Download or read book Engaging Schools written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2003-12-21 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When it comes to motivating people to learn, disadvantaged urban adolescents are usually perceived as a hard sell. Yet, in a recent MetLife survey, 89 percent of the low-income students claimed "I really want to learn" applied to them. What is it about the school environmentâ€"pedagogy, curriculum, climate, organizationâ€"that encourages or discourages engagement in school activities? How do peers, family, and community affect adolescents' attitudes towards learning? Engaging Schools reviews current research on what shapes adolescents' school engagement and motivation to learnâ€"including new findings on students' sense of belongingâ€"and looks at ways these can be used to reform urban high schools. This book discusses what changes hold the greatest promise for increasing students' motivation to learn in these schools. It looks at various approaches to reform through different methods of instruction and assessment, adjustments in school size, vocational teaching, and other key areas. Examples of innovative schools, classrooms, and out-of-school programs that have proved successful in getting high school kids excited about learning are also included.
Download or read book Student Voice in School Reform written by Dana L. Mitra and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2014-03-14 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: High schools continue to be places that isolate, alienate, and disengage students. But what would happen if students were viewed as part of the solution in schools rather than part of the problem? This book examines the emergence of "student voice" at one high school in the San Francisco Bay area where educators went straight to the source and asked the students to help. Struggling, like many high schools, with how to improve student outcomes, educators at Whitman High School decided to invite students to participate in the reform process. Dana L. Mitra describes the evolution of student voice at Whitman, showing that the students enthusiastically created partnerships with teachers and administrators, engaged in meaningful discussion about why so many failed or dropped out, and partnered with teachers and principals to improve learning for themselves and their peers. In documenting the difference that student voice made, this book helps expand ideas of distributed leadership, professional learning communities, and collaboration. The book also contributes much needed research on what student voice initiatives look like in practice and provides powerful evidence of ways in which young people can increase their sense of agency and their sense of belonging in school.
Download or read book Addicted to Reform written by John Merrow and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2017-08-15 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book So Much Reform So Little Change written by Charles M. Payne and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This frank and courageous book explores the persistence of failure in today's urban schools. At its heart is the argument that most education policy discussions are disconnected from the daily realities of urban schools, especially those in poor and beleaguered neighborhoods. Charles M. Payne argues that we have failed to account fully for the weakness of the social infrastructure and the often dysfunctional organizational environments of urban schools and school systems. The result is that liberals and conservatives alike have spent a great deal of time pursuing questions of limited practical value in the effort to improve city schools. Payne carefully delineates these stubborn and intertwined sources of failure in urban school reform efforts of the past two decades. Yet while his book is unsparing in its exploration of the troubled recent history of urban school reform, Payne also describes himself as "guardedly optimistic." He describes how, in the last decade, we have developed real insights into the roots of school failure, and into how some individual schools manage to improve. He also examines recent progress in understanding how particular urban districts have established successful reforms on a larger scale. Drawing on a striking array of sources--from the recent history of various urban school systems, to the growing sophistication of education research, to his own experience as a teacher, scholar, and participant in reform efforts--Payne paints a vivid and unmistakably realistic portrait of urban schools and reforms of the past few decades. So Much Reform, So Little Change will be required reading for everyone interested in the plight--and the future--of urban schools.
Download or read book Reforming Schools written by Kimberly Kinsler and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2004-11-01 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Reforming Schools" will transform the study of school reform, development and improvement. It not only provides an overview of research findings, professional and political issues and policy developments and their history; it also relates such thinking to practice through a rich and multi-faceted case study of school reform. Particular emphasis is given to urban schooling, with a candid look at what can be learnt not only from successful school reforms but also from failure. The authors provide questions and exercises throughout to help readers interact with case-study material. "Reforming Schools" enables the readers to experience what it is like to work in the field in a way that no other book on school reform does.
Download or read book Left Back written by Diane Ravitch and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2001-07-31 with total page 566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this authoritative history of American education reforms in this century, a distinguished scholar makes a compelling case that our schools fail when they consistently ignore their central purpose--teaching knowledge.
