Author:
Publisher: Bryce Cullen Publishing
ISBN: 1935752049
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 198
Book Description
Who Says It's Wrong?: Closing the Morality Gap in Public Education
Author:
Publisher: Bryce Cullen Publishing
ISBN: 1935752049
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 198
Book Description
Publisher: Bryce Cullen Publishing
ISBN: 1935752049
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 198
Book Description
How Schools Really Matter
Author: Douglas B. Downey
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022673336X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 176
Book Description
Most of us assume that public schools in America are unequal—that the quality of the education varies with the location of the school and that as a result, children learn more in the schools that serve mostly rich, white kids than in the schools serving mostly poor, black kids. But it turns out that this common assumption is misplaced. As Douglas B. Downey shows in How Schools Really Matter, achievement gaps have very little to do with what goes on in our schools. Not only do schools not exacerbate inequality in skills, they actually help to level the playing field. The real sources of achievement gaps are elsewhere. A close look at the testing data in seasonal patterns bears this out. It turns out that achievement gaps in reading skills between high- and low-income children are nearly entirely formed prior to kindergarten, and schools do more to reduce them than increase them. And when gaps do increase, they tend to do so during summers, not during school periods. So why do both liberal and conservative politicians strongly advocate for school reform, arguing that the poor quality of schools serving disadvantaged children is an important contributor to inequality? It’s because discussing the broader social and economic reforms necessary for really reducing inequality has become too challenging and polarizing—it’s just easier to talk about fixing schools. Of course, there are differences that schools can make, and Downey outlines the kinds of reforms that make sense given what we know about inequality outside of schools, including more school exposure, increased standardization, and better and fairer school and teacher measurements. ? How Schools Really Matter offers a firm rebuke to those who find nothing but fault in our schools, which are doing a much better than job than we give them credit for. It should also be a call to arms for educators and policymakers: the bottom line is that if we are serious about reducing inequality, we are going to have to fight some battles that are bigger than school reform—battles against the social inequality that is reflected within, rather than generated by—our public school system.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022673336X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 176
Book Description
Most of us assume that public schools in America are unequal—that the quality of the education varies with the location of the school and that as a result, children learn more in the schools that serve mostly rich, white kids than in the schools serving mostly poor, black kids. But it turns out that this common assumption is misplaced. As Douglas B. Downey shows in How Schools Really Matter, achievement gaps have very little to do with what goes on in our schools. Not only do schools not exacerbate inequality in skills, they actually help to level the playing field. The real sources of achievement gaps are elsewhere. A close look at the testing data in seasonal patterns bears this out. It turns out that achievement gaps in reading skills between high- and low-income children are nearly entirely formed prior to kindergarten, and schools do more to reduce them than increase them. And when gaps do increase, they tend to do so during summers, not during school periods. So why do both liberal and conservative politicians strongly advocate for school reform, arguing that the poor quality of schools serving disadvantaged children is an important contributor to inequality? It’s because discussing the broader social and economic reforms necessary for really reducing inequality has become too challenging and polarizing—it’s just easier to talk about fixing schools. Of course, there are differences that schools can make, and Downey outlines the kinds of reforms that make sense given what we know about inequality outside of schools, including more school exposure, increased standardization, and better and fairer school and teacher measurements. ? How Schools Really Matter offers a firm rebuke to those who find nothing but fault in our schools, which are doing a much better than job than we give them credit for. It should also be a call to arms for educators and policymakers: the bottom line is that if we are serious about reducing inequality, we are going to have to fight some battles that are bigger than school reform—battles against the social inequality that is reflected within, rather than generated by—our public school system.
How The Other Half Learns
Author: Robert Pondiscio
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525533753
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 386
Book Description
An inside look at America's most controversial charter schools, and the moral and political questions around public education and school choice. The promise of public education is excellence for all. But that promise has seldom been kept for low-income children of color in America. In How the Other Half Learns, teacher and education journalist Robert Pondiscio focuses on Success Academy, the network of controversial charter schools in New York City founded by Eva Moskowitz, who has created something unprecedented in American education: a way for large numbers of engaged and ambitious low-income families of color to get an education for their children that equals and even exceeds what wealthy families take for granted. Her results are astonishing, her methods unorthodox. Decades of well-intended efforts to improve our schools and close the "achievement gap" have set equity and excellence at war with each other: If you are wealthy, with the means to pay private school tuition or move to an affluent community, you can get your child into an excellent school. But if you are poor and black or brown, you have to settle for "equity" and a lecture--about fairness. About the need to be patient. And about how school choice for you only damages public schools for everyone else. Thousands of parents have chosen Success Academy, and thousands more sit on waiting lists to get in. But Moskowitz herself admits Success Academy "is not for everyone," and this raises uncomfortable questions we'd rather not ask, let alone answer: What if the price of giving a first-rate education to children least likely to receive it means acknowledging that you can't do it for everyone? What if some problems are just too hard for schools alone to solve?
