Philosophy and theory of education Books

Book SynopsisCurriculum Windows Redux: What Curriculum Theorists Can Teach Us about Schools and Society Today is an effort by students of curriculum studies, along with their professor, to interpret and understand curriculum texts and theorists in contemporary terms.The authors explore how key books/authors from the curriculum field illuminate new possibilities forward for us as scholar educators today: How might the theories, practices, and ideas wrapped up in these curriculum texts still resonate with us, allow us to see backward in time and forward in time – all at the same time? How might these figurative windows of insight, thought, ideas, fantasy, and fancy make us think differently about curriculum, teaching, learning, students, education, leadership, and schools? Further, how might they help us see more clearly, even perhaps put us on a path to correct the mistakes and missteps of intervening decades and of today?The authors complete the Curriculum Windows series with this 7th book, Redux, providing a scholarly view of 33 books that should have been treated in the first 6 books based on the decades of the 1950s-2000s. The book's Foreword is by renowned curriculum theorist William H. Schubert.

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Book SynopsisCurriculum Windows Redux: What Curriculum Theorists Can Teach Us about Schools and Society Today is an effort by students of curriculum studies, along with their professor, to interpret and understand curriculum texts and theorists in contemporary terms.The authors explore how key books/authors from the curriculum field illuminate new possibilities forward for us as scholar educators today: How might the theories, practices, and ideas wrapped up in these curriculum texts still resonate with us, allow us to see backward in time and forward in time – all at the same time? How might these figurative windows of insight, thought, ideas, fantasy, and fancy make us think differently about curriculum, teaching, learning, students, education, leadership, and schools? Further, how might they help us see more clearly, even perhaps put us on a path to correct the mistakes and missteps of intervening decades and of today?The authors complete the Curriculum Windows series with this 7th book, Redux, providing a scholarly view of 33 books that should have been treated in the first 6 books based on the decades of the 1950s-2000s. The book's Foreword is by renowned curriculum theorist William H. Schubert.

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Book SynopsisThe global networking promoted by technology, globalization and migration that are occurring at a large scale, requires school systems that develop in the students new types of skills, based on the ability to understand the world and its problems and instill a sense of responsibility and cooperation to enhance the resolution of the great problems of mankind.Rethinking education is essential in a global, transcultural, changing and communicated world. Throughout the book Rethinking Education for a Global, Transcultural World is argued and analyzed how to build relationships between the school and society, and the possibilities of transcending the barriers in different national contexts: Chile, Israel, Mexico, Morocco, Poland, and Spain.The main goal we want to achieve with the contributions made in the book is to know how education systems and schools in different countries respond to the social changes caused by globalization, migration and new communication technologies.The authors are professors of different scientific disciplines and different faiths, cultures and points of view, living the realities described in the chapters and thinking from these realities how to improve and how should be the education in a global, challenging and ever-changing world. We stress the importance of this book and its implications in the education of children and youth and in the preparation of teachers. For this reason, this is a book designed for teachers of primary and secondary schools, parents, principals, supervisors, university teachers who prepare school teachers, university students and those who want to know and think about education in a global and intercultural world and new forms of communication to face learning, whether at local or at world level.The mission of all is continue building education, and to facilitate this work in this book are presented contributions and recommendations of professionals around the world that will allow the reader to know, analyze, understand and appreciate the importance of education to prepare students to function with open and critical thinking in a global world. The chapters do not offer a panacea, but offer many ideas on how, through education, prepare citizens for a global and transcultural society.

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Book SynopsisThe global networking promoted by technology, globalization and migration that are occurring at a large scale, requires school systems that develop in the students new types of skills, based on the ability to understand the world and its problems and instill a sense of responsibility and cooperation to enhance the resolution of the great problems of mankind.Rethinking education is essential in a global, transcultural, changing and communicated world. Throughout the book Rethinking Education for a Global, Transcultural World is argued and analyzed how to build relationships between the school and society, and the possibilities of transcending the barriers in different national contexts: Chile, Israel, Mexico, Morocco, Poland, and Spain.The main goal we want to achieve with the contributions made in the book is to know how education systems and schools in different countries respond to the social changes caused by globalization, migration and new communication technologies.The authors are professors of different scientific disciplines and different faiths, cultures and points of view, living the realities described in the chapters and thinking from these realities how to improve and how should be the education in a global, challenging and ever-changing world. We stress the importance of this book and its implications in the education of children and youth and in the preparation of teachers. For this reason, this is a book designed for teachers of primary and secondary schools, parents, principals, supervisors, university teachers who prepare school teachers, university students and those who want to know and think about education in a global and intercultural world and new forms of communication to face learning, whether at local or at world level.The mission of all is continue building education, and to facilitate this work in this book are presented contributions and recommendations of professionals around the world that will allow the reader to know, analyze, understand and appreciate the importance of education to prepare students to function with open and critical thinking in a global world. The chapters do not offer a panacea, but offer many ideas on how, through education, prepare citizens for a global and transcultural society.

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Book SynopsisThis book is based upon research conducted both before and after a visit to Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia in March, 2003. During this time period United States (US) bombs fell on Baghdad, Iraq. An invasion of US and British ground forces in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities followed the initial bombing. Events during the onset of the war became a catalyst for gaining insight on how the US invasion of Iraq impacted the lives of teachers and their students in Malaysia. In June and July of 2003, the researcher returned to interview educators in Sabah, Malaysia. Follow-up electronic communications with educators were conducted through the remainder of 2003.After the research in Malaysia, the researcher conducted studies of educators' perspectives in Mexico, Canada, and the US. The key objective of the investigations in all four countries was to uncover attitudes and pedagogical comparisons of educators and their students regarding US policies, including war and counter-terrorism policies. Studies in the US took place in close proximity to the US/Mexico international border. Studies were analyzed through the lenses of place-based pedagogy, border pedagogy, and issues-centered approaches that provided baseline information for transnational comparisons and cross-comparative case studies. In this manner, the researcher contemplated the intersection of a critical pedagogy of place and border pedagogy. From these studies emerged new understandings and the development of a critical border dialogism . This critical border dialogism is based on following principles: heteroglossia, meliorism, critical cosmopolitanism, nepantla, dialogism feminism, and pragmatic hope. By its nature critical border dialogism engages us in multidirectional discourses that allow us to tackle issues and work toward enduring conflict resolutions. When applied in classroom settings critical border dialogism moves educators, students, and cultural workers in the direction of a critical border praxis.

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Book SynopsisThis book is based upon research conducted both before and after a visit to Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia in March, 2003. During this time period United States (US) bombs fell on Baghdad, Iraq. An invasion of US and British ground forces in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities followed the initial bombing. Events during the onset of the war became a catalyst for gaining insight on how the US invasion of Iraq impacted the lives of teachers and their students in Malaysia. In June and July of 2003, the researcher returned to interview educators in Sabah, Malaysia. Follow-up electronic communications with educators were conducted through the remainder of 2003.After the research in Malaysia, the researcher conducted studies of educators' perspectives in Mexico, Canada, and the US. The key objective of the investigations in all four countries was to uncover attitudes and pedagogical comparisons of educators and their students regarding US policies, including war and counter-terrorism policies. Studies in the US took place in close proximity to the US/Mexico international border. Studies were analyzed through the lenses of place-based pedagogy, border pedagogy, and issues-centered approaches that provided baseline information for transnational comparisons and cross-comparative case studies. In this manner, the researcher contemplated the intersection of a critical pedagogy of place and border pedagogy. From these studies emerged new understandings and the development of a critical border dialogism . This critical border dialogism is based on following principles: heteroglossia, meliorism, critical cosmopolitanism, nepantla, dialogism feminism, and pragmatic hope. By its nature critical border dialogism engages us in multidirectional discourses that allow us to tackle issues and work toward enduring conflict resolutions. When applied in classroom settings critical border dialogism moves educators, students, and cultural workers in the direction of a critical border praxis.

