Download or read book The World We Created at Hamilton High written by Gerald Grant and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1988 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this wonderfully evocative picture of an urban American high school and its successes and setbacks over the past thirty-five years, Gerald Grant works out a unique perspective on what makes a good school--one that asserts moral and intellectual authority without becoming rigidly doctrinaire or losing the precious gains in equality of opportunity that have been won at great cost. Grant describes what happened inside Hamilton High (a real school, although its identity is disguised), and how different worlds evolved as the school's authority system was transformed. After the opening of Hamilton High in the buoyant and self-confident 1950s, the school plunged into a period of violence and radical deconstruction in the late sixties. Grant charts the rise of student power in the seventies, followed by new transformations of the school in the last decade occasioned in part by the mainstreaming of disabled students and the arrival of Asian immigrants. Things got very bad before they got better, but they did get better. The school went from white power to black power to genuine racial equality. Its average test scores declined and then improved. Although test-score means did not return to their former levels, the gap in achievement between the social classes decreased. Violence was replaced by a sense of relative safety and security. Yet this book is not just a case study. In the second half the author presents a general analysis of American education. He contrasts the world of Hamilton High with other possible worlds, including those at three schools (one public and two private) that exhibit a strong positive ethos. He looks at the way the moral and intellectual worlds have been sundered in many contemporary public schools and asks whether they can be put back together again. The book is grounded in a creative methodology that includes research by students at Hamilton High, whom Grant trained to analyze life in their school. Later he shared this research with teachers as a means of opening a dialogue about what changes they wanted to make. Grant's analysis leads to recommendations for two essential reforms, and in an epilogue the teachers who read this hook also tell us what they make of it and offer their own conclusions. Their challenging final words will spur the thinking of educators, policymakers, scholars, parents, and all those who are concerned about our schools today.
Download or read book Race and Education 1954 2007 written by Raymond Wolters and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Retracing Supreme Court decisions on race and education beginning with the Brown v. Board of Education decision, Wolters distinguishes between desegregation and integration and shows how devastating educational and cultural consequences resulted from subsequent Supreme Court decisions that conflated the two and led to racial balancing policies that have backfired"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book Teaching in America written by Gerald Grant and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grant and Murray describe the evolution taking place in the teaching profession over the last 100 years, and then focus on recent experiments that have given teachers the power to shape their schools and mentor young educators.
Download or read book Discipleship or Pilgrimage written by Tony W. Johnson and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1995-01-01 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This interpretive history and critique of educational philosophy offers a reexamination and reconstruction of John Dewey's vision.
Download or read book Moral Education and Character written by Ivor Pritchard and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Social Economics of Poverty written by Christopher B. Barrett and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-10-03 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A unique analysis of the moral and social dimensions of microeconomic behaviour in developing countries, this book calls into question standard notions of rationality and many of the assumptions of neo-classical economics, and shows how these are inappropriate in communities with widespread disparity in incomes. This book will prove to be essential for students studying development economics.
Download or read book Differentiating School Leadership written by Daniel L. Duke and published by Corwin Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The proposed book maintains that schools face distinct types of challenges requiring distinct types of leadership. There are not, however, an infinite number of types of challenges, at least not for practical purposes. The book focuses on four sets of challenges that any principal might confront, depending on local circumstances. A principal can address each set of challenges successfully, but only by recognizing the distinctive nature of the challenges and adjusting his/her approach accordingly. This recognition of the need to make adjustments in leadership is referred to as differentiated leadership.The idea of differentiated leadership has its roots in contingency theory, situational leadership theory, and path-goal theory (Northouse, 2007). That the concept of leadership requires differentiation is further evidenced by the variety of adjectives used to modify the term instructional leadership, moral leadership, distributed leadership, servant leadership, normative leadership, and so on. In recent years, educators have been attracted to the notion of differentiated instruction. They have recognized that one form of instruction is unlikely to address the needs of all students. The approach begins with actual situations confronting contemporary principals and then analyzes the kinds of leadership functions most likely to handle the situations effectively. The book opens with an introduction to the idea of differentiated leadership and why it is important for principals to understand how different schools may face very distinct sets of challenges. Trying to apply a one-size-fits-all type of leadership can have disastrous results. The introduction also contains an overview of organizational diagnostics and the kinds of data needed to assess the particular kinds of challenges presented by a particular school at a particular point in time.