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525533753
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 386
Book Description
An inside look at America's most controversial charter schools, and the moral and political questions around public education and school choice. The promise of public education is excellence for all. But that promise has seldom been kept for low-income children of color in America. In How the Other Half Learns, teacher and education journalist Robert Pondiscio focuses on Success Academy, the network of controversial charter schools in New York City founded by Eva Moskowitz, who has created something unprecedented in American education: a way for large numbers of engaged and ambitious low-income families of color to get an education for their children that equals and even exceeds what wealthy families take for granted. Her results are astonishing, her methods unorthodox. Decades of well-intended efforts to improve our schools and close the "achievement gap" have set equity and excellence at war with each other: If you are wealthy, with the means to pay private school tuition or move to an affluent community, you can get your child into an excellent school. But if you are poor and black or brown, you have to settle for "equity" and a lecture--about fairness. About the need to be patient. And about how school choice for you only damages public schools for everyone else. Thousands of parents have chosen Success Academy, and thousands more sit on waiting lists to get in. But Moskowitz herself admits Success Academy "is not for everyone," and this raises uncomfortable questions we'd rather not ask, let alone answer: What if the price of giving a first-rate education to children least likely to receive it means acknowledging that you can't do it for everyone? What if some problems are just too hard for schools alone to solve?
Who Says It's Wrong?
Author: Suzanne Nicastro
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781935752035
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 198
Book Description
In Who Says It's Wrong?: Closing the Morality Gap in Public Education, former middle and high school principal Suzanne Nicastro describes the historic decline of character education in public schools, along with its sobering results.With the state of public schools a national concern, Nicastro, a 20-year veteran of public education, presents a provocative blueprint for addressing the problem. By painting an undeniable relationship between moral standards and academic learning, this book successfully argues that moral standards are necessary partners in the field of public education. By adopting (and assessing) four national standards in every American classroom-honesty, compassion, loyalty, and fortitude-educators will be fully armed to address the most important aspects of child development. Only then, will the elusive "achievement gap" be wiped out and public education saved.The data is clear: illegal behavior is on the rise. Violence in public schools (including bullying) persists. As students move up four points on achievement scales in reading, they are still cheating on tests, bullying each other, and breaking laws. With increasing numbers, average-to-high achievers are exhibiting disturbing anti-social behaviors. We can no longer assume good grades equate to good people. Nicastro tackles arguments that adopting a national set of values will result in putting students in a moral straightjacket. Armed with current educational research and real-life classroom stories, universal moral standards are shown to not only influence learning patterns, but also enhance school culture and support democratic ideals...for all children...no matter what their backgrounds. A Call to ActionWhile Who Says It's Wrong?: Closing the Morality Gap in Public Education will prove thought provoking, it also needs to be a call to action: how will Americans redefine the future of public education? Should the discussion focus solely on academic standards or will it include those democratic ideals that involve morality and character building? If the foundation of a democracy is built on ethical decision making, what role does public education play in ensuring that her youngest citizens internalize such values? The time has come to begin a national dialogue around the issue of morality and kids. This book pushes the door open for that discussion by beginning an honest conversation about where our kids fit in the morality index. By attempting to define how values affect learning, and providing solutions for character overhaul in schools with direct, explicit instruction, K-12 schools will be able to turn the corner and find success. This isn't an academic book for educators that discusses a new philosophy or theory. Morality "standards" are neither a new nor original concept. Yet, if history tells us this is so, why have schools veered so dramatically away from morality practice? By exploring current and historical data and real-life stories about teaching and learning, this book illustrates the way in which morality standards are shown to influence the entire learning process. Who Says It's Wrong?: Closing the Morality Gap in Public Education is fighting for the return of character education as the driving force in classrooms-not at the expense of academic standards, but as an equal partner.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781935752035
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 198
Book Description