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Book SynopsisThere is a story going around about the public schools and the people who teach in them—a story about how awful our nation’s teachers are and why we should blame teachers for the poor state of our public schools. But is the story about teachers right or fair? Why do so many people point fingers at teachers and seem to resent them so much?Blame Teachers: The Emotional Reasons for Educational Reform examines why many people blame teachers for what they understand to be the poor state of our schools. Blame comes easily to many people when they read about poor student performance and how “protected” teachers are by teachers’ unions and tenure policies. And with blame comes resentment, and with resentment comes demands for all kinds of educational reform—calls for more standardized testing, merit pay, charter schools, and all the rest. And we expect teachers to like and accept all the reforms being proposed.Conceiving educational reform out of blame and resentment aimed at teachers does no good for teachers, students, or schools. Blame Teachers outlines many of the strange and unacceptable assumptions about teaching and the purposes of education contained in these educational reforms. Intended for teachers, teacher education students, policymakers and the larger public, Blame Teachers suggests much better and more productive conversations we can have with teachers—conversations much more likely to improve teaching and learning in classrooms. The book argues for conversations with teachers that don’t begin or end with blame and resentment.

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Book SynopsisThere is a story going around about the public schools and the people who teach in them—a story about how awful our nation’s teachers are and why we should blame teachers for the poor state of our public schools. But is the story about teachers right or fair? Why do so many people point fingers at teachers and seem to resent them so much?Blame Teachers: The Emotional Reasons for Educational Reform examines why many people blame teachers for what they understand to be the poor state of our schools. Blame comes easily to many people when they read about poor student performance and how “protected” teachers are by teachers’ unions and tenure policies. And with blame comes resentment, and with resentment comes demands for all kinds of educational reform—calls for more standardized testing, merit pay, charter schools, and all the rest. And we expect teachers to like and accept all the reforms being proposed.Conceiving educational reform out of blame and resentment aimed at teachers does no good for teachers, students, or schools. Blame Teachers outlines many of the strange and unacceptable assumptions about teaching and the purposes of education contained in these educational reforms. Intended for teachers, teacher education students, policymakers and the larger public, Blame Teachers suggests much better and more productive conversations we can have with teachers—conversations much more likely to improve teaching and learning in classrooms. The book argues for conversations with teachers that don’t begin or end with blame and resentment.

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Book SynopsisEnough. Private interests, politicians, reformers, and pundits have had their chance, and enough is enough. Teachers have been pushed around and pushed to the edge, and the time for tolerating the failed system of our public education policies is over. It's time to drag the standardized testing commercial complex out of our schools, kicking and screaming if need be, and take back our schools for our kids. The revolution has already begun.We must understand the etiology of the American public school's seeming inability to meaningfully and holistically teach every child if we are to have any hope of changing that school for the better. We must wrestle with the philosophical, sociological, and psychological roots of our misperception and mistreatment of children in order to change the way we understand our students. We must also understand the history of ""reform"" in American education in order to avoid repeating failed experiments. Once we do this, we can dismantle the traditional structures of the American Public School deliberately and thoughtfully, and capitalize upon the intense zeitgeist of the movement against corporatized standardized multiple choice testing, in order to truly revolutionize our schools.Over five sequential sections, ""Insurrection"" addresses educational philosophy, the system of schools, the social issue of misunderstanding children, replacement structures for those that are incompatible with understandings corrected in the first three sections, and a possible manner in which current school employees can lend their efforts to the revolution called for by Sir Ken Robinson in his 2010 TED Talk, which served as the impetus for the work.

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Book SynopsisEnough. Private interests, politicians, reformers, and pundits have had their chance, and enough is enough. Teachers have been pushed around and pushed to the edge, and the time for tolerating the failed system of our public education policies is over. It's time to drag the standardized testing commercial complex out of our schools, kicking and screaming if need be, and take back our schools for our kids. The revolution has already begun.We must understand the etiology of the American public school's seeming inability to meaningfully and holistically teach every child if we are to have any hope of changing that school for the better. We must wrestle with the philosophical, sociological, and psychological roots of our misperception and mistreatment of children in order to change the way we understand our students. We must also understand the history of ""reform"" in American education in order to avoid repeating failed experiments. Once we do this, we can dismantle the traditional structures of the American Public School deliberately and thoughtfully, and capitalize upon the intense zeitgeist of the movement against corporatized standardized multiple choice testing, in order to truly revolutionize our schools.Over five sequential sections, ""Insurrection"" addresses educational philosophy, the system of schools, the social issue of misunderstanding children, replacement structures for those that are incompatible with understandings corrected in the first three sections, and a possible manner in which current school employees can lend their efforts to the revolution called for by Sir Ken Robinson in his 2010 TED Talk, which served as the impetus for the work.

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Book SynopsisAdemás disponible en inglés: Rethinking Education for a Global, Transcultural WorldRepensar la educación es esencial en un mundo, global, transcultural, cambiante y comunicado. A través del libro Repensar la Educación para un Mundo global, Transcultural se argumenta y se analiza cómo construir relaciones entre la escuela y la sociedad, y las posibilidades de trascender las barreras en diferentes contextos nacionales: Chile, Israel, México, Marruecos, Polonia y España.El principal objetivo que queremos conseguir con las aportaciones realizadas en el libro, es conocer cómo los Sistemas Educativos y las escuelas de diferentes países responden a los cambios sociales causados por la globalización, las migraciones y las tecnologías de la comunicación.Los autores son profesores de diferentes disciplinas científicas y de diferentes religiones, culturas y puntos de vista que viven las realidades descritas en los capítulos y piensan desde estas realidades cómo mejorar y cómo debe ser la educación en un mundo global, desafiante y cambiante. Hacemos hincapié en la importancia de este libro y sus implicaciones en la educación de niños y jóvenes, y en la formación de los maestros. Por esta razón, este es un libro diseñado para profesores de escuelas primarias y secundarias, padres, directores, supervisores, profesores universitarios que forman a los maestros, para los estudiantes de la universidad y para todos los que quieren saber y pensar acerca de la educación en un mundo global e intercultural y las nuevas formas de comunicación para hacer frente al aprendizaje, ya sea a nivel local o a nivel mundial.La misión de todos es continuar construyendo la educación, y para ello en este libro se presentan las contribuciones y recomendaciones de los profesionales de diferentes partes del mundo que permitirán al lector conocer, analizar, comprender y apreciar la importancia de la educación para preparar a los estudiantes en un pensamiento abierto y crítico en un mundo global. Los capítulos no ofrecen una panacea, pero ofrecen muchas ideas sobre cómo, a través de la educación, preparar a los ciudadanos para una sociedad global y transcultural.

