At this moment, schools are doing everything they can to win the Race to the Top. They are allocating their funding to test preparation, riffing beloved teachers, and transferring students who “drag down” their grade average on the state report card. This book describes the current state of the education system in the United States. Readers will be on the front lines of the protests in Madison, in the inner city public-turned-charter schools, and in the shoes of the teachers dealing with educational politics every day. By the end of this text, you may beg the question: who’s winning in the Race to the Top?
The Takeover of Public Education in America: The Agenda to Control Information and Knowledge Through the Accountability System is an informative and insightful look into the mechanism that controls school systems today. It provides a look back into the history of how the system developed into what we have today and peels the curtain back to reveal what is crippling the schools across the country. Testimony is given from education professionals and parents who have lost their community schools to the devastating impact of No Child Left Behind mandates and its accountability system. Find out why teachers and school administrators stay in a constant state of preparation for the next round of testing. Discover the effects of failing to meet standards, and see the heavy hand of national policy take away jobs and deprive students of attending their neighborhood school. Become aware of who is benefiting from the current state of public education. Billions of dollars are at stake as corporations position themselves to make huge profits as public schools struggle to gain acceptable ratings and companies are called upon to rescue the children from a failing school. Learn what must be done if the teachers, counselors, administrators, and parents are to have any chance of reclaiming sovereignty over their profession and the schools their children attend. Finally, learn how technology and testing have served to limit a childs education through the agenda to control information and knowledge.
Through conversations in honor of Dale D. Johnson, this book takes a critical view of the monoculture in curriculum and policy that has developed in education with the increase of federal funding and privatization of services for public education, and examines the shift from public interest and control to private and corporate shareholder hegemony. Most states’ educational responsibilities—assessment of constituents, curriculum development, and instructional protocols—are increasingly being outsourced to private enterprises in an effort to reduce state budgets. These enterprises have been given wide access to state resources such as public data from state-sanctioned testing results, field-testing rights to public schools, and financial assistance. Chapter authors challenge this paradigm as well as the model that has set growing premiums on accountability and performance measures. Connecting common impact between the standards movement and the privatization of education, this book lays bare the repercussions of high-stakes accountability coupled with increasing privatization. Winner of The Society of Professors of Education Book Award (2018)
Corporate school reforms, especially privatization, union busting, and high-stakes testing have been hailed as the last best hope for public education. Yet, as Kenneth Saltman powerfully argues in this new book, corporate school reforms have decisively failed to deliver on what their proponents have promised for two decades: higher test scores and lower costs. As Saltman illustrates, the failures of corporate school reform are far greater and more destructive than they seem. Left unchecked, corporate school reform fails to challenge and in fact worsens the most pressing problems facing public schooling, including radical funding inequalities, racial segregation, and anti-intellectualism. But it is not too late for change. Against both corporate school reformers and its liberal critics, this book argues for the expansion of democratic pedagogies and a new common school movement that will lead to broader social renewal.
This book will reset the discourse on charter schooling by systematically exploring the gap between the promise and the performance of charter schools. The authors do not defend the public school system, which for decades has failed primarily poor children of color. Instead, they use empirical evidence to determine whether charter schooling offers an authentic alternative for these children. In concise chapters, they address a series of important questions related to the recent ascent of charter schools and the radical restructuring of public education. This essential introduction includes a detailed history of the charter movement, an analysis of the politics and economics driving the movement, documentation of actual student outcomes, and alternative images of transforming public education to serve all children.
The GCC is a major player in the post-2011 reordering of the Middle East. Despite the rise in prominence of individual Gulf states - especially Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates - and the growth of the GCC as a collective entity, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the actual mechanics of policy-making in the region. This book analyses the vital role that institutions are coming to play in shaping policy in the Gulf Arab states. The research coincides with two key developments that have given institutions new importance in the policy process: the emergence of a new generation of leaders in the Gulf, and the era of low oil prices. Both developments, along with dramatic demographic change, have compelled state and citizens to re-evaluate the nature of the social contract that binds them together. Contributors assess the changing relationship between state and citizen and evaluate the role that formal and informal institutions play in mediating such change and informing policy.The book shows how academic, social and economic institutions are responding to the increasingly complex process of decision-making, where citizens demand better services and further empowerment, and states are obliged to seek wider counsel, although wanting to retain ultimate authority. With contributions from both academics and practitioners, this book will be highly relevant for researchers and policymakers alike.
