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Author: J. M. Beach
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1475862261
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 211
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Book Description
This book examines the idea of educational accountability in higher education, which has become a new secular gospel. But do accountability policies actually make colleges better? What if educational accountability tools don’t actually measure what they’re supposed to? What if accountability data isn’t valid, or worse, what if it’s meaningless? What if administrators don’t know how to use accountability tools or correctly analyze the problematic data these tools produce? What if we can’t measure, let alone accurately assess, what matters most with teaching or student learning. What if students don’t learn much in college? What if higher education was never designed to produce student learning? What if college doesn’t help most students, either personally or economically? What if higher education isn’t meritocratic, actually exacerbates inequality, and makes the lives of disadvantaged students even worse? This book will answer these questions with a wide, interdisciplinary range of the latest scientific research.
Author: J. M. Beach
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1475862261
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 211
Get Book Here
Book Description
This book examines the idea of educational accountability in higher education, which has become a new secular gospel. But do accountability policies actually make colleges better? What if educational accountability tools don’t actually measure what they’re supposed to? What if accountability data isn’t valid, or worse, what if it’s meaningless? What if administrators don’t know how to use accountability tools or correctly analyze the problematic data these tools produce? What if we can’t measure, let alone accurately assess, what matters most with teaching or student learning. What if students don’t learn much in college? What if higher education was never designed to produce student learning? What if college doesn’t help most students, either personally or economically? What if higher education isn’t meritocratic, actually exacerbates inequality, and makes the lives of disadvantaged students even worse? This book will answer these questions with a wide, interdisciplinary range of the latest scientific research.
Author: J. M. Beach
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 9781475862256
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 176
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Book Description
This book examines the idea of educational accountability in higher education, which has become a new secular gospel. But do accountability policies actually make colleges better? What if educational accountability tools don't actually measure what they're supposed to? What if accountability data isn't valid, or worse, what if it's meaningless? What if administrators don't know how to use accountability tools or correctly analyze the problematic data these tools produce? What if we can't measure, let alone accurately assess, what matters most with teaching or student learning. What if students don't learn much in college? What if higher education was never designed to produce student learning? What if college doesn't help most students, either personally or economically? What if higher education isn't meritocratic, actually exacerbates inequality, and makes the lives of disadvantaged students even worse? This book will answer these questions with a wide, interdisciplinary range of the latest scientific research.
Author: J. M. Beach
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1475862296
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 209
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Book Description
This book examines the idea of educational accountability, which has become a new secular gospel. But do accountability policies actually make schools better? Do business management theories and practices make organizations more effective? What if the most widely used management theories and assessment tools don’t work? What if educational accountability tools don’t actually measure what they’re supposed to? What if accountability data isn’t valid, or worse, what if it’s meaningless? What if administrators don’t know how to use accountability tools or correctly analyze the problematic data these tools produce? What if we can’t measure, let alone accurately assess, what matters most with teaching or student learning. How is a business-model of economic efficiency supposed to increase the competing, and perhaps mutually exclusive, ends of schooling, such as human development, student learning, personal satisfaction, social mobility, and economic growth? What if students don’t learn much in schools? What if schools were never designed to produce student learning? This book will answer these questions with a wide, interdisciplinary range of the latest scientific research.