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Book SynopsisAdemás disponible en inglés: Rethinking Education for a Global, Transcultural WorldRepensar la educación es esencial en un mundo, global, transcultural, cambiante y comunicado. A través del libro Repensar la Educación para un Mundo global, Transcultural se argumenta y se analiza cómo construir relaciones entre la escuela y la sociedad, y las posibilidades de trascender las barreras en diferentes contextos nacionales: Chile, Israel, México, Marruecos, Polonia y España.El principal objetivo que queremos conseguir con las aportaciones realizadas en el libro, es conocer cómo los Sistemas Educativos y las escuelas de diferentes países responden a los cambios sociales causados por la globalización, las migraciones y las tecnologías de la comunicación.Los autores son profesores de diferentes disciplinas científicas y de diferentes religiones, culturas y puntos de vista que viven las realidades descritas en los capítulos y piensan desde estas realidades cómo mejorar y cómo debe ser la educación en un mundo global, desafiante y cambiante. Hacemos hincapié en la importancia de este libro y sus implicaciones en la educación de niños y jóvenes, y en la formación de los maestros. Por esta razón, este es un libro diseñado para profesores de escuelas primarias y secundarias, padres, directores, supervisores, profesores universitarios que forman a los maestros, para los estudiantes de la universidad y para todos los que quieren saber y pensar acerca de la educación en un mundo global e intercultural y las nuevas formas de comunicación para hacer frente al aprendizaje, ya sea a nivel local o a nivel mundial.La misión de todos es continuar construyendo la educación, y para ello en este libro se presentan las contribuciones y recomendaciones de los profesionales de diferentes partes del mundo que permitirán al lector conocer, analizar, comprender y apreciar la importancia de la educación para preparar a los estudiantes en un pensamiento abierto y crítico en un mundo global. Los capítulos no ofrecen una panacea, pero ofrecen muchas ideas sobre cómo, a través de la educación, preparar a los ciudadanos para una sociedad global y transcultural.

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Book SynopsisDemocracy can mean a range of concepts, covering everything from freedoms, rights, elections, governments, processes, philosophies and a panoply of abstract and concrete notions that can be mediated by power, positionality, culture, time and space. Democracy can also be translated into brute force, hegemony, docility, compliance and conformity, as in wars will be decided on the basis of the needs of elites, or major decisions about spending finite resources will be the domain of the few over the masses, or people will be divided along the lines of race, ethnicity, class, religion, etc. because it is advantageous for maintaining exploitative political systems in place to do so. Often, these frameworks are developed and reified based on the notion that elections give the right to societies, or segments of societies, to install regimes, institutions and operating systems that are then supposedly legitimated and rendered infinitely just because formal power resides in the hands of those dominating forces.This book is interested in advancing a critical analysis of the hegemonic paradigm described above, one that seeks higher levels of political literacy and consciousness, and one that makes the connection with education. What does education have to do with democracy? How does education shape, influence, impinge on, impact, negate, facilitate and/or change the context, contours and realities of democracy? How can we teach for and about democracy to alter and transform the essence of what democracy is, and, importantly, what it should be?This book advances the notion of decency in relation to democracy, and is underpinned by an analysis of meaningful, critically-engaged education. Is it enough to be kind, nice, generous and hopeful when we can also see signs of rampant, entrenched and debilitating racism, sexism, poverty, violence, injustice, war and other social inequalities? If democracy is intended to be a legitimating force for good, how does education inform democracy? What types of knowledge, experience, analysis and being are helpful to bring about newer, more meaningful and socially just forms of democracy?Throughout some twenty chapters from a range of international scholars, this book includes three sections: Constructing Meanings for Democracy and Decency; Justice for All as Praxis; and Social Justice in Action for Democracy, Decency, and Diversity: International Perspectives. The underlying thread that is interwoven through the texts is a critical reappraisal of normative, hegemonic interpretations of how power is infused into the educational realm, and, importantly, how democracy can be re-situated and re-formulated so as to more meaningfully engage society and education.

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Book SynopsisDemocracy can mean a range of concepts, covering everything from freedoms, rights, elections, governments, processes, philosophies and a panoply of abstract and concrete notions that can be mediated by power, positionality, culture, time and space. Democracy can also be translated into brute force, hegemony, docility, compliance and conformity, as in wars will be decided on the basis of the needs of elites, or major decisions about spending finite resources will be the domain of the few over the masses, or people will be divided along the lines of race, ethnicity, class, religion, etc. because it is advantageous for maintaining exploitative political systems in place to do so. Often, these frameworks are developed and reified based on the notion that elections give the right to societies, or segments of societies, to install regimes, institutions and operating systems that are then supposedly legitimated and rendered infinitely just because formal power resides in the hands of those dominating forces.This book is interested in advancing a critical analysis of the hegemonic paradigm described above, one that seeks higher levels of political literacy and consciousness, and one that makes the connection with education. What does education have to do with democracy? How does education shape, influence, impinge on, impact, negate, facilitate and/or change the context, contours and realities of democracy? How can we teach for and about democracy to alter and transform the essence of what democracy is, and, importantly, what it should be?This book advances the notion of decency in relation to democracy, and is underpinned by an analysis of meaningful, critically-engaged education. Is it enough to be kind, nice, generous and hopeful when we can also see signs of rampant, entrenched and debilitating racism, sexism, poverty, violence, injustice, war and other social inequalities? If democracy is intended to be a legitimating force for good, how does education inform democracy? What types of knowledge, experience, analysis and being are helpful to bring about newer, more meaningful and socially just forms of democracy?Throughout some twenty chapters from a range of international scholars, this book includes three sections: Constructing Meanings for Democracy and Decency; Justice for All as Praxis; and Social Justice in Action for Democracy, Decency, and Diversity: International Perspectives. The underlying thread that is interwoven through the texts is a critical reappraisal of normative, hegemonic interpretations of how power is infused into the educational realm, and, importantly, how democracy can be re-situated and re-formulated so as to more meaningfully engage society and education.

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Book SynopsisIn From Socrates to Summerhill and Beyond: Towards a Philosophy of Education for Personal Responsibility, Ronald Swartz offers an evolving development of fallible, liberal democratic, self?governing educational philosophies. He suggests that educators can benefit from having dialogues about questions such as these: 1). Are there some authorities that can be consistently relied upon to tell school members what they should do and learn while they are in school? 2.) How should the imagination of social theorists be both used and checked in the development and implementation of innovative educational reforms? 3.) How can teachers in personal responsibility schools help their students learn? These questions are representative of problems that Swartz raises in his book.Swartz identifies four educational programs as personal responsibility schools. These are Little Commonwealth (Homer Lane); Summerhill (A.S.Neill); Orphans Home (Janusz Korczak) and Sudbury Valley School (Daniel Greenberg). Swartz then suggests that these learning environments create social institutions that are liberal, democratic, and self?governing and therefore endorse the policy of personal responsibility. This policy states: All school members, students included, are fallible authorities who should be personally responsible for determining their own school activities and many policies that govern a school. Schools which incorporate this policy can interchangeably be referred to as personal responsibility, self?governing, or Summerhill style schools.In providing an historical and philosophical understanding of Summerhill style schools, Swartz suggests that these educational alternatives have intellectual roots in the ideas associated with Socrates as portrayed in Plato’s Apology. Specifically, in personal responsibility schools teachers are not viewed as authorities who attempt to transmit wisdom to their students. Rather, self?governing schools follow the Socratic tradition which claims that teachers can be viewed as fallible authorities who attempt to engage students in dialogues about questions of interest to students. The interpretation of Plato’s works used by Swartz can be found in Karl Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies. Swartz has also been significantly influenced by the educational writings of Bertrand Russell and Paul Goodman. Goodman’s Compulsory Miseducation makes it clear that schools which follow in the tradition of Summerhill compete with the educational programs that are an outgrowth of John Dewey’s writings.In summary, Swartz’s book aims to engage educators in dialogues that will lead to improved educational theories and practices.

