Between City And School

Author : Douglas N. Harris
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022669478X
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.88/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Charter School City written by Douglas N. Harris and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2020-07-15 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the wake of the tragedy and destruction that came with Hurricane Katrina in 2005, public schools in New Orleans became part of an almost unthinkable experiment—eliminating the traditional public education system and completely replacing it with charter schools and school choice. Fifteen years later, the results have been remarkable, and the complex lessons learned should alter the way we think about American education. New Orleans became the first US city ever to adopt a school system based on the principles of markets and economics. When the state took over all of the city’s public schools, it turned them over to non-profit charter school managers accountable under performance-based contracts. Students were no longer obligated to attend a specific school based upon their address, allowing families to act like consumers and choose schools in any neighborhood. The teacher union contract, tenure, and certification rules were eliminated, giving schools autonomy and control to hire and fire as they pleased. In Charter School City, Douglas N. Harris provides an inside look at how and why these reform decisions were made and offers many surprising findings from one of the most extensive and rigorous evaluations of a district school reform ever conducted. Through close examination of the results, Harris finds that this unprecedented experiment was a noteworthy success on almost every measurable student outcome. But, as Harris shows, New Orleans was uniquely situated for these reforms to work well and that this market-based reform still required some specific and active roles for government. Letting free markets rule on their own without government involvement will not generate the kinds of changes their advocates suggest. Combining the evidence from New Orleans with that from other cities, Harris draws out the broader lessons of this unprecedented reform effort. At a time when charter school debates are more based on ideology than data, this book is a powerful, evidence-based, and in-depth look at how we can rethink the roles for governments, markets, and nonprofit organizations in education to ensure that America’s schools fulfill their potential for all students.

Author : Caroline Pratt
Publisher : Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
ISBN 13 : 0802192157
Total Pages : 263 pages
Book Rating : 4.58/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book I Learn from Children written by Caroline Pratt and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2014-06-16 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The memoir of an innovative American educator and the remarkable school she built—“a lucid presentation of what progressive education can accomplish” (The New York Times). Over a century ago, American educator Caroline Pratt created an innovative school that fosters creativity and independent thought by asking the provocative question: “Was it unreasonable to try to fit the school to the child, rather than . . . the child to the school?” A strong-willed small-town schoolteacher who ran a one-room schoolhouse by the time she was seventeen, Pratt came to viscerally reject the teaching methods of her day, which often featured a long-winded teacher at the front of the room and rows of miserable children sitting on benches nailed to the floor. In this “persuasive presentation of progressive education,” Pratt recounts how she founded what is now the dynamic City and Country School in New York City, invented the “unit blocks” that have become a staple in classrooms around the globe, and played an important role in reimagining preschool and primary-school education in ways that are essential for the tumultuously creative time we live in today (Kirkus Reviews).

Author : Joshua M. Dunn
Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 1469606607
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.06/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Complex Justice written by Joshua M. Dunn and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2012-09-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1987 Judge Russell Clark mandated tax increases to help pay for improvements to the Kansas City, Missouri, School District in an effort to lure white students and quality teachers back to the inner-city district. Yet even after increasing employee salaries and constructing elaborate facilities at a cost of more than $2 billion, the district remained overwhelmingly segregated and student achievement remained far below national averages. Just eight years later the U.S. Supreme Court began reversing these initiatives, signifying a major retreat from Brown v. Board of Education. In Kansas City, African American families opposed to the district court's efforts organized a takeover of the school board and requested that the court case be closed. Joshua Dunn argues that Judge Clark's ruling was not the result of tyrannical "judicial activism" but was rather the logical outcome of previous contradictory Supreme Court doctrines. High Court decisions, Dunn explains, necessarily limit the policy choices available to lower court judges, introducing complications the Supreme Court would not anticipate. He demonstrates that the Kansas City case is a model lesson for the types of problems that develop for lower courts in any area in which the Supreme Court attempts to create significant change. Dunn's exploration of this landmark case deepens our understanding of when courts can and cannot successfully create and manage public policy.