When considering inequality, one goal for educators is to enhance critical engagement to allow learners an opportunity to participate in an inquiry process that advances democracy. Service?learning pedagogy offers an opportunity to advance engaged?learning opportunities within higher education. This is particularly important given the power dynamics that are endemic within conversations about education, including the conversations around the Common Core, charter schools, and the privatization of education. Critical inquiry is central to the ethos of service?learning pedagogy, a pedagogy that is built upon community partner participation and active reflection. Within higher education, service?learning offers an important opportunity to enhance practice within the community, allowing students to engage stakeholders and youth which is particularly important given the dramatic inequalities that are endemic in today’s society.
Culture, Learning, and Technology: Research and Practice provides readers with an overview of the research on culture, learning, and technology (CLT) and introduces the concept of culture-related theoretical frameworks. In 13 chapters, the book explores the theoretical and philosophical views of CLT, presents research studies that examine various aspects of CLT, and showcases projects that employ best practices in CLT. Written for researchers and students in the fields of Educational Technology, Instructional Design, and the Learning Sciences, this volume represents a broad conceptualization of CLT and encompasses a variety of settings. As the first significant collection of research in this emerging field of study, Culture, Learning, and Technology overflows with new insights into the increasing role of technology use across all levels of education.
This text-reader brings together powerful readings that critically situate issues of education in the context of the major cultural, moral, political, economic, ecological, and spiritual crises that confront us as a nation and a global community. It provides a focus and a conceptual framework for thinking about education in light of these issues. Readers are exposed to the thinking of some of the best and most insightful social and educational commentators. Critical Social Issues in American Education: Democracy and Meaning in a Globalizing World, Third Edition, is intended to work on two levels. First, it helps readers to develop an awareness of how education is connected to the wider social structures of cultural, political, and economic life. Second, it encourages not only a critical examination of our present social reality but also a serious discussion of alternatives--of what a transformed society and educational process might look like. The editors' goal is to deliberately engage readers in connecting the work of teachers to an ethically committed, politically charged pedagogy. The assumption on which they base the text is that educators must see their work as inextricably linked to the broader conflicts, stresses, and crises of the social world--it is not otherwise possible to make sense of what is happening educationally. What happens in school, or as part of the educational experience, reflects, expresses, and mediates profound questions about the direction and nature of the society we inhabit. The text is organized thematically into five sections, which address, respectively, social justice and democracy; consumerism, culture, and public education; marginality and difference; moral and spiritual perspectives on education; and globalization and education. Each section is preceded by a brief essay that introduces the readings. This Third Edition includes many new readings and addresses issues that have more recently emerged as especially significant--such as concerns about the implications of globalization and the post 9/11 world, commercialism, violence, and the ever-increasing influence of high stakes testing. This compelling text is relevant for a wide range of courses in educational foundations, educational policy, curriculum studies, and multicultural education that address the social context of education, cultural and political change, and public policy.
Continuing his ongoing social critique, Henry Giroux now looks at the way corporate culture is encroaching on the lives of children by exploring three myths prevalent in our society: that the triumph of democracy is related to the triumph of the market; that children are unaffected by power and politics; that teaching and learning are no longer linked to improving the world. Looking at childhood beauty pageants, school shootings and the omnipresent nihilistic chic of advertising, Giroux paints a disturbing picture of the world surrounding our children. Ultimately, he turns to the work of Antonio Gramsci, Paulo Freire and Stuart Hall for lessons about how we can reinstitute a realistic childhood for our children.
