Creating the Suburban School Advantage

Creating the Suburban School Advantage PDF Author: John L. Rury
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501748416
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Creating the Suburban School Advantage explains how American suburban school districts gained a competitive edge over their urban counterparts. John L. Rury provides a national overview of the process, focusing on the period between 1950 and 1980, and presents a detailed study of metropolitan Kansas City, a region representative of trends elsewhere. While big-city districts once were widely seen as superior and attracted families seeking the best educational opportunities for their children, suburban school systems grew rapidly in the post–World War II era as middle-class and more affluent families moved to those communities. As Rury relates, at the same time, economically dislocated African Americans migrated from the South to center-city neighborhoods, testing the capacity of urban institutions. As demographic trends drove this urban-suburban divide, a suburban ethos of localism contributed to the socioeconomic exclusion that became a hallmark of outlying school systems. School districts located wholly or partly within the municipal boundaries of Kansas City, Missouri, make for revealing cases that illuminate our understanding of these national patterns. As Rury demonstrates, struggles to achieve greater educational equity and desegregation in urban centers contributed to so-called white flight and what Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan considered to be a crisis of urban education in 1965. Despite the often valiant efforts made to serve inner city children and bolster urban school districts, this exodus, Rury cogently argues, created a new metropolitan educational hierarchy—a mirror image of the urban-centric model that had prevailed before World War II. The stubborn perception that suburban schools are superior, based on test scores and budgets, has persisted into the twenty-first century and instantiates today's metropolitan landscape of social, economic, and educational inequality.

Creating the Suburban School Advantage

Creating the Suburban School Advantage PDF Author: John L. Rury
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501748416
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Creating the Suburban School Advantage explains how American suburban school districts gained a competitive edge over their urban counterparts. John L. Rury provides a national overview of the process, focusing on the period between 1950 and 1980, and presents a detailed study of metropolitan Kansas City, a region representative of trends elsewhere. While big-city districts once were widely seen as superior and attracted families seeking the best educational opportunities for their children, suburban school systems grew rapidly in the post–World War II era as middle-class and more affluent families moved to those communities. As Rury relates, at the same time, economically dislocated African Americans migrated from the South to center-city neighborhoods, testing the capacity of urban institutions. As demographic trends drove this urban-suburban divide, a suburban ethos of localism contributed to the socioeconomic exclusion that became a hallmark of outlying school systems. School districts located wholly or partly within the municipal boundaries of Kansas City, Missouri, make for revealing cases that illuminate our understanding of these national patterns. As Rury demonstrates, struggles to achieve greater educational equity and desegregation in urban centers contributed to so-called white flight and what Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan considered to be a crisis of urban education in 1965. Despite the often valiant efforts made to serve inner city children and bolster urban school districts, this exodus, Rury cogently argues, created a new metropolitan educational hierarchy—a mirror image of the urban-centric model that had prevailed before World War II. The stubborn perception that suburban schools are superior, based on test scores and budgets, has persisted into the twenty-first century and instantiates today's metropolitan landscape of social, economic, and educational inequality.

Inequality in the Promised Land

Inequality in the Promised Land PDF Author: R. L’Heureux Lewis-McCoy
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804792453
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
Nestled in neighborhoods of varying degrees of affluence, suburban public schools are typically better resourced than their inner-city peers and known for their extracurricular offerings and college preparatory programs. Despite the glowing opportunities that many families associate with suburban schooling, accessing a district's resources is not always straightforward, particularly for black and poorer families. Moving beyond class- and race-based explanations, Inequality in the Promised Land focuses on the everyday interactions between parents, students, teachers, and school administrators in order to understand why resources seldom trickle down to a district's racial and economic minorities. Rolling Acres Public Schools (RAPS) is one of the many well-appointed suburban school districts across the United States that has become increasingly racially and economically diverse over the last forty years. Expanding on Charles Tilly's model of relational analysis and drawing on 100 in-depth interviews as well participant observation and archival research, R. L'Heureux Lewis-McCoy examines the pathways of resources in RAPS. He discovers that—due to structural factors, social and class positions, and past experiences—resources are not valued equally among families and, even when deemed valuable, financial factors and issues of opportunity hoarding often prevent certain RAPS families from accessing that resource. In addition to its fresh and incisive insights into educational inequality, this groundbreaking book also presents valuable policy-orientated solutions for administrators, teachers, activists, and politicians.

