Download or read book Getting To Know Schools In A Democracy written by Helen Simons and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-28 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1987. The central concept of the book is that of 'democratic' evaluation, one of the most influential ideas in the development of education practice in this country since professional evaluation emerged in the 1960s. The question explored, through an examination of the theory and practice of democratic evaluation, is whether it is possible to both posit and practice an approach to evaluation that provides an effective curb on the derivatisation and centralisation of information for educational decision-making. The book documents the emergence of politically conscious evaluation in this country and through two detailed cases explores the strengths and weaknesses of democratic theory in practice. Issues concerning the rights, obligations and freedoms of evaluators in the conduct and dissemination of evaluations are discussed.
Download or read book Starting a Sudbury School written by Daniel Greenberg and published by The Sudbury Valley School. This book was released on 1998 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Sudbury Valley School in Framingham, Massachusetts, is a nontraditional private school founded in 1968, based on the idea that a child is a person worthy of full respect as a human being. It aimed to create a nurturing environment in which the children themselves choose what they wish to do and schedule their time. This book is a guide summarizing the various steps necessary to found a Sudbury school, based on interviews and information gathered from 14 schools and groups throughout the United States. The first four chapters cover what kind of folks are founders, what makes them interested, how founder groups get formed, and characteristics important within the founders' group. The chapter on concrete steps to be taken includes understanding the philosophy, formalization of status, satisfying the appropriate educational authorities, money matters, site selection, and promotion. The next seven chapters address demographics, staffing a Sudbury school, where students come from, the nitty-gritty of staffing a school, developing a culture and keeping the school going, classic errors, and factors enabling success. Appendix 1 is a note from a founder who failed. Appendix 2 is a narrative history of a school that survived its first 4 years. Appendix 3 is another narrative of a school that is still going after 5 years. Appendix 4, entitled "Revolution or Reform?" presents thoughts on the character, strategy, and destiny of the original Sudbury Valley School. (TD)
Download or read book Schools of Democracy written by Clayton Sinyai and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this new political history of the labor movement, Clayton Sinyai examines the relationship between labor activism and the American democratic tradition. Sinyai shows how America's working people and union leaders debated the first questions of democratic theory--and in the process educated themselves about the rights and responsibilities of democratic citizenship. In tracing the course of the American labor movement from the founding of the Knights of Labor in the 1870s to the 1968 presidential election and its aftermath, Sinyai explores the political dimensions of collective bargaining, the structures of unions and businesses, and labor's relationships with political parties and other social movements. Schools of Democracy analyzes how labor activists wrestled with fundamental aspects of political philosophy and the development of American democracy, including majority rule versus individual liberty, the rule of law, and the qualifications required of citizens of a democracy. Offering a balanced assessment of mainstream leaders of American labor, from Samuel Gompers to George Meany, and their radical critics, including the Socialists and the Industrial Workers of the World, Sinyai provides an unusual and refreshing perspective on American labor history.
Download or read book Democracy and Education written by John Dewey and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 1916 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: . Renewal of Life by Transmission. The most notable distinction between living and inanimate things is that the former maintain themselves by renewal. A stone when struck resists. If its resistance is greater than the force of the blow struck, it remains outwardly unchanged. Otherwise, it is shattered into smaller bits. Never does the stone attempt to react in such a way that it may maintain itself against the blow, much less so as to render the blow a contributing factor to its own continued action. While the living thing may easily be crushed by superior force, it none the less tries to turn the energies which act upon it into means of its own further existence. If it cannot do so, it does not just split into smaller pieces (at least in the higher forms of life), but loses its identity as a living thing. As long as it endures, it struggles to use surrounding energies in its own behalf. It uses light, air, moisture, and the material of soil. To say that it uses them is to say that it turns them into means of its own conservation. As long as it is growing, the energy it expends in thus turning the environment to account is more than compensated for by the return it gets: it grows. Understanding the word "control" in this sense, it may be said that a living being is one that subjugates and controls for its own continued activity the energies that would otherwise use it up. Life is a self-renewing process through action upon the environment.
Download or read book Schoolhouse Burning written by Derek W. Black and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2020-09-22 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The full-scale assault on public education threatens not just public education but American democracy itself. Public education as we know it is in trouble. Derek W. Black, a legal scholar and tenacious advocate, shows how major democratic and constitutional developments are intimately linked to the expansion of public education throughout American history. Schoolhouse Burningis grounded in pathbreaking, original research into how the nation, in its infancy, built itself around public education and, following the Civil War, enshrined education as a constitutional right that forever changed the trajectory of our democracy. Public education, alongside the right to vote, was the cornerstone of the recovery of the war-torn nation. Today's current schooling trends -- the declining commitment to properly fund public education and the well-financed political agenda to expand vouchers and charter schools -- present a major assault on the democratic norms that public education represents and risk undermining one of the unique accomplishments of American society.
