educational Categories Create Inequality
by Thurston Domina Andrew M. Penner Emily K. PennerSociety primarily views education as a way to teach students skills and knowledge that they will draw upon as they move into their adult lives. However, schools do more than educate students – they also place students into categories, such as kindergartner, English language learner, and honor roll student. But do these categories have larger consequences than simply sorting students into classrooms? In Schooled & Sorted Thurston Domina, Andrew M. Penner, and Emily K. Penner, explore how educational categories reify and reinforce powerful existing social categories – including race, ethnicity, and class – and ultimately reproduce social and economic inequality in broader society. Domina and colleagues argue that while education is often seen as a tool for social mobility and reducing inequality, categories used in schools shape students’ access to resources, which ultimately have far-reaching impacts on their lives. The authors assert that the classes students are sorted into influence their educational experiences – students who are placed in higher-tracked classes are believed to have stronger academic skills than students in lower-tracked classes. As a result, more resources are often devoted to students in higher-tracked classes. Because many measures of academic achievement reflect values of the status quo, white, affluent students are overrepresented in these track assignments, leading to a reproduction of societal status and resource inequality within schools. This inequality within schools translates into lasting inequalities in the adult world. Society views educational achievement to be based on merit – high achievers have done well because they worked hard and are rewarded with resources, status, and power, including high-paying, high-status jobs at prestigious organizations. Those with lower educational status, on the other hand, are seen as undeserving and are therefore sorted into lower-paid jobs in lower-status professions and hold less influence. Domina and colleagues contend, however, that while educational categorization is unavoidable, a more equitable system, and thus a more equitable society, can be built. A key component is to build and uphold categories that emphasize educational goods that are inherently valuable, such as the ability to read, as opposed to those that derive value from scarcity, such as status and prestige. Schooled & Sorted is an illuminating investigation into the ways sorting within schools translates to sorting – and inequality – into the larger world.