Author: Robert H. Frank
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691178305
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 202
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Book Description
From New York Times bestselling author and economics columnist Robert Frank, a compelling book that explains why the rich underestimate the importance of luck in their success, why that hurts everyone, and what we can do about it How important is luck in economic success? No question more reliably divides conservatives from liberals. As conservatives correctly observe, people who amass great fortunes are almost always talented and hardworking. But liberals are also correct to note that countless others have those same qualities yet never earn much. In recent years, social scientists have discovered that chance plays a much larger role in important life outcomes than most people imagine. In Success and Luck, bestselling author and New York Times economics columnist Robert Frank explores the surprising implications of those findings to show why the rich underestimate the importance of luck in success—and why that hurts everyone, even the wealthy. Frank describes how, in a world increasingly dominated by winner-take-all markets, chance opportunities and trivial initial advantages often translate into much larger ones—and enormous income differences—over time; how false beliefs about luck persist, despite compelling evidence against them; and how myths about personal success and luck shape individual and political choices in harmful ways. But, Frank argues, we could decrease the inequality driven by sheer luck by adopting simple, unintrusive policies that would free up trillions of dollars each year—more than enough to fix our crumbling infrastructure, expand healthcare coverage, fight global warming, and reduce poverty, all without requiring painful sacrifices from anyone. If this sounds implausible, you'll be surprised to discover that the solution requires only a few, noncontroversial steps. Compellingly readable, Success and Luck shows how a more accurate understanding of the role of chance in life could lead to better, richer, and fairer economies and societies.
Author: David C. Berliner
Publisher: Teachers College Press
ISBN: 0807755249
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 273
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Book Description
This book is guaranteed to spark lively debates and critical thinking in any classroom! Two of the most respected voices in education identify 50 myths and lies that threaten America's public schools. Berliner and Glass argue that many citizens conception of K12 public education in the United States is more myth than reality. Warped opinions about our nations public schools include: they are inferior to private schools; they are among the worst in the world in math and science; teachers should be fired if their students dont score at the national average, and on and on. With more than a little humor, Berliner and Glass separate fact from fiction in this comprehensive look at modern education reform. They explain how the mythical failure of public education has been created and perpetuated in large part by political and economic interests who stand to gain from its destruction. They expose a rapidly expanding variety of organizations and media that intentionally misrepresent facts. Where appropriate, they name the promoters of the hoax and point out how their interests are served by encouraging false beliefs. Their method of debunking these falsehoods is to argue against their logic, criticize the data supporting them, and present more credible contradictory data. This dynamic book features short essays on important topics to provide every teacher, administrator, school board member, and concerned parent with reliable knowledge from authoritative sources.
Author: Randall Collins
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231549784
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255
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Book Description
The Credential Society is a classic on the role of higher education in American society and an essential text for understanding the reproduction of inequality. Controversial at the time, Randall Collins’s claim that the expansion of American education has not increased social mobility, but rather created a cycle of credential inflation, has proven remarkably prescient. Collins shows how credential inflation stymies mass education’s promises of upward mobility. An unacknowledged spiral of the rising production of credentials and job requirements was brought about by the expansion of high school and then undergraduate education, with consequences including grade inflation, rising educational costs, and misleading job promises dangled by for-profit schools. Collins examines medicine, law, and engineering to show the ways in which credentialing closed these high-status professions to new arrivals. In an era marked by the devaluation of high school diplomas, outcry about the value of expensive undergraduate degrees, and the proliferation of new professional degrees like the MBA, The Credential Society has more than stood the test of time. In a new preface, Collins discusses recent developments, debunks claims that credentialization is driven by technological change, and points to alternative pathways for the future of education.
Author: Robert A. Hahn
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300068719
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 344
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Book Description
Anthropologist and epidemiologist Robert A. Hahn examines how culture influences the definition, experience and treatment of sickness in Western and non-Western societies.
Author: James R. Kluegel
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 0202303276
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 344
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Book Description
Motivated by the desire to explain how Americans perceive and evaluate inequality and related programs and policies, the authors conducted a national survey of beliefs about social and economic inequality in America. Here they present the results of their research on the structure, determinants, and certain political and personal consequences of these beliefs. The presentations serve two major goals; to describe and explain the central features of Americans' images of inequality. Beliefs About Inequality begins with a focus on people's perceptions of the most basic elements of inequality: the availability of opportunity in society, the causes of economic achievements, and the benefits and costs of equality and inequality. The book's analysis of the public's beliefs on these key issues is based on fundamental theories of social psychology and lays the groundwork for understanding how Americans evaluate inequality-related policies. The authors discuss the ultimate determinants of beliefs and the implications of their findings for social policies related to inequality. They propose that attitudes toward economic inequality and related policy are influenced by three major aspects of the current American social, economic, and political environment: a stable "dominant ideology" about economic inequality; individuals' social and economic status; and specific beliefs and attitudes, often reflecting "social liberalism" shaped by recent political debates and events. "a superb piece of scholarship, combining substantive ambition and theoretical depth with analytical clarity and sophistication."--Public Opinion Quarterly James R. Kluegel is chairman of the Department of Sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of Evaluating Contemporary Juvenile Justice. Eliot R. Smith is professor of psychology at Indiana University. He is the author of Social Psychology.