Download or read book Education Justice Democracy written by Danielle Allen and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-03-04 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Education is a contested topic, and not just politically. For years scholars have approached it from two different points of view: one empirical, focused on explanations for student and school success and failure, and the other philosophical, focused on education’s value and purpose within the larger society. Rarely have these separate approaches been brought into the same conversation. Education, Justice, and Democracy does just that, offering an intensive discussion by highly respected scholars across empirical and philosophical disciplines. The contributors explore how the institutions and practices of education can support democracy, by creating the conditions for equal citizenship and egalitarian empowerment, and how they can advance justice, by securing social mobility and cultivating the talents and interests of every individual. Then the authors evaluate constraints on achieving the goals of democracy and justice in the educational arena and identify strategies that we can employ to work through or around those constraints. More than a thorough compendium on a timely and contested topic, Education, Justice, and Democracy exhibits an entirely new, more deeply composed way of thinking about education as a whole and its importance to a good society.
Download or read book Getting to Know Schools in a Democracy written by Helen Simons and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 1987 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 1987. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Download or read book A Federal Right to Education written by Kimberly Jenkins Robinson and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2023-06-13 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the United States can provide equal educational opportunity to every child The United States Supreme Court closed the courthouse door to federal litigation to narrow educational funding and opportunity gaps in schools when it ruled in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez in 1973 that the Constitution does not guarantee a right to education. Rodriguez pushed reformers back to the state courts where they have had some success in securing reforms to school funding systems through education and equal protection clauses in state constitutions, but far less success in changing the basic structure of school funding in ways that would ensure access to equitable and adequate funding for schools. Given the limitations of state school funding litigation, education reformers continue to seek new avenues to remedy inequitable disparities in educational opportunity and achievement, including recently returning to federal court. This book is the first comprehensive examination of three issues regarding a federal right to education: why federal intervention is needed to close educational opportunity and achievement gaps; the constitutional and statutory legal avenues that could be employed to guarantee a federal right to education; and, the scope of what a federal right to education should guarantee. A Federal Right to Education provides a timely and thoughtful analysis of how the United States could fulfill its unmet promise to provide equal educational opportunity and the American Dream to every child, regardless of race, class, language proficiency, or neighborhood.
Download or read book Democracy s Schools written by Johann N. Neem and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2017-08 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The unknown history of American public education. At a time when Americans are debating the future of public education, Johann N. Neem tells the inspiring story of how and why Americans built a robust public school system in the decades between the Revolution and the Civil War. It’s a story in which ordinary people in towns across the country worked together to form districts and build schoolhouses and reformers sought to expand tax support and give every child a liberal education. By the time of the Civil War, most northern states had made common schools free, and many southern states were heading in the same direction. Americans made schooling a public good. Yet back then, like today, Americans disagreed over the kind of education needed, who should pay for it, and how schools should be governed. Neem explores the history and meaning of these disagreements. As Americans debated, teachers and students went about the daily work of teaching and learning. Neem takes us into the classrooms of yore so that we may experience public schools from the perspective of the people whose daily lives were most affected by them. Ultimately, Neem concludes, public schools encouraged a diverse people to see themselves as one nation. By studying the origins of America’s public schools, Neem urges us to focus on the defining features of democratic education: promoting equality, nurturing human beings, preparing citizens, and fostering civic solidarity.
Download or read book Free Schools Free People written by Ron Miller and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2002-07-18 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first historical account of the free school movement of the 1960s.
Download or read book Democracy Deliberation and Education written by Robert Asen and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2015-08-13 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The local school board is one of America’s enduring venues of lay democracy at work. In Democracy, Deliberation, and Education, Robert Asen takes the pulse of this democratic exemplar through an in-depth study of three local school boards in Wisconsin. In so doing, Asen identifies the broader democratic ideal in the most parochial of American settings. Conducted over two years across racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic lines, Asen’s research reveals as much about the possibilities and pitfalls of local democracy as it does about educational policy. From issues as old as racial integration and as contemporary as the recognition of the Gay-Straight Alliance in high schools, Democracy, Deliberation, and Education illustrates how ordinary folks build and sustain their vision for a community and its future through consequential public decision making. For all the research on school boards conducted in recent years, no other project so directly addresses school boards as deliberative policymaking bodies. Democracy, Deliberation, and Education draws from 250 school-board meetings and 31 interviews with board members and administrators to offer insight into participants’ varied understandings of their roles in the complex mechanism of governance.
Download or read book Democracy Education and the Schools written by Roger Soder and published by Jossey-Bass. This book was released on 1996 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democracy, Education, and the Schools argues that the most basic purpose of America's schools is to teach children the moral and intellectual responsibilities of living and working in a democracy. Leading scholars from the fields of education, history, political science, and anthropology explore what democracy is and what it means for preparing teachers and teaching students. They discuss critical questions about the relationship between the American democracy and a free public school system, including:* To what extent should the enculturation of the young into American democracy be a major function of the schools?* How can students best learn to understand and participate in American democracy?* What should the schools teach to convey to the young their rights and responsibilities as citizens?* What must teachers know in order to teach children their rights and responsibilities in an effective way?Roger Soder and his contributors ultimately show that there is a necessary relationship between democracy and the public school system--and privatization of the schools runs the risk of destroying the fundamental underpinnings of the American democracy.