In Who Says It's Wrong?: Closing the Morality Gap in Public Education, former middle and high school principal Suzanne Nicastro describes the historic decline of character education in public schools, along with its sobering results.With the state of public schools a national concern, Nicastro, a 20-year veteran of public education, presents a provocative blueprint for addressing the problem. By painting an undeniable relationship between moral standards and academic learning, this book successfully argues that moral standards are necessary partners in the field of public education. By adopting (and assessing) four national standards in every American classroom-honesty, compassion, loyalty, and fortitude-educators will be fully armed to address the most important aspects of child development. Only then, will the elusive "achievement gap" be wiped out and public education saved.The data is clear: illegal behavior is on the rise. Violence in public schools (including bullying) persists. As students move up four points on achievement scales in reading, they are still cheating on tests, bullying each other, and breaking laws. With increasing numbers, average-to-high achievers are exhibiting disturbing anti-social behaviors. We can no longer assume good grades equate to good people. Nicastro tackles arguments that adopting a national set of values will result in putting students in a moral straightjacket. Armed with current educational research and real-life classroom stories, universal moral standards are shown to not only influence learning patterns, but also enhance school culture and support democratic ideals...for all children...no matter what their backgrounds. A Call to ActionWhile Who Says It's Wrong?: Closing the Morality Gap in Public Education will prove thought provoking, it also needs to be a call to action: how will Americans redefine the future of public education? Should the discussion focus solely on academic standards or will it include those democratic ideals that involve morality and character building? If the foundation of a democracy is built on ethical decision making, what role does public education play in ensuring that her youngest citizens internalize such values? The time has come to begin a national dialogue around the issue of morality and kids. This book pushes the door open for that discussion by beginning an honest conversation about where our kids fit in the morality index. By attempting to define how values affect learning, and providing solutions for character overhaul in schools with direct, explicit instruction, K-12 schools will be able to turn the corner and find success. This isn't an academic book for educators that discusses a new philosophy or theory. Morality "standards" are neither a new nor original concept. Yet, if history tells us this is so, why have schools veered so dramatically away from morality practice? By exploring current and historical data and real-life stories about teaching and learning, this book illustrates the way in which morality standards are shown to influence the entire learning process. Who Says It's Wrong?: Closing the Morality Gap in Public Education is fighting for the return of character education as the driving force in classrooms-not at the expense of academic standards, but as an equal partner.
The Teacher Wars
Author: Dana Goldstein
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0385536968
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 272
Book Description
In her groundbreaking history of 175 years of American education, Dana Goldstein finds answers in the past to the controversies that plague our public schools today. Teaching is a wildly contentious profession in America, one attacked and admired in equal measure. In The Teacher Wars, a rich, lively, and unprecedented history of public school teaching, Dana Goldstein reveals that teachers have been similarly embattled for nearly two centuries. From the genteel founding of the common schools movement in the nineteenth century to the violent inner-city teacher strikes of the 1960s and '70s, from the dispatching of Northeastern women to frontier schoolhouses to the founding of Teach for America on the Princeton University campus in 1989, Goldstein shows that the same issues have continued to bedevil us: Who should teach? What should be taught? Who should be held accountable for how our children learn? She uncovers the surprising roots of hot button issues, from teacher tenure to charter schools, and finds that recent popular ideas to improve schools—instituting merit pay, evaluating teachers by student test scores, ranking and firing veteran teachers, and recruiting “elite” graduates to teach—are all approaches that have been tried in the past without producing widespread change. And she also discovers an emerging effort that stands a real chance of transforming our schools for the better: drawing on the best practices of the three million public school teachers we already have in order to improve learning throughout our nation’s classrooms. The Teacher Wars upends the conversation about American education by bringing the lessons of history to bear on the dilemmas we confront today. By asking “How did we get here?” Dana Goldstein brilliantly illuminates the path forward.
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0385536968
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 272
Book Description
In her groundbreaking history of 175 years of American education, Dana Goldstein finds answers in the past to the controversies that plague our public schools today. Teaching is a wildly contentious profession in America, one attacked and admired in equal measure. In The Teacher Wars, a rich, lively, and unprecedented history of public school teaching, Dana Goldstein reveals that teachers have been similarly embattled for nearly two centuries. From the genteel founding of the common schools movement in the nineteenth century to the violent inner-city teacher strikes of the 1960s and '70s, from the dispatching of Northeastern women to frontier schoolhouses to the founding of Teach for America on the Princeton University campus in 1989, Goldstein shows that the same issues have continued to bedevil us: Who should teach? What should be taught? Who should be held accountable for how our children learn? She uncovers the surprising roots of hot button issues, from teacher tenure to charter schools, and finds that recent popular ideas to improve schools—instituting merit pay, evaluating teachers by student test scores, ranking and firing veteran teachers, and recruiting “elite” graduates to teach—are all approaches that have been tried in the past without producing widespread change. And she also discovers an emerging effort that stands a real chance of transforming our schools for the better: drawing on the best practices of the three million public school teachers we already have in order to improve learning throughout our nation’s classrooms. The Teacher Wars upends the conversation about American education by bringing the lessons of history to bear on the dilemmas we confront today. By asking “How did we get here?” Dana Goldstein brilliantly illuminates the path forward.
