Education Reform, Governors' Views
Author: United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
Publisher:
Published: 1999
Total Pages: 40
ISBN-13:
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U.S. Education Reform and National Security
Author: Joel I. Klein
Publisher: Council on Foreign Relations
Published: 2014-05-14
Total Pages: 120
ISBN-13: 087609521X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe United States' failure to educate its students leaves them unprepared to compete and threatens the country's ability to thrive in a global economy and maintain its leadership role. This report notes that while the United States invests more in K-12 public education than many other developed countries, its students are ill prepared to compete with their global peers. According to the results of the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), an international assessment that measures the performance of 15-year-olds in reading, mathematics, and science every three years, U.S. students rank fourteenth in reading, twenty-fifth in math, and seventeenth in science compared to students in other industrialized countries. The lack of preparedness poses threats on five national security fronts: economic growth and competitiveness, physical safety, intellectual property, U.S. global awareness, and U.S. unity and cohesion, says the report. Too many young people are not employable in an increasingly high-skilled and global economy, and too many are not qualified to join the military because they are physically unfit, have criminal records, or have an inadequate level of education. The report proposes three overarching policy recommendations: implement educational expectations and assessments in subjects vital to protecting national security; make structural changes to provide students with good choices; and, launch a "national security readiness audit" to hold schools and policymakers accountable for results and to raise public awareness.
The Teacher Wars
Author: Dana Goldstein
Publisher: Anchor
Published: 2015-08-04
Total Pages: 385
ISBN-13: 0345803620
DOWNLOAD EBOOKNEW 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.
Common Core Meets Education Reform
Author: Frederick M. Hess
Publisher: Teachers College Press
Published: 2014
Total Pages: 241
ISBN-13: 0807772844
DOWNLOAD EBOOKHow can the Common Core complement and not conflict with school improvement efforts already at work across the United States? How can it be seamlessly integrated into accountability systems, teacher preparation and development, charter schools, and educational technology? This timely volume brings together prominent scholars and policy analysts to examine the pressing issues that will mark Common Core implementation. Whether or not you agree with the standards, the Common Core is coming, and this book will help policymakers, practitioners, and other stakeholders anticipate the challenges and take steps to address them. “Common Core Meets Education Reform raises the hard questions about implementing and sustaining the Common Core State Standards so they don’t end up in the dustbin of abandoned public education reforms. These new standards can help students enormously in becoming problem solvers and critical thinkers—which is essential in the 21st century—but only if teachers become engaged in the rollout, get the support they need, and the fixation on high-stakes testing gives way to a fixation on learning.” —Randi Weingarten, president, American Federation of Teachers “Adopting the Common Core in a mad dash for federal gold, policymakers across the country blew right past critical questions about how they’d implement the thing. This volume, in stark contrast, meticulously studies the road ahead, seeking out tripwires, pitfalls, and boulders, making it a must-read for anyone who hopes to avoid total Common Core disaster.” —Neal McCluskey, associate director, Center for Educational Freedom, Cato Institute, Washington, DC “This balanced, wide-ranging, and deeply informed book is certain to guide educators and reformers through a complex time of transition for U.S. education. But it also turns out to be timely and clarifying as politicians battle over ambitious new academic standards with plenty of heat and smoke but appallingly little illumination. Thanks to the authors for turning on some lights!” —Chester E. Finn, Jr., senior fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University and president, Thomas B. Fordham Institute Frederick M. Hess is director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and serves as executive editor of Education Next. Michael Q. McShane is a research fellow in education policy studies at AEI.
Reinventing Public Education
Author: Paul Hill
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2009-02-15
Total Pages: 280
ISBN-13: 0226336530
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA heated debate is raging over our nation’s public schools and how they should be reformed, with proposals ranging from imposing national standards to replacing public education altogether with a voucher system for private schools. Combining decades of experience in education, the authors propose an innovative approach to solving the problems of our school system and find a middle ground between these extremes. Reinventing Public Education shows how contracting would radically change the way we operate our schools, while keeping them public and accessible to all, and making them better able to meet standards of achievement and equity. Using public funds, local school boards would select private providers to operate individual schools under formal contracts specifying the type and quality of instruction. In a hands-on, concrete fashion, the authors provide a thorough explanation of the pros and cons of school contracting and how it would work in practice. They show how contracting would free local school boards from operating schools so they can focus on improving educational policy; how it would allow parents to choose the best school for their children; and, finally, how it would ensure that schools are held accountable and academic standards are met. While retaining a strong public role in education, contracting enables schools to be more imaginative, adaptable, and suited to the needs of children and families. In presenting an alternative vision for America’s schools, Reinventing Public Education is too important to be ignored.
