Choosing Excellence
Author: John Merrow
Publisher: R & L Education
Published: 2001
Total Pages: 228
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn this intelligent and humorous account, Merrow seeks to answer the question: How do you know if your school is any good?
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Choosing Excellence in Public Schools
Author: David W. Hornbeck
Publisher: R&L Education
Published: 2009-06-15
Total Pages: 361
ISBN-13: 1607091569
DOWNLOAD EBOOKChoosing Excellence in Public Schools explains the origins of the low expectations we have of children, including, notably, children of color, those for whom English is a second language, poor children and children with disabilities. The book dispels the basis for low expectations. It makes clear the economic, demographic, civic, personal and moral imperative to educate all children to high standards and the consequences of not doing so. Hornbeck and Conner set forth a comprehensive, radical agenda based on proven practices and practical experience that will result in education success for virtually all children where faithfully implemented. This book breaks new ground. It establishes that the missing ingredient in school reform is the absence of values-driven, focused, well-financed, professionally staffed, technologically sophisticated grassroots expression of the public will insisting that the political, media, business, judicial and organized labor institutions that make the choices that result in our children's learning conditions make different, and effective choices. We get the education for our own children and grandchildren and those of others that we tolerate or demand.
Excellence for All
Author: Jack Schneider
Publisher:
Published: 2011
Total Pages: 190
ISBN-13: 9780826518118
DOWNLOAD EBOOKBy the early twenty-first century, a startling consensus had emerged about the overall aim of American school reform. In an era of political discord, and in a field historically known for contentiousness, the notion of promoting educational excellence for all students was a distinct point of bipartisan agreement. Shaped by a corps of entrepreneurial reformers intent on finding "what works" and taking it to scale, this hybrid vision won over the nation's most ambitious and well-resourced policy leaders at foundations and nonprofits, in state and federal government, and in urban school districts from coast to coast. "Excellence for all" might, at first glance, appear to be nothing more than a rhetorical flourish. Who, after all, would oppose the idea of a great education for every student? Yet it is hardly a throwaway phrase. Rather, it represents a surprising fusion of educational policy approaches that had been in tense opposition throughout the twentieth century--those on the right favoring social efficiency, and those on the left supporting social justice. This book seeks to understand why the "excellence for all" vision took hold at the time it did, unpacks the particular beliefs and assumptions embedded in it, and details the often informal coalition building that produced this period of consensus. Examining the nation's largest urban school districts (Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York), the author details three major reform efforts in chapters titled "The Right Space: The Small Schools Movement"; "The Right Teachers: Teach for America"; and "The Right Curriculum: Expanding Advanced Placement."
How The Other Half Learns
Author: Robert Pondiscio
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2020-06-02
Total Pages: 386
ISBN-13: 0525533753
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAn 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?
Choosing Schools
Author: Mark Schneider
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2021-02-09
Total Pages: 329
ISBN-13: 0691225680
DOWNLOAD EBOOKSchool choice seeks to create a competitive arena in which public schools will attain academic excellence, encourage individual student performance, and achieve social balance. In debating the feasibility of this market approach to improving school systems, analysts have focused primarily on schools as suppliers of education, but an important question remains: Will parents be able to function as "smart consumers" on behalf of their children? Here a highly respected team of social scientists provides extensive empirical evidence on how parents currently do make these choices. Drawn from four different types of school districts in New York City and suburban New Jersey, their findings not only stress the importance of parental decision-making and involvement to school performance but also clarify the issues of school choice in ways that bring much-needed balance to the ongoing debate. The authors analyze what parents value in education, how much they know about schools, how well they can match what they say they want in schools with what their children get, how satisfied they are with their children's schools, and how their involvement in the schools is affected by the opportunity to choose. They discover, most notably, that low-income parents value education as much as, if not more than, high-income parents, but do not have access to the same quality of school information. This problem comes under sensitive, thorough scrutiny as do a host of other important topics, from school performance to segregation to children at risk of being left behind.
An Ethic of Excellence
Author: Ron Berger
Publisher: Heinemann Educational Books
Published: 2003
Total Pages: 164
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe author gives us a vision of educational reform that transcends standards, curriculum, and instructional strategies. He argues for a paradigm shift-a schoolwide embrace of an "ethic of excellence" and with a passion for quality describes what's possible when teachers, students, and parents commit to nothing less than the best. The author tells exactly how this can be done, from the blackboard to the blacktop to the school boardroom.
