The Tragedy Of American School Reform

Author : Ronald W. Evans
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 0230119107
Total Pages : 295 pages
Book Rating : 4.09/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Tragedy of American School Reform written by Ronald W. Evans and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-05-09 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two persistent dilemmas haunt school reform: curriculum politics and classroom constancy. Both undermined the 1960s' new social studies, a dynamic reform movement centered on inquiry, issues, and social activism. Dramatic academic freedom controversies ended reform and led to a conservative restoration. On one side were teachers and curriculum developers; on the other, conservative activists determined to undo the revolutions of the 1960s. The episode brought a return to traditional history, a turn away from questioning, and the re-imposition of authority. Engagingly written and thoroughly researched, The Tragedy of American School Reform offers a provocative perspective on current trends.

Author : Maurice R. Berube
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 0313389721
Total Pages : 165 pages
Book Rating : 4.26/5 ( download)

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Download or read book American School Reform written by Maurice R. Berube and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 1994-12-30 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Berube analyzes the three great educational reform movements in the United States. He shows how they have been shaped by outside societal forces: Progressive Education was an offshoot of the Progressive Movement; Equity Reform in the 1960s was influenced by the Civil Rights Movement; Excellence Reform in the last decade was a response to foreign economic competition. Within each matrix, common characteristics of each movement emerge. Progressive Education with its emphasis on critical thinking and child-centered schools set the stage for what was to follow. Equity Reform sought to complete the unfinished agenda of Progressive Education in educating the poor. Excellence Reform repudiated both in the name of higher standards and content-specific curriculums. The emergence of sophisticated educational research since the 1960s has influenced educational policy to be more research-based. Berube provides a necessary overview of the great movements in school reform over the last century.

Author : William J. Reese
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 64 pages
Book Rating : 4.11/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Public School Reform in America written by William J. Reese and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every era of deep social change in U.S. history has produced incessant calls for social improvement through the reform of the public schools. This fastback sketches some common themes and recent discontinuities in the history of school reform. It focuses on three aspects of change during key eras of reform: the sources of education change, the many-sided demands of reformers, and the influence of various reformers on social practices. Embedded in these concerns are fundamental issues of the changing definitions of schooling in society, disputes over who should control and have access to education, and how schools should be organized and what they should teach. The fastback comments on 19th and 20th century efforts at school reform in the United States and considers its politics and process. (Includes a 10-item annotated bibliography and 36 notes.) (BT)

Author : Chester E. Finn, Jr.
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 140082821X
Total Pages : 377 pages
Book Rating : 4.10/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Troublemaker written by Chester E. Finn, Jr. and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2008-02-04 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few people have been more involved in shaping postwar U.S. education reforms--or dissented from some of them more effectively--than Chester Finn. Assistant secretary of education under Ronald Reagan, and an aide to politicians as different as Richard Nixon and Daniel Moynihan, Finn has also been a high school teacher, an education professor, a prolific and best-selling writer, a think-tank analyst, a nonprofit foundation president, and both a Democrat and Republican. This remarkably varied career has given him an extraordinary insider's view of every significant school-reform movement of the past four decades, from racial integration to No Child Left Behind. In Troublemaker, Finn has written a vivid history of postwar education reform that is also the personal story of one of the foremost players--and mavericks--in American education. Finn tells how his experiences have shaped his changing views of the three major strands of postwar school reform: standards-driven, choice-driven, and profession-driven. Of the three, Finn now believes that a combination of choice and standards has the greatest potential, but he favors this approach more on pragmatic than ideological grounds, arguing that parents should be given more options at the same time that schools are allowed more flexibility and held to higher performance norms. He also explains why education reforms of all kinds are so difficult to implement, and he draws valuable lessons from their frequent failure. Clear-eyed yet optimistic, Finn ultimately gives grounds for hope that the best of today's bold initiatives--from charter schools to technology to makeovers of school-system governance--are finally beginning to make a difference.

Author : David B. Tyack
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674267877
Total Pages : 193 pages
Book Rating : 4.79/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Tinkering toward Utopia written by David B. Tyack and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1997-03-25 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over a century, Americans have translated their cultural anxieties and hopes into dramatic demands for educational reform. Although policy talk has sounded a millennial tone, the actual reforms have been gradual and incremental. Tinkering toward Utopia documents the dynamic tension between Americans’ faith in education as a panacea and the moderate pace of change in educational practices. In this book, David Tyack and Larry Cuban explore some basic questions about the nature of educational reform. Why have Americans come to believe that schooling has regressed? Have educational reforms occurred in cycles, and if so, why? Why has it been so difficult to change the basic institutional patterns of schooling? What actually happened when reformers tried to “reinvent” schooling? Tyack and Cuban argue that the ahistorical nature of most current reform proposals magnifies defects and understates the difficulty of changing the system. Policy talk has alternated between lamentation and overconfidence. The authors suggest that reformers today need to focus on ways to help teachers improve instruction from the inside out instead of decreeing change by remote control, and that reformers must also keep in mind the democratic purposes that guide public education.