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Book SynopsisIn From Socrates to Summerhill and Beyond: Towards a Philosophy of Education for Personal Responsibility, Ronald Swartz offers an evolving development of fallible, liberal democratic, self?governing educational philosophies. He suggests that educators can benefit from having dialogues about questions such as these: 1). Are there some authorities that can be consistently relied upon to tell school members what they should do and learn while they are in school? 2.) How should the imagination of social theorists be both used and checked in the development and implementation of innovative educational reforms? 3.) How can teachers in personal responsibility schools help their students learn? These questions are representative of problems that Swartz raises in his book.Swartz identifies four educational programs as personal responsibility schools. These are Little Commonwealth (Homer Lane); Summerhill (A.S.Neill); Orphans Home (Janusz Korczak) and Sudbury Valley School (Daniel Greenberg). Swartz then suggests that these learning environments create social institutions that are liberal, democratic, and self?governing and therefore endorse the policy of personal responsibility. This policy states: All school members, students included, are fallible authorities who should be personally responsible for determining their own school activities and many policies that govern a school. Schools which incorporate this policy can interchangeably be referred to as personal responsibility, self?governing, or Summerhill style schools.In providing an historical and philosophical understanding of Summerhill style schools, Swartz suggests that these educational alternatives have intellectual roots in the ideas associated with Socrates as portrayed in Plato’s Apology. Specifically, in personal responsibility schools teachers are not viewed as authorities who attempt to transmit wisdom to their students. Rather, self?governing schools follow the Socratic tradition which claims that teachers can be viewed as fallible authorities who attempt to engage students in dialogues about questions of interest to students. The interpretation of Plato’s works used by Swartz can be found in Karl Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies. Swartz has also been significantly influenced by the educational writings of Bertrand Russell and Paul Goodman. Goodman’s Compulsory Miseducation makes it clear that schools which follow in the tradition of Summerhill compete with the educational programs that are an outgrowth of John Dewey’s writings.In summary, Swartz’s book aims to engage educators in dialogues that will lead to improved educational theories and practices.

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Book SynopsisInformed by years of research and on-the-ground reporting, Schools That Succeed is Karin Chenoweth’s most inspiring and compelling book yet—an essential read for educators who seek to break the stubborn connection between academic achievement and socioeconomic status.Chenoweth draws on her decade-long journey into neighborhood schools where low-income students and students of color are learning at unexpectedly high levels to reveal a key ingredient to their success: in one way or another, their leaders have confronted the traditional ways that schools are organized and adopted new systems, all focused on improvement. In vivid profiles of once-embattled schools, Chenoweth shows how school leaders doggedly and patiently reorganized internal systems in order to prioritize teaching and learning, resulting in improved outcomes that in many cases exceeded statewide averages.From how they use time to how they use money, schools that succeed combine a deep belief in the capacity of their students to achieve with deliberate systems focused on student needs. As a result, they create vibrant places “where teachers want to teach and students want to learn.”Trade Review“In Schools that Succeed, Chenoweth focuses on the structure of schools that connect people, systems, and processes for the purpose of addressing the needs of students, especially those from minority groups and from low-income and working families. Educators will find this work both enlightening and inspiring.” - Freeman A. Hrabowski, III, president, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

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Book SynopsisPrincipled Resistance: How Teachers Resolve Ethical Dilemmas brings together senior scholars and activist teachers to explore the concept of resistance as a necessary response to mandates that conflict with their understanding of quality teaching. The book provides vivid examples of the pedagogical, professional, and democratic principles undergirding resistance, as well as the distinct perspective of each of its contributors: teachers who reflect on their acts of principled resistance; teacher educators who study teachers and support their professional growth; and historians who demonstrate that a tradition of teachers’ principled resistance has had a significant impact on American society, not only on schools and teaching. They also show the steps teachers take, in their reasoning and in their actions, to resist policies and mandates they are expected to enact.This volume offers a critical and unique resource for teacher educators who are preparing prospective teachers to navigate the contentious terrain of education politics, teachers who are interested in leading change, and others interested in educational ethics.Table of Contents Table of Contents INTRODUCTION Doris A. Santoro and Lizabeth Cain Part 1 Pedagogical Principles 1. THE CHICAGO TEACHERS UNION’S REJECTION OF THE COMMON CORE A Case History of Teacher Resistance Michelle Strater Gunderson 2. PRINCIPLED RESISTANCE TO SYSTEM MANDATES AMONG EARLY-CAREER TEACHERS Clive Beck, Clare Kosnik, Judy Caulfield, and Yiola Cleovoulou 3. RESISTING NO-EXCUSES CULTURE AS A BLACK MALE TEACHER Valuing Critical Thinking and Relationships over Compliance Randy R. Miller, Sr. 4. WORKING THE SYSTEM Teacher Resistance in a Context of Compliance Alisun Thompson and Lucinda Pease-Alvarez Part 2 Professional Principles 5. THE UNITED TEACHERS OF NEW ORLEANS STRIKE OF 1990 Emma Long 6. PROFESSIONAL PREPARATION Principled Responses to an Ethos of Privatization in Teacher Education Margaret Smith Crocco< 7. BUILDING FOUNDATIONS FOR PRINCIPLED RESISTANCE Tom Meyer, Christine McCartney, and Jacqueline Hesse 8. TEACHER RESISTANCE Personal or Professional? Jocelyn Weeda Part 3 Democratic Principles 9. DEDICATED, BELOVED, AND DISMISSED Teachers as Public Intellectuals in New York City Public Schools of the 1950s Lizabeth Cain 10. STAKING A CLAIM IN MAD RIVER Advancing Civil Rights for Queer America Karen Graves and Margaret A. Nash 11. TEACHING AND LEADING AS A PRINCIPLED ACT How Ethel T. Overby Built Foot Soldiers of the Civil Rights Movement, 1910–1957 Adah Ward Randolph and Dwan V. Robinson 12. TWEETING TO TRANSGRESS Teachers on Twitter as Principled Resisters Jessica Hochman, Doris A. Santoro, and Stephen Houser 13. NAVIGATING DILEMMAS IN A DEMOCRACY Lizabeth Cain and Doris A. Santoro Notes About the Editors About the Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisIn Absent from School, Gottfried and Hutt offer a comprehensive and timely resource for educators and policy makers seeking to understand the scope, impact, and causes of chronic student absenteeism. The editors present a series of studies by leading researchers from a variety of disciplines that address which students are missing school and why, what roles schools themselves play in contributing to or offsetting patterns of absenteeism, and ways to assess student attendance for purposes of school accountability. The contributors examine school-based initiatives that focus on a range of issues, including transportation, student health, discipline policies, and protections for immigrant students, as well as interventions intended to improve student attendance. Only in the past two or three years has chronic absenteeism become the focus of attention among policy makers, civil rights advocates, and educators. Absent from School provides the first critical, systematic look at research that can inform and guide those who are working to ensure that every child is in school and learning every day.Table of Contents Table of Contents Foreword Elaine Allensworth and Robert Balfanz Introduction Michael A. Gottfried and Ethan L. Hutt PART I Measuring Absenteeism 1. Roll Call Describing Chronically Absent Students, the Schools They Attend, and Implications for Accountability Heather Hough 2.Variation in Chronic Absenteeism The Role of Children, Classrooms, and Schools Kevin A. Gee 3.Attending to Attendance Why Data Quality and Modeling Assumptions Matter When Using Attendance as an Outcome Shaun M. Dougherty and Joshua Childs 4.The Distributional Impacts of Student Absences on Academic Achievement Seth Gershenson, Jessica Rae McBean, and Long Tran PART II Policies, Programs, and Practices 5. Reinforcing Student Attendance Shifting Mind-Sets and Implementing Data-Driven Improvement Strategies During School Transitions Stacy B. Ehrlich and David W. Johnson 6.Schools as Sanctuaries? Examining the Relationship Between Immigration Enforcement and Absenteeism Rates for Immigrant-Origin Children Carolyn Sattin-Bajaj and Jacob Kirksey 7.Can School Buses Drive Down (Chronic) Absenteeism? Sarah A. Cordes, Michele Leardo, Christopher Rick, and Amy Ellen Schwartz 8.The Ills of Absenteeism Can School-Based Health Centers Provide the Cure? Jennifer Graves, Sarit Weisburd, and Christopher Salem 9.Tackling Truancy Findings from a State-Level Policy Banning Suspensions for Truancy Kaitlin Anderson, Anna J. Egalite, and Jonathan N. Mills PART III Interventions 10.Ready . . . Set . . . Text! Reducing School Absenteeism Through Parent-School Two-Way Text Messaging Ken Smythe-Leistico and Lindsay C. Page 11.Keeping Families Front and Center Leveraging Our Best Ally for Ninth-Grade Attendance Martha Abele Mac Iver and Steven B. Sheldon 12. Intervention Design Choices and Evaluation Lessons from Multisite Field Trials on Reducing Absenteeism Rekha Balu 13. Conclusion Ethan L. Hutt and Michael A. Gottfried Afterword Todd Rogers and Johannes Demarzi Notes Acknowledgments About the Editors About the Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisIn Where Teachers Thrive, Susan Moore Johnson outlines a powerful argument about the importance of the school as an organization in nurturing high‐quality teaching. Based on case studies conducted in fourteen high-poverty, urban schools, the book examines why some schools failed to make progress, while others achieved remarkable results. It explores the challenges that administrators and teachers faced and describes what worked, what didn't work, and why. Johnson draws on vivid portraits of schools to highlight an array of school‐based systems and practices that support teachers' professional growth and effectiveness. These include a rich and interactive hiring process; team‐based curriculum planning and assessment; and informative feedback and ongoing professional learning. Critical to all of these is the role of the principal as an essential agent in a school's success. Although these elements may vary from school to school, Johnson argues that together these systems provide a comprehensive, mutually reinforcing set of well-orchestrated strategies that can help schools deliver results that exceed the sum of teachers' individual efforts. Since 2000, policy makers and education officials have diligently sought to improve schools by improving the quality of individual teachers. However, even if those teachers are skilled and committed, the schools where they work are all too often disjointed, dysfunctional organizations that serve no one well. Where Teachers Thrive explains clearly how educators within a school can join together to adopt systems of practice that ensure growth and success by all teachers and their students.

