The Emancipatory Promise of Charter Schools
The Emancipatory Promise of Charter Schools

Author: Eric Rofes

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2012-02-01

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 0791484327

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This book opens up a critical conversation among progressive educators of various generations, races, perspectives, and social locations concerning one specific school reform initiative—charter schools. Eric Rofes and Lisa M. Stulberg bring together scholars who both study and actively participate in school choice reform and charge them to be "bold in their questioning and assertive in their own ambivalence" about this complex, controversial public issue and to include issues that are underexamined in the school literature, such as the impact of school choice on race and class politics and inequalities. The editors argue that charter schools are playing a powerful role in reviving participation in public education, expanding opportunities for progressive methods in public school classrooms, and generating new energy for community-based, community-controlled school initiatives. The result is a groundbreaking volume that pushes boundaries, questions assumptions, and rocks foundations of progressive thought.

Re-envisioning Education & Democracy
Re-envisioning Education & Democracy

Author: Ruthanne Kurth-Schai

Publisher: IAP

Published: 2016-04-01

Total Pages: 219

ISBN-13: 1681234254

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The future of public education and democracy is at risk. Powerful forces are eroding commitment to public schools and weakening democratic resolve. Yet even in deeply troubling times, it is possible to broaden social imagination and empower effective advocacy for systemic progressive reform. Re-envisioning Education and Democracy explores challenges and opportunities for restructuring public education to establish and sustain more broadly inclusive, deeply democratic, and effectively transforming approaches to social inquiry and civic participation. Re-envisioning Education and Democracy adopts a non-traditional format to extend social awareness and imagination. Within each chapter, one episode of an evolving strategic narrative traces the life cycle of a systemic reform initiative. This is followed by an exploratory essay that draws from theory, research, criticism, and practice to prompt consideration of focal issues. Woven through each chapter is a poetically framed meditative stream informed by varied historical and cultural conceptions of oracles. A developmental sequence of social learning strategies (exploratory democratic practices), accompanied by thematic bibliographic references, are included to model democratic teaching and learning applicable in classroom and community settings.

Proud to be Different
Proud to be Different

Author: Robert A. Fox

Publisher: R&L Education

Published: 2014-01-23

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 1475806213

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This is a book about ethnocentric niche charter schools. What are they? When did they first appear? From where did the term come? How do they differ from regular charter schools and from district-run traditional public schools? Each subject chapter was created by a team consisting of at least one educational researcher and at least one charter school practitioner. The goal is to make the book readable for everyone (policymakers, parents, teachers, older students) while providing a framework of rigor from which to view each charter school. Hence: the teams. The authors took special pains to create a book which exhibits the objectivity of the educational researcher while, at the same time, inviting the reader into each school by painting a human picture of its ethos. Each chapter contains a description of the school told by people who actually taught or learned or sent their children there.

Privatisation, Education and Social Justice
Privatisation, Education and Social Justice

Author: Geoffrey Walford

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-10-02

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 1317356608

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Privatisation in and of education is a process that takes many different forms, and is deeply controversial. While the shift in who pays is certainly an important dimension of privatisation, there have also been changes in the management, provision, and delivery of schooling. In most of the economically developed world, discussion about the privatisation of education is now several decades old, and yet new forms of privatisation are still being developed and old forms being applied to new situations. This book examines the concept and nature of privatisation, and explores the impacts of privatisation in terms of social justice. The authors extend various arguments about the processes, and provide new research and critique. Some believe that privatisation can lead to increasing social justice for the poor, while others argue the exact opposite. This volume contributes to theoretical conceptions of social justice and education as well as providing up-to-date research results. This book was originally published as a special issue of Oxford Review of Education.

Handbook of Education Policy Research
Handbook of Education Policy Research

Author: Gary Sykes

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-09-10

Total Pages: 2586

ISBN-13: 113585646X

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Co-published by Routledge for the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Educational policy continues to be of major concern. Policy debates about economic growth and national competitiveness, for example, commonly focus on the importance of human capital and a highly educated workforce. Defining the theoretical boundaries and methodological approaches of education policy research are the two primary themes of this comprehensive, AERA-sponsored Handbook. Organized into seven sections, the Handbook focuses on (1) disciplinary foundations of educational policy, (2) methodological perspectives, (3) the policy process, (4) resources, management, and organization, (5) teaching and learning policy, (6) actors and institutions, and (7) education access and differentiation. Drawing from multiple disciplines, the Handbook’s over one hundred authors address three central questions: What policy issues and questions have oriented current policy research? What research strategies and methods have proven most fruitful? And what issues, questions, and methods will drive future policy research? Topics such as early childhood education, school choice, access to higher education, teacher accountability, and testing and measurement cut across the 63 chapters in the volume. The politics surrounding these and other issues are objectively analyzed by authors and commentators. Each of the seven sections concludes with two commentaries by leading scholars in the field. The first considers the current state of policy design, and the second addresses the current state of policy research. This book is appropriate for scholars and graduate students working in the field of education policy and for the growing number of academic, government, and think-tank researchers engaged in policy research. For more information on the American Educational Research Association, please visit: http://www.aera.net/.