American Education
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 380
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 380
Book Description
Bad Students, Not Bad Schools
Author: Robert Weissberg
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351297716
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 316
Book Description
Americans are increasingly alarmed over our nation's educational deficiencies. Though anxieties about schooling are unending, especially with public institutions, these problems are more complex than institutional failure. Expenditures for education have exploded, and far exceed inflation and the rising costs of health care, but academic achievement remains flat. Many students are unable to graduate from high school, let alone obtain a college degree. And if they do make it to college, they are often forced into remedial courses. Why, despite this fiscal extravagance, are educational disappointments so widespread? In Bad Students, Not Bad Schools, Robert Weissberg argues that the answer is something everybody knows to be true but is afraid to say in public America's educational woes too often reflect the demographic mix of students. Schools today are filled with millions of youngsters, too many of whom struggle with the English language or simply have mediocre intellectual ability. Their lackluster performances are probably impervious to the current reform prescriptions regardless of the remedy's ideological derivation. Making matters worse, retention of students in school is embraced as a philosophy even if it impedes the learning of other students. Weissberg argues that most of America's educational woes would vanish if indifferent, troublesome students were permitted to leave when they had absorbed as much as they could learn; they would quickly be replaced by learning-hungry students, including many new immigrants from other countries. American education survives since we import highly intelligent, technically skillful foreigners just as we import oil, but this may not last forever. When educational establishments get serious about world-class mathematics and science, and permit serious students to learn, problems will dissolve. Rewarding the smartest, not spending fortunes in a futile quest to uplift the bottom, should become official policy. This book is a bracing reminder of the risks of political manipulation of education and argues that the measure of policy should be academic achievment.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351297716
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 316
Book Description
Americans are increasingly alarmed over our nation's educational deficiencies. Though anxieties about schooling are unending, especially with public institutions, these problems are more complex than institutional failure. Expenditures for education have exploded, and far exceed inflation and the rising costs of health care, but academic achievement remains flat. Many students are unable to graduate from high school, let alone obtain a college degree. And if they do make it to college, they are often forced into remedial courses. Why, despite this fiscal extravagance, are educational disappointments so widespread? In Bad Students, Not Bad Schools, Robert Weissberg argues that the answer is something everybody knows to be true but is afraid to say in public America's educational woes too often reflect the demographic mix of students. Schools today are filled with millions of youngsters, too many of whom struggle with the English language or simply have mediocre intellectual ability. Their lackluster performances are probably impervious to the current reform prescriptions regardless of the remedy's ideological derivation. Making matters worse, retention of students in school is embraced as a philosophy even if it impedes the learning of other students. Weissberg argues that most of America's educational woes would vanish if indifferent, troublesome students were permitted to leave when they had absorbed as much as they could learn; they would quickly be replaced by learning-hungry students, including many new immigrants from other countries. American education survives since we import highly intelligent, technically skillful foreigners just as we import oil, but this may not last forever. When educational establishments get serious about world-class mathematics and science, and permit serious students to learn, problems will dissolve. Rewarding the smartest, not spending fortunes in a futile quest to uplift the bottom, should become official policy. This book is a bracing reminder of the risks of political manipulation of education and argues that the measure of policy should be academic achievment.
Proceedings, ... Annual Session of the North Dakota Education Association
Author: North Dakota Education Association
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 990
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 990
Book Description
Ignoring Poverty in the U.S.
Author: P. L. Thomas
Publisher: IAP
ISBN: 1617357855
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Book Description
Ignoring Poverty in the U.S.: The Corporate Takeover of Public Education examines the divide between a commitment to public education and our cultural myths and more powerful commitment to consumerism and corporate America. The book addresses poverty in the context of the following: the historical and conflicting purposes in public education—how schools became positivistic/behavioral in our quest to produce workers for industry; the accountability era—how A Nation at Risk through NCLB have served corporate interest in dismantling public education and dissolving teachers unions; the media and misinformation about education; charter schools as political/corporate compromise masking poverty; demonizing schools and scapegoating teachers—from misusing the SAT to VAM evaluations of teachers; rethinking the purpose of schools—shifting from schools as social saviors to addressing poverty so that public education can fulfill its purpose of empowering everyone in a democracy; and reframing how we view people living in poverty—rejecting deficit views of people living in poverty and students struggling in school under the weight of lives in poverty. This work is intended to confront the growing misinformation about the interplay among poverty, public schools, and what schools can accomplish while political and corporate leadership push agendas aimed at replacing public education with alternatives such as charter schools. The audience for the publication includes educators, educational reformers, politicians, and any member of the wider public interested in public education.