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Book SynopsisDrawing on decades of research, policy, and practice, Jennifer A. O'Day and Marshall S. Smith show how strategies for pursuing educational quality and equal outcomes for all students can be linked, presenting an ambitious idea of the future of American education and a comprehensive theory of change for enacting that vision. The authors argue that systemic causes require systemic solutions. Analyzing the failures of past efforts to address and remedy systemic inequality, O'Day and Smith maintain that our current standards-based policy framework needs to be connected to a continuous improvement approach to build on and scale up successes and to address gaps in outcomes. They emphasize the value of focusing on a small set of high-leverage issues that are particularly salient for underserved students, and they call for deeper coordination between schools and community-based organizations to mobilize a coherent response to in-school and out-of-school inequities. The authors outline a change strategy that incorporates a balance of pressure and support from three sources: government and administrative policy, professional accountability and networking, and collective engagement of parents and other stakeholders. The authors combine discussion of research with examples of promising practices and progress in school systems across the country, and offer opportunities for readers to begin and sustain improvement efforts.

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Book SynopsisVocational Education and Training for a Global Economy investigates the greatly varying ways in which four countries-Singapore, Switzerland, China, and the United States-prepare young people for the twenty-first-century workplace. The book looks first at the highly successful vocational education and training (VET) systems in Singapore and Switzerland, describing them in revealing detail and accounting for the assumptions and social arrangements that account for their unique features. It then turns to the two largest-and arguably the most dynamic-nations in the world, China and the United States, and examines the differing conditions, goals, and arrangements that have affected their respective programs for preparing their citizens for present and future work. At a time when a highly competitive global economy is prompting profound changes in the workplace and in the skills required for professional success, all countries feel a heightened sense of urgency in finding ways to guide and prepare young people for work. As this book makes clear, however, the resulting preparatory systems within these four countries differ dramatically-and for a wide range of economic, cultural, and political reasons. A detailed and incisive look at VET systems in the United States and abroad, Vocational Education and Training for a Global Economy will be indispensable reading for all who are concerned with preparing youth for today’s competitive and demanding modern workplace.

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Book SynopsisCulturally and Linguistically Responsive Education provides a much-needed blueprint for how school leaders can leverage the power of collaborative learning to create more culturally and linguistically responsive schools. The book describes an innovative network of twenty preK-8 schools located across the United States striving to address the barriers to inclusive education. Based on an ongoing initiative begun in 2012 by a team at Boston College, the book shows how these schools transformed to better serve their diverse, multilingual communities by adopting a two-way immersion model with the help of local faculty and other experts in bilingual education serving as mentors. Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Education describes the founding of the network, the theory of action that drove its design, and the compelling evidence linking the networked approach to subsequent growth in student achievement and enrollment at the schools. Chapters written by the network's mentors examine in detail six practices that were key to driving the schools' transformation, including critical conversations, fidelity assurances to the two-way immersion model, coordinated professional development, teacher reflection cycles, family engagement, and distributive leadership. The editors draw key lessons from this network for other leaders and argue for increased attention to culturally and linguistically responsive schooling that builds on students' sociocultural competence, cultivates an appreciation and proficiency in multiple languages, and promotes high levels of academic achievement.

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Book SynopsisIn Rethinking Recess, sociologist Rebecca A. London argues that recess has been overlooked as an essential part of the elementary school experience, with major implications for how well schools serve all students equitably and responsively. Given its potential to support students' social and emotional learning and physical activity, London says, recess should be designed intentionally, with attention to safety, health, and engagement. The book shows how school leaders and other educators-even those with budget and space constraints-can make the most of recess time by using a variety of proven strategies, and also provides examples of schools that have put these strategies to use. Rethinking Recess highlights the need for equitable access to recess and supplies alternatives to the common practice of withholding recess for misbehavior or as a punishment, along with other policy recommendations, assessment tools, and resources that practitioners can use to redesign recess. When unstructured or poorly planned, recess can be a major source of disciplinary incidents and office referrals, eating into instructional time, adding stress, and affecting perceptions of school climate for students and staff, among other negative outcomes. Conversely, taking organizational steps to create a well‐designed recess can engage students, improve school climate, build valuable social and emotional skills, reduce behavioral incidents, and promote healthy lifestyles. Meticulously researched and filled with practical and often easy to implement changes for recess policies and practice, this book provides a critical resource for school leaders and others looking to make every aspect of school a positive one for students.