Author : Carla Shedd
Publisher : Russell Sage Foundation
ISBN 13 : 1610448529
Total Pages : 241 pages
Book Rating : 4.29/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Unequal City written by Carla Shedd and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2015-10-20 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chicago has long struggled with racial residential segregation, high rates of poverty, and deepening class stratification, and it can be a challenging place for adolescents to grow up. Unequal City examines the ways in which Chicago’s most vulnerable residents navigate their neighborhoods, life opportunities, and encounters with the law. In this pioneering analysis of the intersection of race, place, and opportunity, sociologist and criminal justice expert Carla Shedd illuminates how schools either reinforce or ameliorate the social inequalities that shape the worlds of these adolescents. Shedd draws from an array of data and in-depth interviews with Chicago youth to offer new insight into this understudied group. Focusing on four public high schools with differing student bodies, Shedd reveals how the predominantly low-income African American students at one school encounter obstacles their more affluent, white counterparts on the other side of the city do not face. Teens often travel long distances to attend school which, due to Chicago’s segregated and highly unequal neighborhoods, can involve crossing class, race, and gang lines. As Shedd explains, the disadvantaged teens who traverse these boundaries daily develop a keen “perception of injustice,” or the recognition that their economic and educational opportunities are restricted by their place in the social hierarchy. Adolescents’ worldviews are also influenced by encounters with law enforcement while traveling to school and during school hours. Shedd tracks the rise of metal detectors, surveillance cameras, and pat-downs at certain Chicago schools. Along with police procedures like stop-and-frisk, these prison-like practices lead to distrust of authority and feelings of powerlessness among the adolescents who experience mistreatment either firsthand or vicariously. Shedd finds that the racial composition of the student body profoundly shapes students’ perceptions of injustice. The more diverse a school is, the more likely its students of color will recognize whether they are subject to discriminatory treatment. By contrast, African American and Hispanic youth whose schools and neighborhoods are both highly segregated and highly policed are less likely to understand their individual and group disadvantage due to their lack of exposure to youth of differing backgrounds.

Author : Laura Lippman
Publisher : DIANE Publishing
ISBN 13 : 0788136321
Total Pages : 232 pages
Book Rating : 4.20/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Urban Schools written by Laura Lippman and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 1996-12 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Edward J. Watts
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520258169
Total Pages : 303 pages
Book Rating : 4.67/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria written by Edward J. Watts and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2008-09-10 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This lively and wide-ranging study of the men and ideas of late antique education explores the intellectual and doctrinal milieux in the two great cities of Athens and Alexandria from the second to the sixth centuries to shed new light on the interaction between the pagan cultural legacy and Christianity. While previous scholarship has seen Christian reactions to pagan educational culture as the product of an empire-wide process of development, Edward J. Watts crafts two narratives that reveal how differently education was shaped by the local power structures and urban contexts of each city. Touching on the careers of Herodes Atticus, Proclus, Damascius, Ammonius Saccas, Origen, Hypatia, and Olympiodorus; and events including the Herulian sack of Athens, the closing of the Athenian Neoplatonic school under Justinian, the rise of Arian Christianity, and the sack of the Serapeum, he shows that by the sixth century, Athens and Alexandria had two distinct, locally determined, approaches to pagan teaching that had their roots in the unique historical relationships between city and school.

Author : Thomas J. Sugrue
Publisher : Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN 13 : 0812970381
Total Pages : 738 pages
Book Rating : 4.88/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Sweet Land of Liberty written by Thomas J. Sugrue and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 738 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sweet Land of Liberty is Thomas J. Sugrue’s epic account of the abiding quest for racial equality in states from Illinois to New York, and of how the intense northern struggle differed from and was inspired by the fight down South. Sugrue’s panoramic view sweeps from the 1920s to the present–more than eighty of the most decisive years in American history. He uncovers the forgotten stories of battles to open up lunch counters, beaches, and movie theaters in the North; the untold history of struggles against Jim Crow schools in northern towns; the dramatic story of racial conflict in northern cities and suburbs; and the long and tangled histories of integration and black power. Filled with unforgettable characters and riveting incidents, and making use of information and accounts both public and private, such as the writings of obscure African American journalists and the records of civil rights and black power groups, Sweet Land of Liberty creates an indelible history.

Author : Christopher Bonastia
Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 1503631982
Total Pages : 407 pages
Book Rating : 4.84/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Battle Nearer to Home written by Christopher Bonastia and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2022-07-05 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite its image as an epicenter of progressive social policy, New York City continues to have one of the nation's most segregated school systems. Tracing the quest for integration in education from the mid-1950s to the present, The Battle Nearer to Home follows the tireless efforts by educational activists to dismantle the deep racial and socioeconomic inequalities that segregation reinforces. The fight for integration has shifted significantly over time, not least in terms of the way "integration" is conceived, from transfers of students and redrawing school attendance zones, to more recent demands of community control of segregated schools. In all cases, the Board eventually pulled the plug in the face of resistance from more powerful stakeholders, and, starting in the 1970s, integration receded as a possible solution to educational inequality. In excavating the history of New York City school integration politics, in the halls of power and on the ground, Christopher Bonastia unearths the enduring white resistance to integration and the severe costs paid by Black and Latino students. This last decade has seen activists renew the fight for integration, but the war is still far from won.

Author : Kate Rousmaniere
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780807735886
Total Pages : 179 pages
Book Rating : 4.84/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book City Teachers written by Kate Rousmaniere and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on extensive interviews with teachers of an earlier generation, Rousmaniere lets readers see the complexity of teachers' work, their problems with reform implementation, and the conditions they believed were necessary for real change. It is an important book because it raises questions about the power and legacy of teachers' historical work culture and the effect of teachers' working conditions on teacher practice and broader school reform policy.

Author : David Osborne
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1632869918
Total Pages : 433 pages
Book Rating : 4.13/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Reinventing America's Schools written by David Osborne and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.