Leading for Equity
Author: Stacey M. Childress
Publisher: Harvard Education Press
Published: 2009-07-01
Total Pages: 177
ISBN-13: 1612500110
DOWNLOAD EBOOKLeading for Equity tells the compelling story of the Montgomery County (Maryland) Public Schools and its transformation—in less than a decade—into a system committed to breaking the links between race and class and academic achievement. In chapters organized around six core themes, the authors lay out the essential elements of MCPS’s success. They identify key lessons other districts can draw from MCPS’s experience and offer a framework for applying them. A dramatic departure from “business as usual,” MCPS has won nationwide attention as a compelling model for tackling the achievement and opportunity issues that confront our nation as a whole.
The School Choice Roadmap
Author: Andrew Campanella
Publisher: Beaufort Books
Published: 2020-01-21
Total Pages: 179
ISBN-13: 0825308151
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWINNER OF THE 2020 FOREWORD INDIES GOLD AWARD IN EDUCATION WINNER OF THE SILVER IPPY AWARD FOR BEST EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES You want your children to benefit from a great education. But every student is unique. One type of school might be a great fit for your neighbor's child, but it might not work for your son or daughter. Across the country, many parents today have more choices for their children's education than ever before. If you are starting the process of finding your child's first school—or if you want to choose a new learning environment—The School Choice Roadmap is for you. This first-of-its-kind book offers a practical, jargon-free overview of school choice policies, from public school open enrollment to private school scholarships and more. It breaks down the similarities and differences between traditional public schools, public charter schools, public magnet schools, online public schools, private schools, and homeschooling. Most importantly, The School Choice Roadmap offers a seven-step process that will help you harness the power of your own intuition—and your own expertise about your child's uniqueness—to help you find a school that reflects your family's goals, values, and priorities. Filled with sage advice from dozens of other parents who have pursued the school search process, and interviews with school leaders and teachers, The School Choice Roadmap is an optimistic, empowering book that cuts through the confusion in K-12 education—so that you can give your children every opportunity to succeed in school and in life.
The Schools Our Children Deserve
Author: Alfie Kohn
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 1999
Total Pages: 356
ISBN-13: 9780618083459
DOWNLOAD EBOOKArguing against the tougher standards rhetoric that marks the current education debate, the author of No Contest and Punished by Rewards writes that such tactics squeeze the pleasure out of learning. Reprint.
The Public School Advantage
Author: Christopher A. Lubienski
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2013-11-07
Total Pages: 299
ISBN-13: 022608907X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKNearly the whole of America’s partisan politics centers on a single question: Can markets solve our social problems? And for years this question has played out ferociously in the debates about how we should educate our children. From the growth of vouchers and charter schools to the implementation of No Child Left Behind, policy makers have increasingly turned to market-based models to help improve our schools, believing that private institutions—because they are competitively driven—are better than public ones. With The Public School Advantage, Christopher A. and Sarah Theule Lubienski offer powerful evidence to undercut this belief, showing that public schools in fact outperform private ones. For decades research showing that students at private schools perform better than students at public ones has been used to promote the benefits of the private sector in education, including vouchers and charter schools—but much of these data are now nearly half a century old. Drawing on two recent, large-scale, and nationally representative databases, the Lubienskis show that any benefit seen in private school performance now is more than explained by demographics. Private schools have higher scores not because they are better institutions but because their students largely come from more privileged backgrounds that offer greater educational support. After correcting for demographics, the Lubienskis go on to show that gains in student achievement at public schools are at least as great and often greater than those at private ones. Even more surprising, they show that the very mechanism that market-based reformers champion—autonomy—may be the crucial factor that prevents private schools from performing better. Alternatively, those practices that these reformers castigate, such as teacher certification and professional reforms of curriculum and instruction, turn out to have a significant effect on school improvement. Despite our politics, we all agree on the fundamental fact: education deserves our utmost care. The Public School Advantage offers exactly that. By examining schools within the diversity of populations in which they actually operate, it provides not ideologies but facts. And the facts say it clearly: education is better off when provided for the public by the public.
