Addicted to Reform

Addicted to Reform PDF Author: John Merrow
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1620972433
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
The prize-winning PBS correspondent's provocative antidote to America's misguided approaches to K-12 school reform During an illustrious four-decade career at NPR and PBS, John Merrow—winner of the George Polk Award, the Peabody Award, and the McGraw Prize—reported from every state in the union, as well as from dozens of countries, on everything from the rise of district-wide cheating scandals and the corporate greed driving an ADD epidemic to teacher-training controversies and America's obsession with standardized testing. Along the way, he taught in a high school, at a historically black college, and at a federal penitentiary. Now, the revered education correspondent of PBS NewsHour distills his best thinking on education into a twelve-step approach to fixing a K–12 system that Merrow describes as being "addicted to reform" but unwilling to address the real issue: American public schools are ill-equipped to prepare young people for the challenges of the twenty-first century. This insightful book looks at how to turn digital natives into digital citizens and why it should be harder to become a teacher but easier to be one. Merrow offers smart, essential chapters—including "Measure What Matters," and "Embrace Teachers"—that reflect his countless hours spent covering classrooms as well as corridors of power. His signature candid style of reportage comes to life as he shares lively anecdotes, schoolyard tales, and memories that are at once instructive and endearing. Addicted to Reform is written with the kind of passionate concern that could come only from a lifetime devoted to the people and places that constitute the foundation of our nation. It is a "big book" that forms an astute and urgent blueprint for providing a quality education to every American child.

Addicted to Reform

Addicted to Reform PDF Author: John Merrow
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1620972433
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Get Book Here

Book Description
The prize-winning PBS correspondent's provocative antidote to America's misguided approaches to K-12 school reform During an illustrious four-decade career at NPR and PBS, John Merrow—winner of the George Polk Award, the Peabody Award, and the McGraw Prize—reported from every state in the union, as well as from dozens of countries, on everything from the rise of district-wide cheating scandals and the corporate greed driving an ADD epidemic to teacher-training controversies and America's obsession with standardized testing. Along the way, he taught in a high school, at a historically black college, and at a federal penitentiary. Now, the revered education correspondent of PBS NewsHour distills his best thinking on education into a twelve-step approach to fixing a K–12 system that Merrow describes as being "addicted to reform" but unwilling to address the real issue: American public schools are ill-equipped to prepare young people for the challenges of the twenty-first century. This insightful book looks at how to turn digital natives into digital citizens and why it should be harder to become a teacher but easier to be one. Merrow offers smart, essential chapters—including "Measure What Matters," and "Embrace Teachers"—that reflect his countless hours spent covering classrooms as well as corridors of power. His signature candid style of reportage comes to life as he shares lively anecdotes, schoolyard tales, and memories that are at once instructive and endearing. Addicted to Reform is written with the kind of passionate concern that could come only from a lifetime devoted to the people and places that constitute the foundation of our nation. It is a "big book" that forms an astute and urgent blueprint for providing a quality education to every American child.

Education Reform in New York City

Education Reform in New York City PDF Author: Jennifer A. O'Day
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781934742839
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Written in an accessible style, the papers in this volume document and analyse particular components of the Children First reforms, including governance, community engagement, finance, accountability, and instruction. Aimed at instituting evidence-based practices to produce higher and more equitable outcomes for all students, the policies that comprise the Children First initiative represent an attempt at organisational improvement and systemic learning.

A Decade of Urban School Reform

A Decade of Urban School Reform PDF Author: S. Paul Reville
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
A Decade of Urban School Reform looks at this critical era in the Boston schools and distills valuable insights and lessons for school leaders and reformers everywhere. In the last decade, the Boston Public Schools has undergone critical reforms that have been of intense interest to school leaders and policymakers throughout the country. Under the leadership of superintendent Thomas Payzant, the Boston schools implemented extensive reform strategies that yielded notable results. Fittingly, at the end of Payzant's superintendency in September 2006, the Boston Public Schools received the Broad Prize for Urban Education for being the most improved urban school district in the country. With chapters that explore questions pertaining to governance, human resources, instruction, data collection, disabilities, community engagement, and other topics, the book offers a detailed, comprehensive portrait of a school system managing the complex and daunting tasks of system-wide reform. The result is a timely, in-depth contribution to the small group of indispensable writings on urban school reform.

Reform as Learning

Reform as Learning PDF Author: Lea Ann Hubbard
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135925488
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Looking closely at the recent reform efforts in San Diego, this book explores the full range of critical issues pertaining to urban school reform. Drawing on the systemic school reform initiative that was launched in San Diego in the 1990s, this book explores all layers of the school reform process - from leadership in the central office, to work with principals and teachers, to the impact on how teachers worked with students in the classroom. The authors draw on careful ethnographic research collected over the entire four years of the San Diego reforms, in order to identify, not only how teachers, principals and other district educators were shaped by the large-scale reforms, but also the ways in which the reform unfolded. In doing so, the book shows more broadly how actors throughout a school system can change the views of leaders and impact the larger reform process.

Contradictions of School Reform

Contradictions of School Reform PDF Author: Linda McNeil
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135963282
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
Parents and community activists around the country complain that the education system is failing our children. They point to students' failure to master basic skills, even as standardized testing is widely employed in efforts to improve the educational system. Contradictions of Reform is a provocative look into the reality, for students as well as teachers, of standardized testing. A detailed account of how student improvement and teacher effectiveness are evaluated, Contradictions of Reform argues compellingly that the preparation of students for standardized tests engenders teaching methods that vastly compromise the quality of education.