Download or read book The Case against Education written by Bryan Caplan and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-20 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why we need to stop wasting public funds on education Despite being immensely popular—and immensely lucrative—education is grossly overrated. Now with a new afterword by Bryan Caplan, this explosive book argues that the primary function of education is not to enhance students' skills but to signal the qualities of a good employee. Learn why students hunt for easy As only to forget most of what they learn after the final exam, why decades of growing access to education have not resulted in better jobs for average workers, how employers reward workers for costly schooling they rarely ever use, and why cutting education spending is the best remedy. Romantic notions about education being "good for the soul" must yield to careful research and common sense—The Case against Education points the way.
Download or read book Will Standards Save Public Education written by Deborah Meier and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2000-04-24 with total page 110 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Somewhere. . . there is a place of sanity where education is intense and substantive. . . . It's in that place that Deborah Meier has been working all these years. Her voice conveys a life of struggle in the front lines-victories and losses, hopes and disappointments. . . . It's a voice our nation needs to hear. --Jonathan Kozol, from the Foreword Acclaimed educator Deborah Meier offers a fresh take on standardized tests. While others have criticized standards and what they measure, Meier rejects the very idea of a centralized authority that dictates how and what teachers teach. Standardization, she argues, prevents citizens-including teachers-from emerging as thoughtful, responsible adults, seriously engaged with shaping their own schools, classrooms, and communities. As a result, young people can't learn from them how to be thoughtful, responsible adults and good citizens, the primary goal of public education in a democracy. The New Democracy Forum is a series of short paperback originals exploring creative solutions to our most urgent national concerns. "A civic treasure. . . . A truly good idea, carried out with intelligence and panache." --Robert Pinsky
Download or read book Democratic Schools written by Michael W. Apple and published by Heinemann Educational Books. This book was released on 2007 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every once in a while, with the passage of time, a classic book takes on even greater relevance. The first edition of Democratic Schools was praised by legions of education professionals for showing how to create schools and classrooms with democratic values in mind; it was hailed for its clear-eyed assessment of the important role schools continue to play in promoting democracy, its traditions, and its thinking. Now an expanded and updated edition of Democratic Schools arrives, increasingly relevant in a time of inequitable accountability-based reform, standardized assessments, and cookie-cutter curricula. Michael Apple and James Beane return to challenge reform movements such as No Child Left Behind by asserting that our schools have a vital and historic connection to the continued success of our democratic way of life. Democratic Schools, Second Edition, shows in detail how educators can make a lasting difference by combining authentic, important lessons and a consistent, building- or system-wide focus on a critical and democratic education. Apple and Beane once more convene seven of America's most creative democratic educators for a powerful conversation about how to build an education that is worthy of our highest ideals. The essays that made the first edition so potent are here in their entirety, each followed by brand-new retrospective insight from their writers, educators who have proven that teachers and administrators can bring the nation's most noble values to life every day. Contributors include: Michael W. Apple James A. Beane Bob Peterson Brian D. Schultz Barbara L. Brodhagen Larry Rosenstock Adria Steinberg Deborah Meier Paul Schwarz. Grounded in a robust understanding of democracy, education, and the exigencies of our political and social systems, the second edition of Democratic Schools goes beyond updating and expanding the stories of the schools it originally chronicled. It adds new material - including a brand new chapter from Apple and Beane - that provides crucial lessons for creating and sustaining democratic schools, and that once again inspires teachers, administrators, and educational leaders to adopt ways of framing their mission that can create and sustain our democratic way of life - even in these difficult times.
Download or read book Education and Democracy in the 21st Century written by Nel Noddings and published by Teachers College Press. This book was released on 2015-04-25 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Educational philosopher Nel Noddings draws on John Dewey's foundational work to reimagine education's aims and curriculum for the 21st century. Noddings looks at education as a multi-aim enterprise in which schools must address needs in all three domains of life: home and family, occupational, and civic. She raises critical questions about the current enthusiasm for standardization, the search for 'one-best-way' solutions, and the practice of maintaining a sharp separation between the disciplines. Comprehensive in its scope, chapters examine the liberal arts curriculum, vocational education, restructuring secondary school, extracurricular activities, national and global citizenship, critical thinking, and moral education."--Back cover.
Download or read book Education Democracy and Development written by Clive Harber and published by Symposium Books Ltd. This book was released on 2012-05-14 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Education is often seen as the key agency in international development and poverty reduction. Frequently the emphasis is on the economic and social role of education in development. This book, on the other hand, is unusual in explicitly examining the political role of education in development. In particular, it sets out the theories, evidence and arguments concerning the potential and actual relationships between education and democracy and critically explores the contradictory role of formal education in both supporting and hindering democratic political development. A key theme of the book is the importance of considering the type and nature of the education actually provided and experienced – what goes on inside the ‘black box’ of education? Currently in developing countries and elsewhere this is often at odds with democratic principles but the book also provides many examples of successful democratic practice in schools in developing countries as well as discussing a detailed case study of South Africa where democratic change in education is a key aspect of the policy agenda.