Download or read book The Collapse of the Common Good written by Philip K. Howard and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In pursuit of fairness at any cost, we have created a society paralyzed by legal fear: Doctors are paranoid and principals powerless. Little league coaches, scared of liability, stop volunteering. Schools and hospitals start to crumble. The common good fades, replaced by a cacophony of people claiming their “individual rights.” By turns funny and infuriating, this startling book dissects the dogmas of fairness that allow self-interested individuals to bully the rest of society. Philip K. Howard explains how, trying to honor individual rights, we removed the authority needed to maintain a free society. Teachers don’t even have authority to maintain order in the classroom. With no one in charge, the safe course is to avoid any possible risk. Seesaws and diving boards are removed. Ridiculous warning labels litter the American landscape: “Caution: Contents Are Hot.” Striving to protect “individual rights,” we ended up losing much of our freedom. When almost any decision that someone disagrees with is a possible lawsuit, no one knows where he stands. A huge monument to the unknown plaintiff looms high above America, casting a dark shadow across our daily choices. Today, in the land of free speech, you’d have to be a fool to say what you really think. This provocative book not only attacks the sacred cows of political correctness, but takes a breathtakingly bold stand on how to reinvigorate our common good. Only by restoring personal authority can schools begin to work again. Only by judges and legislatures taking back the authority to decide who can sue for what can doctors feel comfortable using their best judgment and American be liberated to say and do what they know is right. Lucid, honest, and hard hitting, The Collapse of the Common Good shows how Americans can bring back freedom and common sense to a society disabled by lawyers and legal fear.
Download or read book The Schoolhouse Gate written by Justin Driver and published by Pantheon. This book was released on 2018-09-04 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Washington Post Notable Book of the Year A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice An award-winning constitutional law scholar at the University of Chicago (who clerked for Judge Merrick B. Garland, Justice Stephen Breyer, and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor) gives us an engaging and alarming book that aims to vindicate the rights of public school students, which have so often been undermined by the Supreme Court in recent decades. Judicial decisions assessing the constitutional rights of students in the nation’s public schools have consistently generated bitter controversy. From racial segregation to unauthorized immigration, from antiwar protests to compulsory flag salutes, from economic inequality to teacher-led prayer—these are but a few of the cultural anxieties dividing American society that the Supreme Court has addressed in elementary and secondary schools. The Schoolhouse Gate gives a fresh, lucid, and provocative account of the historic legal battles waged over education and illuminates contemporary disputes that continue to fracture the nation. Justin Driver maintains that since the 1970s the Supreme Court has regularly abdicated its responsibility for protecting students’ constitutional rights and risked transforming public schools into Constitution-free zones. Students deriving lessons about citizenship from the Court’s decisions in recent decades would conclude that the following actions taken by educators pass constitutional muster: inflicting severe corporal punishment on students without any procedural protections, searching students and their possessions without probable cause in bids to uncover violations of school rules, random drug testing of students who are not suspected of wrongdoing, and suppressing student speech for the viewpoint it espouses. Taking their cue from such decisions, lower courts have upheld a wide array of dubious school actions, including degrading strip searches, repressive dress codes, draconian “zero tolerance” disciplinary policies, and severe restrictions on off-campus speech. Driver surveys this legal landscape with eloquence, highlights the gripping personal narratives behind landmark clashes, and warns that the repeated failure to honor students’ rights threatens our basic constitutional order. This magisterial book will make it impossible to view American schools—or America itself—in the same way again.
Download or read book From Family Collapse to America s Decline written by Mitch Pearlstein and published by R&L Education. This book was released on 2011-09-16 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Very high rates of family fragmentation in the United States are subtracting from what very large numbers of students are learning in school and forever holding them back in many other ways. This in turn is damaging the country economically by making us less primed for innovation while also making millions of Americans less competitive in an increasingly demanding worldwide marketplace. All of which is leading – and can only lead – to deepening class divisions in a nation which has never viewed itself or operated in such splintered ways. What can be done to reverse these severely destructive trends, starting with reducing the enormous number of children forced to grow up with only one parent living under the same roof? What educational reforms are most likely to help under such demanding circumstances? And as dangerous as the situation is, why do leaders in education and other fields persist, for both understandable and less-worthy reasons, in dancing around profoundly important questions of family breakdown to the point of contortion and ultimately failure?
Download or read book The Lost Art of Drawing the Line written by Philip K. Howard and published by Random House. This book was released on 2001-06-12 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Lost Art of Drawing the Line will appall and irritate — and entertain — readers every bit as much as Philip Howard’s first book. Why is it that no one can fix the schools? Why do ordinary judgements fill doctors with fear? Why are seesaws disappearing from playgrounds? Why has a wave of selfish people overtaken America? In our effort to protect the individual against unfair decisions, we have created a society where no one’s in charge of anything. Silly lawsuits strike fear in our hearts because judges don’t think they have the authority to dismiss them. Inner-city schools are filthy and mired in a cycle of incompetence because no one has the authority to decide who’s doing the job and who’s not. When no one’s in charge, we all lose our link to the common good. When principals lack authority over schools, of what use are the parents’ views? When no one can judge right and wrong, why not be as selfish as you can be? Philip Howard traces our well-meaning effort to protect individuals through the twentieth century, with the unintended result that we have lost much of our individual freedom. Buttressed with scores of stories that make you want to collar the next self-centered jerk or hapless bureaucrat, The Lost Art of Drawing the Line demonstrates once again that Philip Howard is “trying to drive us all sane.”