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Book SynopsisSchooling for Critical Consciousness addresses how schools can help youth of color resist the negative effects of racial injustice and challenge its root causes. Scott Seider and Daren Graves draw on a four-year longitudinal study examining how five different mission-driven urban high schools foster critical consciousness among their students. The book presents vivid portraits of the schools as they implement various programs and practices, and traces the impact of these approaches on the students themselves. The authors make a unique contribution to the existing scholarship on critical consciousness and culturally responsive teaching by comparing the roles of different schooling models in fostering various dimensions of critical consciousness and identifying specific programming and practices that contributed to this work. Through their research with more than 300 hundred students of color, Seider and Graves aim to help educators strengthen their capacity to support young people like these in learning to analyze, navigate, and challenge racial injustice.Schooling for Critical Consciousness provides school leaders and educators with specific programming and practices they can incorporate into their own school contexts to support the critical consciousness development of the youth they serve.

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Book SynopsisIn A Single Garment, Genevieve Siegel-Hawley explores the leadership, policies, and practices that support contemporary school integration. Drawing on a wide range of sources, as well as her own experience as a parent, former student, and teacher, Siegel‐Hawley provides a richly layered account of four Richmond, Virginia schools, each committed to building successful, diverse communities as a foundation for a just, democratic society. Siegel-Hawley explores a range of internal and external considerations for promoting integration through portraits of four schools: a preschool, a suburban elementary school, an urban middle school, and a regional high school. She takes an in-depth look at how students are assigned to classrooms, how families are engaged, and who gets access to what curricula and which teachers. Siegel-Hawley also delves into what it takes to bring students together in the first place, and how policies and practices regarding student assignment and school choice, transportation, and outreach can work to support or undermine integration. Timely and compelling, A Single Garment, makes a powerful argument in favor of local, intentional integration efforts at a critical moment. The book illuminates a way forward for school leaders, policy makers, and others interested in pursuing equitable education in an age of shifting demographics and divisive politics.

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Book SynopsisCareer pathways (CP) has gained prominence as a strategy to ensure that high school students and displaced workers acquire the college and career readiness skills needed in a fast-changing, globalized economy. In an effort to ensure future success for CP, Stephen F. Hamilton examines the School-to-Work (STW) movement of the 1980s and 1990s and explores how the lessons learned from that campaign's demise can pave the way for a CP program that endures and serves the most deserving. Hamilton recounts the history and trajectory of STW and CP and outlines the components of a career pathways program that can stand the test of time. He recommends a plan that includes work-based learning, dual enrollment opportunities, coordination at the K-12 and post-secondary levels, private and public funding, and above all, the creation of a CP infrastructure or "system" rather than a loose collection of programs that characterized the earlier STW initiative. Guided by the latest research, Career Pathway for All Youth features vignettes and interviews with educators, leaders, and career-to-work industry veterans, including High-Tech High, YouthBuild, Linked Learning, CareerWise Colorado, and Apprenticeship Carolina. Showcasing CP's many guises and possibilities, the book should help educators learn from the past and secure a more equitable future.

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Book SynopsisSteps to Schoolwide Success makes a powerful case for the implementation of a school reform that bridges academic and social-emotional learning systems in high schools. Based on a multi-year project in Broward County, Florida, the book describes how the biggest difference in academic success from school to school was not in instructional practice but in the systematic attention to personal relationships between adults and students. In the higher performing schools, educators made deliberate efforts to engage with students; established organizational structures to support students; and encouraged a language and culture of personalization. Working with the National Center on Scaling Up Effective Schools, a research-practice partnership that included Vanderbilt University, Florida State University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, educators in Broward County identified five core practices and specific implementation strategies to improve student academic, social-emotional, and behavioral outcomes---practices whose efficacy is supported by prior research and theory. This approach, called Personalization for Academic and Social Emotional Learning (PASL), emphasizes systemic personalization where adults intentionally attend to practices in schools that improve relationships between adults and students. Drawing on multiple sources, the book delves into the five components of PASL, providing stories from educators and students to illustrate how they were adapted in different schools through a process of continuous improvement.Steps to Schoolwide Success challenges conventional, fragmented, and top-down efforts at reform, and points the way to a new generation of efforts that emphasize continuous, systematic improvement. Readers will learn how high schools can be made stronger and more responsive places when educators employ strategies that bridge academic and social emotional systems.

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Book SynopsisImprovement in Action, Anthony S. Bryk's sequel to Learning to Improve, illustrates how educators have effectively applied the six core principles of continuous improvement in practice. The book highlights relevant examples of rigorous, high-quality improvement work in districts, schools, and professional development networks across the country. The organizations featured in the book have addressed, with remarkable results, long-standing inequitable educational outcomes in high school graduation rates, college readiness, and absenteeism. The cases emphasize the measures the educators took and the thinking that motivated their actions. Bryk describes how improvers, working in different contexts and confronting different problems, used select principles, tools, and methods to make improvement come to life. Brief analytic reflections are embedded throughout the narratives, and each chapter concludes with an analysis of a set of larger lessons illuminated by the organization's story. Taken as a set, these examples offer readers valuable insights about the actual dynamics of doing improvement work.Improvement in Action, paired with Learning to Improve, provides readers with a comprehensive understanding of the practice, method, and theory of large-scale continuous improvement in education.Table of Contents Introduction 1 Attacking Inequities in Postsecondary Opportunities 2 Supporting Improvement Through an Analytic Hub 3 Becoming a Learning Organization 4 Infusing Improvement into a Charter Network 5 Advancing Instructional Improvement 6 Transforming a School District 7 Charting Paths Forward Notes Acknowledgments About the Author About the Contributing Authors Index

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Book SynopsisIn Evidence, Politics, and Education Policy, political scientists Lorraine M. McDonnell and M. Stephen Weatherford provide an original analysis of evidence use in education policymaking to help scholars and advocates shape policy more effectively. The book shows how multiple types of evidence are combined as elected officials and their staffs work with researchers, advocates, policy entrepreneurs, and intermediary organizations to develop, create, and implement education policies.Evidence, Politics, and Education Policy offers an in-depth understanding of the political environment in which evidence is solicited and used. Two key case studies inform the book's findings. The primary case - a major, multimethod study - examines the development and early implementation of the Common Core State Standards at the national level and in four states: California, Indiana, Massachusetts, and Tennessee. A comparative case analyzes the evidence used in Congressional hearings over the twenty-year history of the Children's Health Insurance Program. Together, the two cases illustrate the conditions under which different types of evidence are used and, in particular, how federalism, the complexity of the policy problem, and the policy's maturity shape evidence use. McDonnell and Weatherford focus on three leverage points for strengthening the use of research evidence in education policy: integrating research findings with value-based policy ideas; designing policies with incentives for research use built into their rules and organizational structures; and training policy analysts to promote the use of research in policymaking venues.

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Book SynopsisIn this volume, editors Patricia Somers and Matt Valentine lead an examination of the unintended consequences of campus gun policy and showcase the voices from the college community who are grappling with the questions, issues, and consequences that have emerged at their respective institutions. While making the case that campus carry legislation is a harmful, the book gathers some of the very best thinking around enacting such policies and offers valuable recommendations for mitigating its effects and preserving university values. The implementation of campus carry is complex and has provoked many questions: How does concealed carry on campus affect the free expression of ideas in the classroom or the safety of faculty holding unpopular or even controversial views? Should students who misplace or leave their weapons unattended be disciplined? What about students of color and campus carry? Along with the book's contributors, Somers and Valentine provide higher education leaders, administrators, and faculty with a valuable resource that will guide them toward considerations that might otherwise be overlooked, help them avoid pitfalls that have been encountered elsewhere, and protect institutional priorities. The book features reflection pieces from students, alumni, and faculty to illustrate the complexity and controversy of the campus carry policy. Given that the legal possession of guns in the classroom is now a reality for American educators and students in much of the country, Campus Carry concludes with a passionate call for more university-based original research on gun violence.