Download or read book Class and Schools written by Richard Rothstein and published by Teachers College Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary public policy assumes that the achievement gap between black and white students could be closed if only schools would do a better job. According to Richard Rothstein, "Closing the gaps between lower-class and middle-class children requires social and economic reform as well as school improvement. Unfortunately, the trend is to shift most of the burden to schools, as if they alone can eradicate poverty and inequality." In this book, Rothstein points the way toward social and economic reforms that would give all children a more equal chance to succeed in school. This book features: a summary of numerous studies linking school achievement to health care quality, nutrition, childrearing styles, housing stability, parental economic security, and more ; aA look at erroneous and misleading data that underlie commonplace claims that some schools "beat the demographic odds and therefore any school can close the achievement gap if only it adopted proper practices." ; and an analysis of how the over-emphasis of standardized tests in federal law obscures the true achievement gap and makes narrowing it more difficult.
Download or read book Real Learning Real Work written by Adria Steinberg and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Download or read book Real Education written by Charles Murray and published by Crown Forum. This book was released on 2009-08-25 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The most talked-about education book this semester." —New York Times From the author of Coming Apart, and based on a series of controversial Wall Street Journal op-eds, this landmark manifesto gives voice to what everyone knows about talent, ability, and intelligence but no one wants to admit. With four truths as his framework, Charles Murray, the bestselling coauthor of The Bell Curve, sweeps away the hypocrisy, wishful thinking, and upside-down priorities that grip America’s educational establishment. •Ability varies. Children differ in their ability to learn, but America’s educational system does its best to ignore this. •Half of the children are below average. Many children cannot learn more than rudimentary reading and math. Yet decades of policies have required schools to divert resources to unattainable goals. •Too many people are going to college. Only a fraction of students struggling to get a degree can profit from education at the college level. •America’s future depends on how we educate the academically gifted. It is time to start thinking about the kind of education needed by the young people who will run the country.
Download or read book Making the Grade written by Tony Wagner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-12-16 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a guide for a long-overdue public dialogue about why and how we need to reinvent our nation's schools. How has the world changed for our children; what do all students need to know in light of these changes; how do we hold students and schools accountable for results; what do good schools look like; and what must leaders do to create more of these schools? These are some of the questions that drive this book. The answers emerging to these questions may surprise many. The most successful public schools of the 21st century look a lot more like our 19th century village schools than our current factory model of schooling. This book describes these "new village schools" that have been created in the last decade and suggests that they are a prototype for the schools of the future.
Download or read book High Schools on a Human Scale written by Thomas Toch and published by . This book was released on 2003-05-15 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher Description
Download or read book America s Public Schools written by William J. Reese and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2011-04-01 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this update to his landmark publication, William J. Reese offers a comprehensive examination of the trends, theories, and practices that have shaped America’s public schools over the last two centuries. Reese approaches this subject along two main lines of inquiry—education as a means for reforming society and ongoing reform within the schools themselves. He explores the roots of contemporary educational policies and places modern battles over curriculum, pedagogy, race relations, and academic standards in historical perspective. A thoroughly revised epilogue outlines the significant challenges to public school education within the last five years. Reese analyzes the shortcomings of “No Child Left Behind” and the continued disjuncture between actual school performance and the expectations of government officials. He discusses the intrusive role of corporations, economic models for enticing better teacher performance, the continued impact of conservatism, and the growth of home schooling and charter schools. Informed by a breadth of historical scholarship and based squarely on primary sources, this volume remains the standard text for future teachers and scholars of education.
Download or read book High School Biology Today and Tomorrow written by National Research Council and published by National Academies. This book was released on 1989-02-01 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biology is where many of science's most exciting and relevant advances are taking place. Yet, many students leave school without having learned basic biology principles, and few are excited enough to continue in the sciences. Why is biology education failing? How can reform be accomplished? This book presents information and expert views from curriculum developers, teachers, and others, offering suggestions about major issues in biology education: what should we teach in biology and how should it be taught? How can we measure results? How should teachers be educated and certified? What obstacles are blocking reform?