Teaching in Context

Teaching in Context PDF Author: Esther Quintero
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781682530382
Category : Education and state
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Teaching in Context provides new evidence from a range of leading scholars showing that teachers become more effective when they work in organizations that support them in comprehensive and coordinated ways. The studies featured in the book suggest an alternative approach to enhancing teacher quality: creating conditions and school structures that facilitate the transmission and sharing of knowledge among teachers, allowing teachers to work together effectively, and capitalizing on what we know about how educators learn and improve. The chapters in this book point to the need to reevaluate current policies for assessing and ensuring teacher effectiveness, and establish the foundation for a more thoughtful, research-informed approach. "What a wonderful collection of diverse voices in this book, all sounding a similar message. Successful schools encourage and support purposeful collaboration among adults and they focus on students. In these schools, teachers feel more rewarded for their efforts and students learn more. Practitioners and researchers understand these findings. Now, let's build education policies that enable them." --John Q. Easton, vice president of programs, Spencer Foundation "Teaching in Context is a call to action--one to which Esther Quintero and her colleagues invite us to imagine, build, nurture, and protect a profession and culture fueled by supportive networks that produce more trust and less churn." --Ralph R. Smith, managing director, Campaign for Grade-Level Reading Esther Quintero is a senior fellow at the Albert Shanker Institute. Andy Hargreaves is the Brennan Chair in Education at Boston College.

Handbook of Global Education Policy

Handbook of Global Education Policy PDF Author: Karen Mundy
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 111846804X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 632

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Book Description
This innovative new handbook offers a comprehensive overview of the ways in which domestic education policy is framed and influenced by global institutions and actors. Surveys current debates about the role of education in a global polity, highlights key transnational policy actors, accessibly introduces research methodologies, and outlines global agendas for education reform Includes contributions from an international cast of established and emerging scholars at the forefront of the field thoughtfully edited and organized by a team of world-renowned global education policy experts Each section features a thorough introduction designed to facilitate readers’ understanding of the subsequent material and highlight links to interdisciplinary global policy scholarship Written in an accessible and engaging style that will appeal to domestic and international policy practitioners, social scientists, and education scholars alike

Tinkering toward Utopia

Tinkering toward Utopia PDF Author: David B. TYACK
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674044525
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
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.

Charting Chicago School Reform

Charting Chicago School Reform PDF Author: Anthony Bryk
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429981376
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
In 1989, Chicago began an experiment with radical decentralization of power and authority. Intertwining extensive narratives and rigorous quantitative analyses, this book tells the story of what happened to Chicagos elementary schools in the first four years of this reform. }In 1989, Chicago began an experiment with radical decentralization of power and authority. This book tells the story of what happened to Chicagos elementary schools in the first four years of this reform. Implicit in this reform is the theory that expanded local democratic participation would stimulate organizational change within schools, which in turn would foster improved teaching and learning. Using this theory as a framework, the authors marshal massive quantitative and qualitative data to examine how the reform actually unfolded at the school level.With longitudinal case study data on 22 schools, survey responses from principals and teachers in 269 schools, and supplementary system-wide administrative data, the authors identify four types of school politics: strong democracy, consolidated principal power, maintenance, and adversarial. In addition, they classify school change efforts as either systemic or unfocused. Bringing these strands together, the authors determine that, in about a third of the schools, expanded local democratic participation served as a strong lever for introducing systemic change focused on improved instruction. Finally, case studies of six actively restructuring schools illustrate how under decentralization the principals role is recast, social support for change can grow, and ideas and information from external sources are brought to bear on school change initiatives. Few studies intertwine so completely extensive narratives and rigorous quantitative analyses. The result is a complex picture of the Chicago reform that joins the politics of local control to school change.This volume is intended for scholars in the fields of urban education, public policy, sociology of education, anthropology of education, and politics of education. Comprehensive and descriptive, it is an engaging text for graduate students and upper-level undergraduates. Local, state, and federal policymakers who are concerned with urban education will find new and insightful material. The book should be on reading lists and in professional development seminars for school principals who want to garner community support for change and for school community leaders who want more responsive local institutions. Finally, educators, administrators, and activists in Chicago will appreciate this detailed analysis of the early years of reform.

Trust, Accountability, and Capacity in Education System Reform

Trust, Accountability, and Capacity in Education System Reform PDF Author: Melanie Ehren
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780367362478
Category : Comparative education
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
This global collection brings a new perspective to the field of comparative education by presenting trust, capacity and accountability as the three building blocks of education systems and education system reform. In exploring how these three factors relate to student learning outcomes across different international contexts, this book provides a powerful framework for a more equal system. Drawing upon research and case studies from scholars, policymakers and experts from international agencies across five continents, this book shows how trust, capacity and accountability interact in ways and with consequences that vary among countries, pointing readers towards understanding potential leverage points for system change. Trust, Accountability, and Capacity in Education System Reform illuminates how these three concepts are embedded in an institutional context temporally, socially and institutionally and offers an analysis that will be of use to researchers, policymakers and agencies working in comparative education and towards education system reform. Chapter 11 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license available at http: //www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9780429344855