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Book SynopsisIn The Teacher Insurgency, Leo Casey addresses how the unexpected wave of recent teacher strikes has had a dramatic impact on American public education, teacher unions, and the larger labor movement. Casey explains how this uprising was not only born out of opposition to government policies that underfunded public schools and deprofessionalized teaching, but was also rooted in deep-seated changes in the economic climate, social movements, and, most importantly, educational politics. With an eye to maintaining the momentum of the insurgency, the author examines four key strategic questions that have arisen from the strikes: the relationship of mobilization to organizing; the relationship between protests and direct action; the conditions under which teacher strikes are most likely to be successful; and the importance of 'bargaining for the common good.' More broadly, Casey examines how to organize teachers for collective action, focusing on four discourses of teaching: teaching as nurturance; as professionalism; as labor and craft; and as a vocation of democratic intellectual work.

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Book SynopsisRural Education in America provides a comprehensive framework for understanding the diversity and complexity of rural communities in the United States and for helping rural educators implement and evaluate successful place-based programs tailored for students and their families. Written by educators who grew up in rural America and returned there to raise their children, the book illustrates how efficacy is determined by the degrees to which instruction, interventions, and programs address the needs and strengths of each unique rural community. Geoff and Sky Marietta weave research, compelling case studies, and personal experience to illustrate effective approaches along the P-16 pipeline. Emphasizing the value and vitality of these communities, the authors advocate for solutions that fit the sociocultural and historical reality of the community, rather than strategies that fundamentally support out-migration. They also provide tools that can be used to evaluate rural educational initiatives and implement place-based strategies that are aligned with the strengths of a particular community.Rural Education in America includes examples from a range of geographic locations, including Eastern Washington, Montana, Ohio, northern Minnesota, North Carolina, Mississippi, Kentucky, and the Navajo Nation. Core chapters focus on critical issues for advancing rural education including early literacy, STEM education, and college completion while highlighting successful programs and partnerships in these areas. This book presents a vision of what rural education can be and how it can attend to the well-being of the people, places, and regions that it serves.

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Book SynopsisIn Challenging the One Best System, a team of leading education scholars offers a rich comparative analysis of the set of urban education governance reforms collectively known as the 'portfolio management model.' They investigate the degree to which this model-a system of schools operating under different types of governance and with different degrees of autonomy-challenges the standard structure of district governance famously characterized by David Tyack as 'the one best system.' The authors examine the design and enactment of the portfolio management model in three major cities: New Orleans, Los Angeles, and Denver. They identify the five interlocking mechanisms at the core of the model-planning and oversight, choice, autonomy, human capital, and school supports-and show how these are implemented differently in each city. Using rich qualitative data from extensive interviews, the authors trace the internal tensions and tradeoffs that characterize these systems and highlight the influence of historical and contextual factors as well. Most importantly, they question whether the portfolio management model represents a fundamental restructuring of education governance or more incremental change, and whether it points in the direction of meaningful improvement in school practices. Drawing on a rigorous, multimethod study, Challenging the One Best System represents a significant contribution to our understanding of system-level change in education.

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Book SynopsisAm I My Brother’s Keeper? provides a powerful cautionary tale about the challenges involved in enacting large-scale educational change. The book, chronicling the Expanded Success Initiative (ESI), a four-year study focused on improving the educational outcomes of 15,000 Black and Latinx males in New York City public high schools, covers what worked, what didn’t, and what we can learn from the experience. The ESI model, a precursor to President Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper, highlights the ways that school districts can embed educational equity into the principles and policies that guide their work with students, in contrast to implementing stand-alone initiatives that may come and go. Through the voices of students, teachers, and administrators, the book informs the implementation of other large-scale district-community partnerships designed to improve opportunities and outcomes for young people who have systematically been denied both. Most critically, the book provides policy, practice, and research recommendations to inform the next generation of work with this student population. As sustained protests across the United States call attention to the ravages of systemic racism, Am I My Brother’s Keeper? highlights concrete steps that school districts can take to confront racist structures and support young people of color.

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Book SynopsisAm I My Brother’s Keeper? provides a powerful cautionary tale about the challenges involved in enacting large-scale educational change. The book, chronicling the Expanded Success Initiative (ESI), a four-year study focused on improving the educational outcomes of 15,000 Black and Latinx males in New York City public high schools, covers what worked, what didn’t, and what we can learn from the experience. The ESI model, a precursor to President Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper, highlights the ways that school districts can embed educational equity into the principles and policies that guide their work with students, in contrast to implementing stand-alone initiatives that may come and go. Through the voices of students, teachers, and administrators, the book informs the implementation of other large-scale district-community partnerships designed to improve opportunities and outcomes for young people who have systematically been denied both. Most critically, the book provides policy, practice, and research recommendations to inform the next generation of work with this student population. As sustained protests across the United States call attention to the ravages of systemic racism, Am I My Brother’s Keeper? highlights concrete steps that school districts can take to confront racist structures and support young people of color.

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Book SynopsisIn Districts That Succeed, long-time education writer Karin Chenoweth turns her attention from effective schools to effective districts. Leveraging new, cutting-edge national research on district performance as well as in-depth reporting, Chenoweth profiles five districts that have successfully broken the correlation between race, poverty, and achievement. Focusing on high performing or rapidly improving districts that serve children of color and children from low-income backgrounds, the book explores the common elements that have led to the districts’ successes, including leadership, processes, and systems. Districts That Succeed reveals that helping more students achieve is not a matter of adopting a program or practice. Rather, it requires developing a district-wide culture where all adults feel responsible for the academic well-being of students and adopt systems and processes that support that culture. Chenoweth explores how districts, from urban Chicago, Illinois to suburban Seaford, Delaware, have organized themselves to look at data to guide improvement. Her research highlights the essential role of districts in closing achievement gaps and illustrates how successful outliers can serve as resources for other districts. With important lessons for district leaders and policy makers alike, Chenoweth offers the hard-won wisdom of educators who understand the power of schools to, as one superintendent says, “change the path of poverty.”

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Book SynopsisUsing original qualitative and quantitative data, Schools Under Siege confronts the many ways, direct and indirect, in which US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) policies and practices disrupt education. The book explores the impact of these policies not only on the six-million-plus K–12 students in the US at risk for being directly affected by enforcement, but also the wide-ranging consequences for their classmates, educators, and communities. Fear, stress, and trauma invoked by the threat of ICE detention and deportation contribute to increased absenteeism, decreased student achievement, and parent disengagement. Bullying becomes more widespread, and a multitude of other effects impact school climate and student health and well-being. Amplifying the burden, these effects are experienced disproportionately in poorly funded districts and Title I schools and are felt more acutely among vulnerable populations such as immigrant students, English language learners, and Latinx students.Schools Under Siege highlights the work of teachers, counselors, and administrators who are addressing these day-to-day challenges in support of students and families. It provides a profile of a model sanctuary school and offers practical advice for how educators, local government, and nonprofit agencies can work together to mitigate the collateral damage of immigration enforcement. The book suggests ways in which concerned persons can advocate for immigration policy reform at the local, state, and federal levels. Ultimately, editors Patricia GÁndara and Jongyeon Ee chart a course into a future that makes good on the promise of equitable education for all students.