Author : Jeannie Oakes
Publisher : Jossey-Bass
ISBN 13 : 9780787962241
Total Pages : 436 pages
Book Rating : 4.44/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Becoming Good American Schools written by Jeannie Oakes and published by Jossey-Bass. This book was released on 2002-04-04 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "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.

Author : Maurice R. Berube
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 9780742539471
Total Pages : 96 pages
Book Rating : 4.74/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The End of School Reform written by Maurice R. Berube and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2007 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Education as a major social movement is coming to an end. The theoretical framework for this proposition derives from Thomas Kuhn's theory of paradigm shifts of major movements and Hegel's 'end of history' thesis. The 'end of school reform' thesis blends Arthur Danto's 'end of art', John Horgan's 'end of science', and Francis Fukuyama's 'end of history' theses. Including interviews of education historians and policy professors, The End of School Reform maintains that educational innovation may still continue, but only on a piecemeal basis.

Author : Dwight W. Allen
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 0313066027
Total Pages : 196 pages
Book Rating : 4.23/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Schools for a New Century written by Dwight W. Allen and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 1992-01-22 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents optimistic alternatives to the current educational reform movement, which has not produced substantial improvement. Dwight W. Allen advocates structural reform of education in virtually every aspect--organization, staff, curriculum, and political accountability. His central proposal is for the establishment of a national system of experimental schools, well-funded for research, experimentation, evaluation, and demonstration, but with realistic operating expenses. The biggest obstacle to reform is the lack of confidence in those who might establish, coordinate, and implement it. The establishment of an extensive, coordinated national experimental school system with voluntary participation by all those involved would provide a relatively nonthreatening environment in which to try new alternatives in all aspects of public education. The first requirement is a new vision of education--one that has the capacity for quick implementation of new curricular and instructional programs. Allen advocates the creation of a well-designed national curriculum which would enhance local control of schools. With a portion of the curriculum standardized, local school districts and teachers would have the time and resources to develop local curriculum options.

Author : Larry Cuban
Publisher : Harvard Education Press
ISBN 13 : 1682536971
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.71/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Confessions of a School Reformer written by Larry Cuban and published by Harvard Education Press. This book was released on 2022-10-18 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Confessions of a School Reformer, eminent historian of education Larry Cuban reflects on nearly a century of education reforms and his experiences with them as a student, educator, and administrator. Cuban begins his own story in the 1930s, when he entered first grade at a Pittsburgh public school, the youngest son of Russian immigrants who placed great stock in the promises of education. With a keen historian's eye, Cuban expands his personal narrative to analyze the overlapping social, political, and economic movements that have attempted to influence public schooling in the United States since the beginning of the twentieth century. He documents how education both has and has not been altered by the efforts of the Progressive Era of the first half of the twentieth century, the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s through the 1970s, and the standards-based school reform movement of the 1980s through today. Cuban points out how these dissimilar movements nevertheless shared a belief that school change could promote student success and also forge a path toward a stronger economy and a more equitable society. He relates the triumphs of these school reform efforts as well as more modest successes and unintended outcomes. Interwoven with Cuban's evaluations and remembrances are his "confessions," in which he accounts for the beliefs he held and later rejected, as well as mistakes and areas of weakness that he has found in his own ideology. Ultimately, Cuban remarks with a tempered optimism on what schools can and cannot do in American democracy.

Author : John F. Lyons
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
ISBN 13 : 0252032721
Total Pages : 314 pages
Book Rating : 4.21/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Teachers and Reform written by John F. Lyons and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on archival as well as rich interview material, John F. Lyons examines the role of Chicago public schoolteachers and their union, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), in shaping the policies and practices of public education in Chicago from 1937 to 1970. From the union's formation in 1937 until the 1960s, the CTU was the largest and most influential teachers' union in the country, operating in the nation's second largest school system. Although all Chicago public schoolteachers were committed to such bread-and-butter demands as higher salaries, many teachers also sought a more rigorous reform of the school system through calls for better working conditions, greater classroom autonomy, more funding for education, and the end of political control of the schools. Using political action, public relations campaigns, and community alliances, the CTU successfully raised members' salaries and benefits, increased school budgets, influenced school curricula, and campaigned for greater equality for women within the Chicago public education system. Examining teachers' unions and public education from the bottom up, Lyons shows how teachers' unions helped to shape one of the largest public education systems in the nation. Taking into consideration the larger political context, such as World War II, the McCarthy era, and the civil rights movements of the 1960s, this study analyzes how the teachers' attempts to improve their working lives and the quality of the Chicago public school system were constrained by internal divisions over race and gender as well as external disputes between the CTU and the school administration, state and local politicians, and powerful business and civic organizations. Because of the obstacles they faced and the decisions they made, unionized teachers left many problems unresolved, but they effected changes to public education and to local politics that still benefit Chicago teachers and the public today.