What Governors Need To Know about Education Reform
Author: National Governors' Association, Washington, DC. Center for Policy Research
Publisher:
Published: 1995
Total Pages: 124
ISBN-13: 9781558772472
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book offers 24 perspectives from educators, students, advocates, journalists, policymakers, and citizens on education reform and the importance of improving America's schools and school systems. Articles include the following: (1) "What Only a Governor Can Do" (Lamar Alexander); (2) "Governors and the National Education Goals" (Carroll A. Campbell, Jr.); (3) "The Touch of a Teacher" (Sharon M. Draper); (4) "We All Pay the Price of Children's Poverty" (Marian Wright Edelman); (5) "It Won't Fix Itself" (Chester E. Finn, Jr.); (6) "Getting Down in the Trenches" (Keith Geiger); (7) "Reforms That Failed and Reforms That Worked" (Ira Glass); (8) "Partners for Progress--Advocates for Change" (Joseph T. Gorman); (9) "Language Minority Students: Challenges and Promises" (Kenju Hakuta); (10) "Help Us Help Ourselves" (Darlene Hidalgo); (11) "A Demographer's View" (Harold L. Hodgkinson); (12) "Remembering 'The Forgotten Half'" (Harold Howe, II); (13) "Education Reform: Impertinent Issues and Pertinent Questions" (Sharon Lynn Kagan); (14) "Accepting Teachers as Experts" (Megan C. Lawson); (15) "Improving the Scientific Literacy of Teachers and Students" (Leon M. Lederman); (16) "Change in Public Schools" (Bertha O. Pendleton); (17) "Improving Education Performance" (Hilary Pennington); (18) "Making High School Count" (Lauren B. Resnick); (19) "The Challenge for New Governors: Leading Education Reform in the Late 1990s" (Richard W. Riley); (20) "Making Quality Count" (Roy Romer); (21) "The Public Looks at School Reform" (Albert Shanker); (22) "Up the Down Staircase" (Leila Sinclaire); (23) "Listening as a School Reform Strategy" (Deborah Wadsworth); and (24) "In Our Nation's Best Interest: Achieving Educational Excellence for Latinos" (Raul Yzaguirre). (LMI)
The End of Education
Author: Neil Postman
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2011-06-01
Total Pages: 225
ISBN-13: 0307797201
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn this comprehensive response to the education crisis, the author of Teaching as a Subversive Activity returns to the subject that established his reputation as one of our most insightful social critics. Postman presents useful models with which schools can restore a sense of purpose, tolerance, and a respect for learning.
Charter Schools and Accountability in Public Education
Author: Paul T. Hill
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Published: 2004-05-13
Total Pages: 154
ISBN-13: 9780815798583
DOWNLOAD EBOOKCharter schools are among the most debated and least understood phenomena in American education today. At the heart of these matters is a contested question of accountability. To survive, charter schools must make and keep promises about what students will experience and learn under their purview. However, unlike public schools, charter schools do not rely exclusively on their relationship with school districts. They must also look to parents, teachers, and donors to cooperatively establish expectations of a particular school and its mission. Aimed toward elected officials, school reform activists, and educators, this book is the result of the first national-scale study of charter school accountability. The authors researched one hundred-fifty schools and sixty authorizing agencies in Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Massachusetts, and Michigan. These states contain the majority of charter schools that have been operating for three years or more and represent the major differences in state charter school legislation. The authors include interviews from a range of participants in the field©¡from state legislators and administrators to principals, teachers, and parents. In assessing the structure of accountability as it works internally to bolster external confidence, Hill and Lake suggest the struggle of charter schools actually complements those of standards based reform. Both seek to transform public education to make schools responsible for performance, not compliance.
Law and the Shaping of Public Education, 1785-1954
Author: David B. Tyack
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
Published: 1987
Total Pages: 276
ISBN-13: 9780299108847
DOWNLOAD EBOOKUsing case studies as illustrations, this text explores the ways in which public schooling was shaped by state constitutions, by state statutes and administrative law, and by appellate decisions concerning public public education.
Letters to a Young Education Reformer
Author: Frederick M. Hess
Publisher: Harvard Education Press
Published: 2017-04-25
Total Pages: 203
ISBN-13: 1682530248
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn Letters to a Young Education Reformer, Frederick M. Hess distills knowledge from twenty-five years of working in and around school reform. Inspired by his conversations with young, would-be reformers who are passionate about transforming education, the book offers a window into Hess’s thinking about what education reform is and should be. Hess writes that “reform is more a matter of how one thinks about school improvement than a recital of programs and policy proposals.” Through his essays, he explores a range of topics, including: -Talkers and Doers -The Temptations of Bureaucracy -The Value in Talking with Those Who Disagree -Why You Shouldn’t Put Too Much Faith in Experts -Philanthropy and Its Discontents -The Problem with Passion Hess offers personal impressions as well as lessons from notable mistakes he’s observed with the hope that readers will benefit from his frustrations and realizations. As the policy landscape continues to shift, Letters to a Young Education Reformer offers valuable, timely insights to any young person passionate about transforming education—and to not-so-young reformers who are inclined to reflect on their successes and failures.