Making the Grade

Making the Grade PDF Author: William A. Fischel
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226251314
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
A significant factor for many people deciding where to live is the quality of the local school district, with superior schools creating a price premium for housing. The result is a “race to the top,” as all school districts attempt to improve their performance in order to attract homebuyers. Given the importance of school districts to the daily lives of children and families, it is surprising that their evolution has not received much attention. In this provocative book, William Fischel argues that the historical development of school districts reflects Americans’ desire to make their communities attractive to outsiders. The result has been a standardized, interchangeable system of education not overly demanding for either students or teachers, one that involved parents and local voters in its governance and finance. Innovative in its focus on bottom-up processes generated by individual behaviors rather than top-down decisions by bureaucrats, Making the Grade provides a new perspective on education reform that emphasizes how public schools form the basis for the localized social capital in American towns and cities.

Closing the Opportunity Gap

Closing the Opportunity Gap PDF Author: Prudence L. Carter
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199983003
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
While the achievement gap has dominated policy discussions over the past two decades, relatively little attention has been paid to a gap even more at odds with American ideals: the opportunity gap. Opportunity and achievement, while inextricably connected, are very different goals. Every American will not go to college, but every American should be given a fair chance to be prepared for college. In communities across the U.S., children lack the crucial resources and opportunities, inside and outside of schools that they need if they are to reach their potential. Closing the Opportunity Gap offers accessible, research-based essays written by top experts who highlight the discrepancies that exist in our public schools, focusing on how policy decisions and life circumstances conspire to create the "opportunity gap" that leads inexorably to stark achievement gaps. They also describe sensible policies grounded in evidence that can restore and enhance opportunities. Moving beyond conventional academic discourse, Closing the Opportunity Gap will spark vital new conversations about what schools, parents, educators, and policymakers can and should do to give all children a fair chance to thrive.

Despite the Best Intentions

Despite the Best Intentions PDF Author: Amanda E. Lewis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190250879
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
On the surface, Riverview High School looks like the post-racial ideal. Serving an enviably affluent, diverse, and liberal district, the school is well-funded, its teachers are well-trained, and many of its students are high achieving. Yet Riverview has not escaped the same unrelenting question that plagues schools throughout America: why is it that even when all of the circumstances seem right, black and Latino students continue to lag behind their peers? Through five years' worth of interviews and data-gathering at Riverview, John Diamond and Amanda Lewis have created a rich and disturbing portrait of the achievement gap that persists more than fifty years after the formal dismantling of segregation. As students progress from elementary school to middle school to high school, their level of academic achievement increasingly tracks along racial lines, with white and Asian students maintaining higher GPAs and standardized testing scores, taking more advanced classes, and attaining better college admission results than their black and Latino counterparts. Most research to date has focused on the role of poverty, family stability, and other external influences in explaining poor performance at school, especially in urban contexts. Diamond and Lewis instead situate their research in a suburban school, and look at what factors within the school itself could be causing the disparity. Most crucially, they challenge many common explanations of the 'racial achievement gap,' exploring what race actually means in this situation, and why it matters. An in-depth study with far-reaching consequences, Despite the Best Intentions revolutionizes our understanding of both the knotty problem of academic disparities and the larger question of the color line in American society.

Suburban Remix

Suburban Remix PDF Author: Jason Beske
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1610918630
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Investment has flooded back to cities because dense, walkable, mixed-use urban environments offer choices that support diverse dreams. Auto-oriented, single-use suburbs have a hard time competing. Suburban Remix brings together experts in planning, urban design, real estate development, and urban policy to demonstrate how suburbs can use growing demand for urban living to renew their appeal as places to live, work, play, and invest. The case studies and analysis show how compact new urban places are being created in suburbs to produce health, economic, and environmental benefits, and contribute to solving a growing equity crisis.