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Book SynopsisThis inspiring account of bipartisan political success delivers an expert breakdown of how and why Kansas—a politically conservative state—was able to craft a stable, balanced, and equitable system of funding for its public schools. Beyond a chronicle of one state’s achievements, School Finance and Education Equity provides invaluable policy guidance and lays out a blueprint that other states can use to strengthen their own public education systems. Readers are given an insider’s tour of the Kansas story by Bruce D. Baker, an academic researcher and expert witness in school finance litigation who has more than two decades of involvement with the state. Baker combines historical background, legal analysis, and political and economic contextual data—along with a gleaming wit—to present a thorough, enlightening narrative of Kansas’s K–12 funding journey. As Baker points out, other states can find much to learn here. He shows that, when it comes to school finance, Kansas serves as an exemplar in aligning resources to meet the promises of its constitution. State leaders rejected the pervasive notion that “money doesn’t matter” in education, and they gathered the data to prove that it does. Baker emphasizes that this kind of slow and steady success hinges on the ability of stakeholders to remain involved over time. Continuity is vitally important. Baker’s account highlights how persistence can overcome opposition, continuity can aid reform, and incremental gains can lead to big change. In an era of national ideological polarization and political and economic volatility, the lessons from Kansas are especially illuminating.

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Book SynopsisContinuous Improvement in High Schools gives educators and policymakers an accessible, actionable framework to address one of the nation's most important educational priorities: improving high school graduation and postsecondary preparedness rates. Martha Abele Mac Iver and Robert Balfanz, national experts in dropout prevention, apply the Carnegie Foundation’s continuous improvement framework to the issue of student success in high school, starting with the critical ninth-grade year. A proven tool for organizational change, the continuous improvement framework provides a systematic structure for examining the root causes of problems and testing possible solutions. Mac Iver and Balfanz draw on their decades of experience working with educators and their deep knowledge of challenges faced by high schools to customize the framework to the high school context. They model the use of improvement science principles such as establishing practical measures, conducting disciplined inquiry, and accelerating learning through networked communities. With real-world examples and ideas for change, the authors show how attention to five key areas can enrich student educational experience and improve high school outcomes. These areas include: early warning and intervention systems; family engagement; students’ sense of connectedness to school; social, emotional, and academic development; and teacher instructional practices. The guidance offered in this useful work will enable educators and their collaborating partners to create their own powerful solutions for student success.

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Book SynopsisIn Confessions of a School Reformer, eminent historian of education Larry Cuban reflects on nearly a century of education reforms and his experiences with them as a student, educator, and administrator. Cuban begins his own story in the 1930s, when he entered first grade at a Pittsburgh public school, the youngest son of Russian immigrants who placed great stock in the promises of education. With a keen historian's eye, Cuban expands his personal narrative to analyze the overlapping social, political, and economic movements that have attempted to influence public schooling in the United States since the beginning of the twentieth century. He documents how education both has and has not been altered by the efforts of the Progressive movement of the first half of the twentieth century, the Civil Rights Movement of the fifties through the seventies, and the standards-based school reform movement of the eighties through today. Cuban points out how these dissimilar movements nevertheless shared a belief that school change could promote student success and also forge a path toward a stronger economy and a more equitable society. He relates the triumphs of these school reform efforts as well as more modest successes and unintended outcomes. Interwoven with Cuban's evaluations and remembrances are his "confessions," in which he accounts for the beliefs he held and later rejected, as well as mistakes and areas of weakness that he has found in his own ideology. Ultimately, Cuban remarks with a tempered optimism on what schools can and cannot do in American democracy.

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Book SynopsisIn this thought-provoking volume, editors Rebecca M. Taylor and Ashley Floyd Kuntz invite readers to explore the many facets of on-campus ethical dilemmas and the careful, nuanced decision-making processes required to address them. Taylor and Kuntz demonstrate how to apply collaborative, multidisciplinary, philosophical inquiry to deeply complex issues. They present seven normative case studies focusing on a variety of campus quandaries, from urgent matters such as Title IX violations and free speech in social media policy, to long-simmering concerns such as admissions and access and the future of historically Black colleges and universities. The editors then bring together a diverse group of scholars and practitioners with a broad array of disciplinary and personal backgrounds to offer their commentary and insight on the cases. Leaders in higher education are under immense pressure to respond to campus crises quickly, to quell controversy, and to avoid the backlash of public scrutiny in an ever-shifting sociopolitical terrain. Yet, in tension with such pressures, adequate responses to these dilemmas require leaders to make ethical, contextual choices that effectively foster inclusion, respect individual and institutional freedoms, and promote equity. Expanding the scope of inquiry, the contributors challenge underlying assumptions, raise points that had been omitted from the original cases, and imagine alternative solutions. Ethics in Higher Education appeals to readers to do the same, in the interest of advancing ethical decision-making on campuses.

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Book SynopsisCivil Rights and Federal Higher Education offers a renewed vision for higher education policy making, presenting an incisive analysis of the connections between educational politics and educational inequality. With a view toward the future, the editors assert that the thoughtful application of evidence-based solutions to complex policy problems can help establish a more just and equitable system of higher education.Edited by Nicholas Hillman and Gary Orfield, the volume focuses on federal policy debates that have significant racial and socioeconomic implications, linking civil rights reforms to contemporary higher education policy issues. Through a mix of history and current events, the chapters highlight how policy has strayed from the Higher Education Act’s intended trajectory of promoting and protecting civil rights. This drift, the editors show, has created far-reaching consequences for students of color, low-income students, and incarcerated students, in addition to the colleges that serve them.Deftly identifying the social justice dimensions of today’s federal policies, the editors reveal how certain political influences have preserved the interests of powerful and historically advantaged stakeholders—often at the expense of those who are less powerful and most disadvantaged. With great insight, the book’s contributors explore higher education issues such as enrollment at Minority Serving Institutions, for-profit college outcomes, and legal and academic perspectives on affirmative action.Perhaps more importantly, Civil Rights and Federal Higher Education provides guidance on what can be done to course correct. The book offers short- and long-term policy prescriptions and policy alternatives to help legislative staffers, policy analysts, and researchers plot a way forward.

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Book SynopsisAssessing the Nation’s Report Card examines the history of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and outlines plans for improving and modernizing the organization.Educational policy analyst Chester E. Finn, Jr. imparts a rare inside analysis of the evolution of the NAEP program at key moments in its history, and provides a firsthand perspective of crucial decisions and core goals that have helped shape it. The result is a revealing survey of the US’s most influential source of data on K–12 achievement.Assessing the Nation’s Report Card offers readers an in-depth understanding and appreciation of NAEP as well as an examination of its shortcomings, its controversies, and its current issues. The book explores why NAEP is considered the gold standard of educational assessments yet is much lesser known than other types of standardized testing.Finn underscores the promise of applying the results in addressing achievement gaps, boosting federal accountability, and driving education reform and policy. He also discloses how the data are collected and what the results can and cannot tell us.For more than 50 years, this ambitious federal testing program has informed the decisions of policy makers and educational leaders as they advocate for educational improvements in the US. Acknowledging the nation’s evolving need for actionable information about students and schools, Finn provides an assured and rare overview of the existing program and proposes possibilities for the future.

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