Schools as Radical Sanctuaries
Schools as Radical Sanctuaries

Author: René Antrop-González

Publisher: IAP

Published: 2011-11-01

Total Pages: 133

ISBN-13: 1617355925

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Large, comprehensive urban high schools were designed and constructed with the belief that they could meet the needs of all its students, academic and otherwise. By and large, however, these schools have only done a good job of sorting students for specific jobs in a society based on capitalism and White supremacy. Consequently, students schooled in these large institutions are often sorted depending on how they are situated and/or perceived by institutional agents (i.e. teachers, administrators, guidance counselors, and other staff) along racial/ethnic, class, gender, sexual orientation, and ability lines. The overall result of such structurally and culturally-based discriminatory practices has led to astronomically horrendous dropout/pushout rates among urban youth, particularly those of color who live in poverty. However, in such a sea of despair, there exist islands of hope and miracles. These islands of hope and miracles are constituted of small high schools that have become sanctuaries for their students, their families, and communities of color. Moreover, not only do these school sanctuaries exist, but they have the potential to serve as inspirations to communities that are looking to the small schools initiative as a possible solution to the widespread failure of large, comprehensive high schools to serve their needs. Although much recent small schools research discusses the benefits of smallness, very little of this research demonstrates or acknowledges the various ways in which communities have created small schools that have established the necessary conditions to make them sustainable, culturally relevant, and linked to social justice while greatly impacting the improved academic achievement of their students. Therefore, the focus of this book is to advance the school as radical sanctuary concept as described through the history, curricula, and experiences of urban youth and their teachers in two small urban high schools. This book is important for those educationists who wish to deepen their understanding of small school reform and its implications for urban education.

Alternative Schooling and School Choice
Alternative Schooling and School Choice

Author: Allan G. Osborne, Jr.

Publisher: SAGE

Published: 2012-09-06

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 1412987954

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Written and signed by experts in the field, this volume in the point/counterpoint Debating Issues in American Education reference series tackles the topic of alternative schooling and school choice, offering an illustrated overview of the topic as well as providing resources for further study.

JSL Vol 25-N1
JSL Vol 25-N1

Author: JOURNAL OF SCHOOL LEADERSHIP

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2015-02-27

Total Pages: 197

ISBN-13: 1475816847

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The Journal of School Leadership is broadening the conversation about schools and leadership and is currently accepting manuscripts. We welcome manuscripts based on cutting-edge research from a wide variety of theoretical perspectives and methodological orientations. The editorial team is particularly interested in working with international authors, authors from traditionally marginalized populations, and in work that is relevant to practitioners around the world. Growing numbers of educators and professors look to the six bimonthly issues to: deal with problems directly related to contemporary school leadership practice teach courses on school leadership and policy use as a quality reference in writing articles about school leadership and improvement.

Diverse Families, Desirable Schools
Diverse Families, Desirable Schools

Author: Mira Debs

Publisher: Harvard Education Press

Published: 2021-03-09

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 1682533093

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In Diverse Families, Desirable Schools, Mira Debs offers a richly detailed study of public Montessori schools, which make up the largest group of progressive schools in the public sector. As public Montessori schools expand rapidly as alternatives to traditional public schools, the story of these schools, Debs points out, is a microcosm of the broader conflicts around public school choice. Drawing on historical research, interviews with public Montessori educators, and ethnographic case studies, Debs explores the forces that pull intentionally diverse, progressive schools toward elitism. At the heart of Debs’s book is a thoughtful analysis of the notion of “fit” between parents and schools—an idea that is central to school choice, which is often marketed as an opportunity for parents to find the perfect fit for their kids. By exploring parents’ varied motivations in choosing these schools and observing how families experience—or fail to experience—a “good fit” after having chosen a particular school, Debs makes an original contribution to the literature on school choice and sheds light on the dilemmas entailed in maintaining diversity in progressive charter and magnet schools.