Author: Susan T. Fiske
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
ISBN: 1610447093
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 251
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Book Description
An insightful examination of why we compare ourselves to those above and below us. The United States was founded on the principle of equal opportunity for all, and this ethos continues to inform the nation's collective identity. In reality, however, absolute equality is elusive. The gap between rich and poor has widened in recent decades, and the United States has the highest level of economic inequality of any developed country. Social class and other differences in status reverberate throughout American life, and prejudice based on another's perceived status persists among individuals and groups. In Envy Up, Scorn Down, noted social psychologist Susan Fiske examines the psychological underpinnings of interpersonal and intergroup comparisons, exploring why we compare ourselves to those both above and below us and analyzing the social consequences of such comparisons in day-to-day life. What motivates individuals, groups, and cultures to envy the status of some and scorn the status of others? Who experiences envy and scorn most? Envy Up, Scorn Down marshals a wealth of recent psychological studies as well as findings based on years of Fiske's own research to address such questions. She shows that both envy and scorn have distinctive biological, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral characteristics. And though we are all "wired" for comparison, some individuals are more vulnerable to these motives than others. Dominant personalities, for example, express envy toward high-status groups such as the wealthy and well-educated, and insecurity can lead others to scorn those perceived to have lower status, such as women, minorities, or the disabled. Fiske shows that one's race or ethnicity, gender, and education all correlate with perceived status. Regardless of whether one is accorded higher or lower status, however, all groups rank their members, and all societies rank the various groups within them. We rate each group as either friend or foe, able or unable, and accordingly assign them the traits of warmth or competence. The majority of groups in the United States are ranked either warm or competent but not both, with extreme exceptions: the homeless or the very poor are considered neither warm nor competent. Societies across the globe view older people as warm but incompetent. Conversely, the very rich are generally considered cold but highly competent. Envy Up, Scorn Down explores the nuances of status hierarchies and their consequences and shows that such prejudice in its most virulent form dehumanizes and can lead to devastating outcomes—from the scornful neglect of the homeless to the envious anger historically directed at Tutsis in Rwanda or Jews in Europe. Individuals, groups, and even cultures will always make comparisons between and among themselves. Envy Up, Scorn Down is an accessible and insightful examination of drives we all share and the prejudice that can accompany comparison. The book deftly shows that understanding envy and scorn—and seeking to mitigate their effects—can prove invaluable to our lives, our relationships, and our society.
Author: Peter Saunders
Publisher: Basic Civitas Books
ISBN: 9781906837143
Category : Great Britain
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
In a 'meritocratic' society, people's achievements mainly reflect their own efforts and talents - if you are reasonably bright and motivated there is little stopping you from succeeding in life. In Social Mobility Myths, Peter Saunders, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Sussex, sets out to convince the political class that much of what they believe (or say they believe) about social mobility in this country is either false or more complicated than they think. According to Saunders, modern Britain is a much more open and meritocratic society than most of us realise and talent and motivation are the key drivers of success and achievement. In Social Mobility Myths, Saunders investigates the link between intelligence and social class using empirical sociological models. He argues that by ignoring intelligence, current thinking is in danger of spawning policies that will not work, and which might even make things worse. The bottom line is this: we cannot hope to develop good policies if we ignore the key influence on the phenomenon we are hoping to change.