Making the Difference

Making the Difference PDF Author: Dean Ashenden
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000247058
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
First published in 1982, Making the Difference has become a classic in the study of education and of Australian society. Hailed on publication as 'certainly the most interesting book written about Australian schools in a very long time [and] arguably the most important', it has since been recognised as one of the 10 most influential works of Australian sociology, 'not just a major argument, and a 'classic' point of reference, [but] an event, an intervention in ways of doing research and speaking to practice, a methodology, a textual style. it was designed to be read by a much wider audience than the standard sociological text, and it has succeeded'. Making the Difference draws on a detailed study of the schools and homes of the powerful and the wealthy, and of ordinary wage-earners. It allows children, parents and teachers to speak for themselves and from what they say it develops strikingly new ways of understanding 'educational inequality', of how the class and gender systems work, and of schools and their social roles. 'Equality of opportunity', co-education, and 'relevant and meaningful curriculum' are all questioned, sympathetically but incisively. Ranging across educational policy from system level to the everyday experience of kids and teachers, from the problems of schooling to the production of class and gender relations, this path-breaking combination of theory, research and politics remains engaging, thought-provoking, and relevant.

Reinventing Public Education

Reinventing Public Education PDF Author: Paul Hill
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226336530
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
A heated debate is raging over our nation’s public schools and how they should be reformed, with proposals ranging from imposing national standards to replacing public education altogether with a voucher system for private schools. Combining decades of experience in education, the authors propose an innovative approach to solving the problems of our school system and find a middle ground between these extremes. Reinventing Public Education shows how contracting would radically change the way we operate our schools, while keeping them public and accessible to all, and making them better able to meet standards of achievement and equity. Using public funds, local school boards would select private providers to operate individual schools under formal contracts specifying the type and quality of instruction. In a hands-on, concrete fashion, the authors provide a thorough explanation of the pros and cons of school contracting and how it would work in practice. They show how contracting would free local school boards from operating schools so they can focus on improving educational policy; how it would allow parents to choose the best school for their children; and, finally, how it would ensure that schools are held accountable and academic standards are met. While retaining a strong public role in education, contracting enables schools to be more imaginative, adaptable, and suited to the needs of children and families. In presenting an alternative vision for America’s schools, Reinventing Public Education is too important to be ignored.

Class and Schools

Class and Schools PDF Author: Richard Rothstein
Publisher: Teachers College Press
ISBN: 9780807745564
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
Contemporary public policy assumes that the achievement gap between black and white students could be closed if only schools would do a better job. According to Richard Rothstein, "Closing the gaps between lower-class and middle-class children requires social and economic reform as well as school improvement. Unfortunately, the trend is to shift most of the burden to schools, as if they alone can eradicate poverty and inequality." In this book, Rothstein points the way toward social and economic reforms that would give all children a more equal chance to succeed in school. This book features: a summary of numerous studies linking school achievement to health care quality, nutrition, childrearing styles, housing stability, parental economic security, and more ; aA look at erroneous and misleading data that underlie commonplace claims that some schools "beat the demographic odds and therefore any school can close the achievement gap if only it adopted proper practices." ; and an analysis of how the over-emphasis of standardized tests in federal law obscures the true achievement gap and makes narrowing it more difficult.

School, Family, and Community Partnerships

School, Family, and Community Partnerships PDF Author: Joyce L. Epstein
Publisher: Corwin Press
ISBN: 1483320014
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 518

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Book Description
Strengthen programs of family and community engagement to promote equity and increase student success! When schools, families, and communities collaborate and share responsibility for students′ education, more students succeed in school. Based on 30 years of research and fieldwork, the fourth edition of the bestseller School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Your Handbook for Action, presents tools and guidelines to help develop more effective and more equitable programs of family and community engagement. Written by a team of well-known experts, it provides a theory and framework of six types of involvement for action; up-to-date research on school, family, and community collaboration; and new materials for professional development and on-going technical assistance. Readers also will find: Examples of best practices on the six types of involvement from preschools, and elementary, middle, and high schools Checklists, templates, and evaluations to plan goal-linked partnership programs and assess progress CD-ROM with slides and notes for two presentations: A new awareness session to orient colleagues on the major components of a research-based partnership program, and a full One-Day Team Training Workshop to prepare school teams to develop their partnership programs. As a foundational text, this handbook demonstrates a proven approach to implement and sustain inclusive, goal-linked programs of partnership. It shows how a good partnership program is an essential component of good school organization and school improvement for student success. This book will help every district and all schools strengthen and continually improve their programs of family and community engagement.