NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A groundbreaking history of 175 years of American education that brings the lessons of the past to bear on the dilemmas we face today—and brilliantly illuminates the path forward for public schools. “[A] lively account." —New York Times Book Review In The Teacher Wars, a rich, lively, and unprecedented history of public school teaching, Dana Goldstein reveals that teachers have been embattled for nearly two centuries. 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.
A comprehensive exploration of 21st Century school politics, Teachers versus the Public offers the first comparison of the education policy views of both teachers and the public as a whole, and reveals a deep, broad divide between the opinions held by citizens and those who teach in the public schools. Among the findings: - Divisions between teachers and the public are wider and deeper than differences between other groups often thought to contest school policy, such as Republicans and Democrats, the young and the old, the rich and the poor, or African Americans and whites. - The teacher-public gap is widest on such issues as merit pay, teacher tenure reform, impact of teacher unions, school vouchers, charter schools, and requirements to test students annually. - Public support for school vouchers for all students, charter schools, and parent trigger laws increases sharply when people are informed of the national ranking of student performance in their local school district. - Public willingness to give local schools high marks, its readiness to support higher spending levels, and its support for teacher unions all decline when the public learns the national ranking of their local schools. - On most issues, teacher opinion does not change in response to new information nearly as much as it does for the public as a whole. In fact, the gap between what teachers and the public think about school reform grows even wider when both teachers and the public are given more information about current school performance, current expenditure levels, and current teacher pay. The book provides the first experimental study of public and teacher opinion. Using a recently developed research strategy, the authors ask differently worded questions about the same topic to randomly chosen segments of representative groups of citizens. This approach allows them to identify the impact on public opinion of new information on issues such as student performance and school expenditures in each respondent's community. The changes in public opinion when citizens receive information about school performance are largest in districts that perform below the national average. Altogether, the results indicate that support for many school reforms would increase if common core state standards were established and implemented in such a way as to inform the public about the quality of their local schools. These and many other findings illuminate the distance between teacher opinions and those of the public at large. About the Research: In partnership with the Harvard Program on Education Policy and Governance and the journal, Education Next, authors Paul E. Peterson, Martin West and Michael Henderson surveyed nationally representative samples of teachers and the public as a whole annually between 2007 and 2013.
Now with SAGE Publishing! The bestselling Educational Administration: Concepts and Practices has been considered the standard for all educational administration textbooks for three decades. A thorough and comprehensive revision, the Seventh Edition continues to balance theory and research with practical application for prospective and practicing school administrators. While maintaining the book’s hallmark features—a friendly and approachable writing style, cutting-edge content, and compelling pedagogy—authors Frederick C. Lunenburg and Allan Ornstein present research-based practices while discussing topical issues facing school administrators today. Included with this title: The password-protected Instructor Resource Site (formally known as SAGE Edge) offers access to all text-specific resources, including a test bank and editable, chapter-specific PowerPoint® slides.
Within the broad scope of school reform lies the issue of teacher professionalism and teacher professionalization. The professionalism of teachers and the desire to either increase or decrease the professionalization of the vocation is implicated in essentially all of the reform literature. Since there is a significant split within the literature and the debate at large between those advocating greater professionalization and increased teacher autonomy and status, and those advocating more control through increased standardization and greater accountability, this study attempts to properly frame that debate to illustrate the variances in treatment and power that teachers individually and through their organizations are afforded. Ultimately then, conclusions can be reached based on the rhetoric of the reform debate and the reality of the working conditions of teachers. This book allows the reader to better understand the professionalism debate within the reform literature and thereby to better assess professionalism. Given the historical, legal, social, and political impediments to greater teacher professionalization, school reform measures that focus generally upon increasing the status and power of teachers or decreasing the status and power of teachers largely misses the point. The author argues that the present school reform debate is largely a debate over words, more than a practical plan for school improvement. The debate will be greatly advanced by widespread realization and acceptance of what we already know to be true: that different persons, places, and situations require different responses in order to maximize their potential.
This book identifies good practices in the design and implementation of evaluation and teacher incentive systems from various perspectives through formulation, stakeholder negotiation, implementation, monitoring and follow-up.
A revolution in elementary school reform!"One Million Children" offers an in-depth description of Success for All, a reading program that transforms elementary schools, especially those serving disadvantaged children. The authors offer research on the program and discuss the impact this research is having on educational policy and practice. This program is now specifically tailored to meet the requirements of the NCLB Reading First and Early Reading First funding. Highlights research-based curricular strategies in reading, writing, and language arts; one-to-one tutoring for children struggling in reading; and active family support programs. Included are: Readable, "user-friendly" descriptions and rationales for all program elements Updated research, including large-scale evaluations using state accountability measures and third-party evaluations Studies of program variations and key student subgroups Discussions of policy implications for comprehensive school reform, Title I, bilingual education, and special education