Download or read book American Education written by William John Bennett and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 70 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Shaping the Culture of Schooling written by Cheryl Taylor Desmond and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 1996-07-03 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 1998 American Educational Studies Association Critics' Choice Titles Focusing on the cultural history of the origins of outcome-based education (OBE), this book investigates the social and economic culture of Johnson City, New York, schools. OBE has often been proclaimed the salvation for ailing American schools and has spread to thousands of school districts throughout the United States. The reform has also been the lightning rod for fierce challenges from community members who oppose OBE's dismantling of the bell-shaped curve and its promotion of secular humanism. The author uncovers the messy business of school change and its deep roots in the values of the local community and economy. Grounding the story historically and theoretically, Desmond analyzes the reshaping of the Johnson City schools from a production mill for blue collar workers to a development center of technologically minded, middle-class, well-educated citizens. She argues that the heart of successful, synergistic school reform lies in the consensus that children have unlimited learning capacity and a long-term moral leadership that is committed to caring, reciprocal relationships of power.
Download or read book Making Good Citizens written by Diane Ravitch and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: divAmericans have reason to be concerned about the condition of American democracy at the start of the twenty-first century. Surveys show that civic participation has declined, cynicism about government has increased, and young people have a weak grasp of the principles that underlie our constitutional system. Crucial questions must be answered: How serious is the situation? What role do schools play in shaping civic behavior? Are current education reform initiatives—such as multiculturalism and school choice—counterproductive? How can schools contribute toward reversing the trend? This volume brings together leading thinkers from a variety of disciplines to probe the relation between a healthy democracy and education. Their original and provocative discussions cut across a range of important topics: the cultivation of democratic values, the formation of social capital in schools and communities, political conflict in a pluralist society, the place of religion in public life, the enduring problems of racial inequality. Gathering together the most current research and thinking on education and civil society, this is a book that deserves the attention of everyone who cares about the quality and future of American democracy./DIV
Download or read book The American Impasse written by Michael Minkenberg and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 2017-03-15 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The end of communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the USSR produced strikingly little enthusiasm in the United States. The political energy absorbed for forty years by American-Soviet relations left America no triumphant, but reflective, turning inward with a general sense of national decline. American politics and policy have met the rapid changes in the new global order with alarming slowness and inflexibility. In this book, fourteen leading political scientists ask two basic questions. What effect did the cold war have on American institutions and politics? And how will American politics evolve now? The first section of the volume focuses on institutions-the presidency, Congress, federalism. The second explores politics-ideologies, public opinion, and the American party system. The third section tackles important policy areas: the budget, social issues, education, foreign policy, trade, and immigration. Contributors: Joel D. Aberbach; Tobias Dürr; Andreas Falke; Adrienne Héritier; Peter Lösche; Theodore J. Lowi; Heinz-Dieter Meyer; Demetrios G. Papademetriou; Paul E. Peterson; Bert A. Rockman; James Thurber; David B. Walker; and the editors.
Download or read book They Always Test Us on Things We Haven t Read written by Kathleen Waldron Gershman and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 2004 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This eminently readable book, poignant and humorous, quickly draws the reader into the scholastic world of high school students. Based on classroom observation and over 100 interviews, this study is a fascinating look at the challenges in getting middle-class adolescents to engage with their high school education. They Always Test Us On Things We Haven't Read offers a refreshing perspective on the mainstream American high school experience. It sends a powerful message to those interested in making curriculum more interesting and engaging. The book will appeal largely to teachers, but the clarity and depth of the text also make it valuable for anyone interested in school reform.
Download or read book An Ethnographic Study of a Special Education School written by Frederick L. Patrick and published by Universal-Publishers. This book was released on 1997-09 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The purpose of this study was to describe, using the tools of ethnography and qualitative research, selected events in the history of a public special education school and its school culture. The year of the study, 1994-1995, the school served 125 students with cerebral palsy and other disabilities affecting some or all of their physical, sensory, and cognitive abilities. Study participants included faculty and staff, former students, parents, school administrators, and others identified with the school and in the Nashville community during the 1994-1995 school year. In-depth interviews with study participants, on-site observations, semi-structured interviews with informants, document, and archival research were used to create five collective tales based on stories of those who knew the school best between 1975 and 1995. This is a story of one special education school's founding, success, and survival. In recent years, the local school system closed 5 of 7 special education schools, its own K-12 school enrollment declined, and rumors it too would soon close. The story presents a saga of success and survival as the school faced a new social construction of schooling called the "inclusive schools movement." By applying institutional theory to the study of organizations, this study offers an explanation of how one special education school survived the inclusion movement by adapting to societal demands and by maintaining certain environmental elements considered important to school survival. This study provides a number of stories which serve as evidence of how the continuum of services for students with disabilities continues to work as inclusion efforts in some public schools often go awry. This study investigated (1) events beginning with the school's founding in 1975, (2) school success and survival using institutional theory and organizational analysis, and (3) the school as a model day school in special education's continuum or Cascade of Services. At the time of this study, the inclusive schools movement was believed to be responsible for declining enrollments at Harris-Hillman, increasing numbers of students with disabilities being placed in other public and private schools, and rumors the school would soon be closed. Study results offer a collection of stories from one educational setting over two decades. Discussion of these stories is followed by study conclusions that provide support for special education schools and a continuum of service and placement options for students in need of special settings with appropriate curricular content and instruction. It is a unique story of a special education school and its history over 20 years between 1975 and 1995.