Download or read book Big City School Reforms written by Michael Fullan and published by Teachers College Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Big cities have mostly failed in their efforts to reform public schools. This book shows why, and offers a framework for achieving future success. Fullan and Boyle, internationally renowned thinkers on school change, demonstrate that while the educational challenges of big cities can be overwhelming, they are not insurmountable. They identify six essential "push" and "pull" actions that can enable big school systems to improve student achievement. Leaders need to push to challenge the staus quo, convey a high sense of urgency, and have the courage needed to intervene. But they need to also pull together to create a commonly owned strategy, develop a profesisonal power of capital, and attend to sustainability. Examining three major cities, New York, Toronto, and London, through the decade of 2002 - 2012. this book weaves case studies with careful analysis and recommendations to hone in on which policies and strategies generate quality implementation that in turn raise the bar for all students and reduce the gap for the disadvantaged. Big-City School Reforms offers invaluable advice to those leading the next phase of school reform in cities around the world.
Download or read book Education Reforms in Ghana written by G. M. Osei and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The decision to undertake this research was a pragmatic response to the debates, which followed the introduction of a new innovative secondary education system in Ghana. This book investigates the innovation during its formation since 1974, inception from 1987 and, in respect of field research, aspects of its operation from 1998 to 2002.The primary aim of the research was to monitor the implementation processes in as many aspects as possible. This was done in order to see what benefits might be gained, and what lessons in order to continue the innovation. In order to conduct this assessment, it was necessary to examine critically the characteristics of each element of the reform and their implications, using a variety of research methods to generate relevant data. This approach yielded a substantial amount of original evidence on the dynamics of educational change. While this evaluation specifically helps to deepen understanding of the said innovation, it also makes a contribution to the literature on educational innovation in developing countries.
Download or read book Troublemaker written by Chester E. Finn, Jr. and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2008-02-04 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few people have been more involved in shaping postwar U.S. education reforms--or dissented from some of them more effectively--than Chester Finn. Assistant secretary of education under Ronald Reagan, and an aide to politicians as different as Richard Nixon and Daniel Moynihan, Finn has also been a high school teacher, an education professor, a prolific and best-selling writer, a think-tank analyst, a nonprofit foundation president, and both a Democrat and Republican. This remarkably varied career has given him an extraordinary insider's view of every significant school-reform movement of the past four decades, from racial integration to No Child Left Behind. In Troublemaker, Finn has written a vivid history of postwar education reform that is also the personal story of one of the foremost players--and mavericks--in American education. Finn tells how his experiences have shaped his changing views of the three major strands of postwar school reform: standards-driven, choice-driven, and profession-driven. Of the three, Finn now believes that a combination of choice and standards has the greatest potential, but he favors this approach more on pragmatic than ideological grounds, arguing that parents should be given more options at the same time that schools are allowed more flexibility and held to higher performance norms. He also explains why education reforms of all kinds are so difficult to implement, and he draws valuable lessons from their frequent failure. Clear-eyed yet optimistic, Finn ultimately gives grounds for hope that the best of today's bold initiatives--from charter schools to technology to makeovers of school-system governance--are finally beginning to make a difference.
Download or read book After the Education Wars written by Andrea Gabor and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offering a fresh take on the endless battles over school reform, in Beyond the Education Wars journalist, bestselling author, and business professor Andrea Gabor argues that despite being championed by the likes of Bill Gates and Eli Broad, the market-based changes and carrot-and-stick incentives informing today's school reforms are out of sync with the nurturing culture that good schools foster - and at odds with the best practices of thriving twenty-first-century companies as well. A welcome exception to the doom-and-gloom canon of education reform, Beyond the Education Wars makes clear that what's needed is not more grand ideas, but practical ways to grow the great ones schools already have.