Publisher: IAP
ISBN: 1617357855
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Book Description
Ignoring Poverty in the U.S.: The Corporate Takeover of Public Education examines the divide between a commitment to public education and our cultural myths and more powerful commitment to consumerism and corporate America. The book addresses poverty in the context of the following: the historical and conflicting purposes in public education—how schools became positivistic/behavioral in our quest to produce workers for industry; the accountability era—how A Nation at Risk through NCLB have served corporate interest in dismantling public education and dissolving teachers unions; the media and misinformation about education; charter schools as political/corporate compromise masking poverty; demonizing schools and scapegoating teachers—from misusing the SAT to VAM evaluations of teachers; rethinking the purpose of schools—shifting from schools as social saviors to addressing poverty so that public education can fulfill its purpose of empowering everyone in a democracy; and reframing how we view people living in poverty—rejecting deficit views of people living in poverty and students struggling in school under the weight of lives in poverty. This work is intended to confront the growing misinformation about the interplay among poverty, public schools, and what schools can accomplish while political and corporate leadership push agendas aimed at replacing public education with alternatives such as charter schools. The audience for the publication includes educators, educational reformers, politicians, and any member of the wider public interested in public education.
Ghosts in the Schoolyard
Author: Eve L. Ewing
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022652616X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 237
Book Description
“Failing schools. Underprivileged schools. Just plain bad schools.” That’s how Eve L. Ewing opens Ghosts in the Schoolyard: describing Chicago Public Schools from the outside. The way politicians and pundits and parents of kids who attend other schools talk about them, with a mix of pity and contempt. But Ewing knows Chicago Public Schools from the inside: as a student, then a teacher, and now a scholar who studies them. And that perspective has shown her that public schools are not buildings full of failures—they’re an integral part of their neighborhoods, at the heart of their communities, storehouses of history and memory that bring people together. Never was that role more apparent than in 2013 when Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced an unprecedented wave of school closings. Pitched simultaneously as a solution to a budget problem, a response to declining enrollments, and a chance to purge bad schools that were dragging down the whole system, the plan was met with a roar of protest from parents, students, and teachers. But if these schools were so bad, why did people care so much about keeping them open, to the point that some would even go on a hunger strike? Ewing’s answer begins with a story of systemic racism, inequality, bad faith, and distrust that stretches deep into Chicago history. Rooting her exploration in the historic African American neighborhood of Bronzeville, Ewing reveals that this issue is about much more than just schools. Black communities see the closing of their schools—schools that are certainly less than perfect but that are theirs—as one more in a long line of racist policies. The fight to keep them open is yet another front in the ongoing struggle of black people in America to build successful lives and achieve true self-determination.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022652616X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 237
Book Description
“Failing schools. Underprivileged schools. Just plain bad schools.” That’s how Eve L. Ewing opens Ghosts in the Schoolyard: describing Chicago Public Schools from the outside. The way politicians and pundits and parents of kids who attend other schools talk about them, with a mix of pity and contempt. But Ewing knows Chicago Public Schools from the inside: as a student, then a teacher, and now a scholar who studies them. And that perspective has shown her that public schools are not buildings full of failures—they’re an integral part of their neighborhoods, at the heart of their communities, storehouses of history and memory that bring people together. Never was that role more apparent than in 2013 when Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced an unprecedented wave of school closings. Pitched simultaneously as a solution to a budget problem, a response to declining enrollments, and a chance to purge bad schools that were dragging down the whole system, the plan was met with a roar of protest from parents, students, and teachers. But if these schools were so bad, why did people care so much about keeping them open, to the point that some would even go on a hunger strike? Ewing’s answer begins with a story of systemic racism, inequality, bad faith, and distrust that stretches deep into Chicago history. Rooting her exploration in the historic African American neighborhood of Bronzeville, Ewing reveals that this issue is about much more than just schools. Black communities see the closing of their schools—schools that are certainly less than perfect but that are theirs—as one more in a long line of racist policies. The fight to keep them open is yet another front in the ongoing struggle of black people in America to build successful lives and achieve true self-determination.