Description
Book SynopsisThis text examines major changes in US educational development and reform, considering how such changes have been implemented in the past and warning against exaggerating their benefits. Issues covered include governance, equity and multiculturalism, curriculum standards and school choice.
Trade Review"The quality of the contributors alone is enough to make this an excellent book. It is a valuable compendium--and bibliography--of recent thinking on the historical context of current discussions of educational reform. It should be read by educational policymakers and by anyone who wants to be sufficiently well-informed about education to participate in the reform process."--Robert A. McCaughey, Barnard College
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: Changes in Education Over Time
Chapter 1. Assimilation, Adjustment, and Access: An Antiquarian View of American Education
Chapter 2. Who's in Charge? Federal, State, and Local Control
Chapter 3. Attitudes, Choices, and Behavior: School Delivery
Part II: Equity and Multiculturalism
Chapter 4. Changing Conceptions of Educational Equity
Chapter 5. Ethnic Diversity and National Identity
Chapter 6. American History Reconsidered: Asking New Questions About the Past
Part III: Recent Strategies For Reforming the Schools
Chapter 7. The Search for Order and the Rejection of Conformity: Standards in American EDucation
Chapter 8. Reinventing Schooling
Chapter 9. The New Politics of Choice
Part IV: The Six National Goals
Chapter 10. School Readiness and Early Childhood Education
Chapter 11. School Leaving: Dead End or Detour?
Chapter 12. Rhetoric and Reality: The High School Curriculum
Chapter 13. Literate America: High-Level Adult Literacy as a National Goal
Chapter 14. Reefer Madness and A Clockwork Orange
Contributors
