The Big Lies of School Reform

The Big Lies of School Reform

Author: Paul C. Gorski

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-03-14

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 1134607415

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The Big Lies of School Reform provides a critical interruption to the ongoing policy conversations taking place around public education in the United States today. By analyzing the discourse employed by politicians, lobbyists, think tanks, and special interest groups, the authors uncover the hidden assumptions that often underlie popular statements about school reform, and demonstrate how misinformation or half-truths have been used to reshape public education in ways that serve the interests of private enterprise. Through a thoughtful series of essays that each identify one “lie“ about popular school reform initiatives, the authors of this collection reveal the concrete impacts of these falsehoods—from directing funding to shaping curricula to defining student achievement. Luminary contributors including Deborah Meier, Jeannie Oakes, Gloria Ladson-Billings, and Jim Cummins explain how reform movements affect teachers and administrators, and how widely-accepted mistruths can hinder genuine efforts to keep public education equitable, effective, and above all, truly public. Topics covered include common core standards, tracking, alternative paths to licensure, and the disempowerment of teachers’ unions. Beyond critically examining the popular rhetoric, the contributors offer visions for improving educational access, opportunity, and outcomes for all students and educators, and for protecting public education as a common good.


Addicted to Reform

Addicted to Reform

Author: John Merrow

Publisher: The New Press

Published: 2017-08-15

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 1620972433

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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.


Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain

Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain

Author: Zaretta Hammond

Publisher: Corwin Press

Published: 2014-11-13

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 1483308022

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A bold, brain-based teaching approach to culturally responsive instruction To close the achievement gap, diverse classrooms need a proven framework for optimizing student engagement. Culturally responsive instruction has shown promise, but many teachers have struggled with its implementation—until now. In this book, Zaretta Hammond draws on cutting-edge neuroscience research to offer an innovative approach for designing and implementing brain-compatible culturally responsive instruction. The book includes: Information on how one’s culture programs the brain to process data and affects learning relationships Ten “key moves” to build students’ learner operating systems and prepare them to become independent learners Prompts for action and valuable self-reflection


The Education We Need for a Future We Can′t Predict

The Education We Need for a Future We Can′t Predict

Author: Thomas Hatch

Publisher: Corwin Press

Published: 2021-01-19

Total Pages: 181

ISBN-13: 1071838504

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Improve Schools and Transform Education In order for educational systems to change, we must reevaluate deep-seated beliefs about learning, teaching, schooling, and race that perpetuate inequitable opportunities and outcomes. Hatch, Corson, and Gerth van den Berg challenge the narrative when it comes to the "grammar of schooling"--or the conventional structures, practices, and beliefs that define educational experiences for so many children—to cast a new vision of what school could be. The book addresses current systemic problems and solutions as it: Highlights global examples of successful school change Describes strategies that improve educational opportunities and performance Explores promising approaches in developing new learning opportunities Outlines conditions for supporting wide-scale educational improvement This provocative book approaches education reform by highlighting what works, while also demonstrating what can be accomplished if we redefine conventional schools. We can make the schools we have more efficient, more effective, and more equitable, all while creating powerful opportunities to support all aspects of students’ development. "You won’t find a better book on system change in education than this one. We learn why schools don’t change; how they can improve; what it takes to change a system; and, in the final analysis, the possibilities of system change. Above all, The Education We Need renders complexity into clarity as the writing is so clear and compelling. A powerful read on a topic of utmost importance." ~Michael Fullan, Professor Emeritus, OISE/Universtiy of Toronto "I cannot recommend this book highly enough – Tom tackles long-standing and emerging educational issues in new ways with an impressive understanding of the challenging complexities, but also feasible possibilities, for ensuring excellence and equity for all students." ~Carol Campbell, Associate Professor, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto


Learning Policy

Learning Policy

Author: David K. Cohen

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2008-10-01

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 0300133340

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Education reformers and policymakers argue that improved students’ learning requires stronger academic standards, stiffer state tests, and accountability for students’ scores. Yet these efforts seem not to be succeeding in many states. The authors of this important book argue that effective state reform depends on conditions which most reforms ignore: coherence in practice as well as policy and opportunities for professional learning. The book draws on a decade’s detailed study of California’s ambitious and controversial program to improve mathematics teaching and learning. Researchers David Cohen and Heather Hill report that state policy influenced teaching and learning when there was consistency among the tests and other policy instruments; when there was consistency among the curricula and other instruments of classroom practice; and when teachers had substantial opportunities to learn the practices proposed by the policy. These conditions were met for a minority of elementary school teachers in California. When the conditions were met for teachers, students had higher scores on state math tests. The book also shows that, for most teachers, the reform ended with consistency in state policy. They did not have access to consistent instruments of classroom practice, nor did they have opportunities to learn the new practices which state policymakers proposed. In these cases, neither teachers nor their students benefited from the state reform. This book offers insights into the ways policy and practice can be linked in successful educational reform and shows why such linkage has been difficult to achieve. It offers useful advice for practitioners and policymakers seeking to improve education, and to analysts seeking to understand it.


The Science of Reading

The Science of Reading

Author: Margaret J. Snowling

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2008-04-15

Total Pages: 680

ISBN-13: 0470757639

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The Science of Reading: A Handbook brings together state-of-the-art reviews of reading research from leading names in the field, to create a highly authoritative, multidisciplinary overview of contemporary knowledge about reading and related skills. Provides comprehensive coverage of the subject, including theoretical approaches, reading processes, stage models of reading, cross-linguistic studies of reading, reading difficulties, the biology of reading, and reading instruction Divided into seven sections:Word Recognition Processes in Reading; Learning to Read and Spell; Reading Comprehension; Reading in Different Languages; Disorders of Reading and Spelling; Biological Bases of Reading; Teaching Reading Edited by well-respected senior figures in the field


What I Learned In School

What I Learned In School

Author: James P. Comer

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2009-09-04

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 0470541660

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From the Winner of the Grawemeyer Award in Education in 2007 "In the world of education reform, where silver-bullet ideas, ideologies, and intellectual fashion clamor for influence, James Comer's thinking has long been a sea of calm, balanced, and humane wisdom focused on the needs of the whole person. Reading Comer you see the incompleteness of so many other approaches to reform, as well as learn an integrated approach to making schools work. And now, here it all is in a single book. If you want to see how schools can actually work, as opposed to affiliate with a prior belief about how they should work, this is a must read." —Claude Steele,professor, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University "The best introduction?professional and personal—to the remarkable world of James Comer: physician-educator, par excellence." —Howard Gardner, Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, Massachusetts "James Comer is a rare constellation among social scientists: a great intellect, a keen analyst, a creative problem-solver and a man of enormous empathy. His writings are required reading for anyone interested in education reform or improving the odds for poor children." —Geoffrey Canada, president and CEO, Harlem Children's Zone


Law and School Reform

Law and School Reform

Author: Jay Philip Heubert

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 1999-01-01

Total Pages: 452

ISBN-13: 9780300082968

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An examination of six of the most controversial school reform initiatives in the US: school desegregation; school finance reform; special education; education of immigrant children; integration of youth services; and enforcable performance mandates.


Reform as Learning

Reform as Learning

Author: Lea Ann Hubbard

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-10-18

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 1135925488

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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.