Challenges and Opportunities Facing America's Schools and Workplaces


Book Description

During his inaugural address President Obama noted, "This generation of Americans has been tested by crises that steeled our resolve and proved our resilience." Our Nation has always shown its true greatness in the most difficult of circumstances. This certainly defines the last recession and the challenges we continue to face. In our classrooms, one out of four students will drop out of high school before they have earned a diploma. Students and families across the country are being buried under a mountain of college debt that now exceeds a trillion dollars. Meanwhile, confusion and uncertainty surrounding the direction of the Nation's education system has only been exacerbated by the administration's convoluted waiver scheme. Those who complete their education are finding a difficult academic climate has been replaced by an even more difficult job market. Roughly 8 million workers have been forced to accept part-time work when what they need is a full-time job. No one questions the ability of the American people to rise above these tough times and work toward a brighter future. The question is whether their elected government can do so as well.










Facing the Challenges of Whole-school Reform


Book Description

About a decade ago, New American Schools (NAS) set out to address theperceived lagging performance of American students and the lacklusterresults of school reform efforts. As a private nonprofit organization,NAS's mission was-and is-to help schools and districts raise studentachievement levels by using whole-school designs and design team assistanceduring implementation. Since its inception, NAS has engaged in adevelopment phase (1992-1993), a demonstration phase (1993-1995), and ascale-up phase (1995-present). Over the last ten years, RAND has been monitoring the progress of the NASinitiative. This book is a retrospective on NAS and draws together thefindings from RAND research. The book underscores the significantcontributions made by NAS to comprehensive school reform but also highlightsthe challenges of trying to reform schools through whole-school designs.Divided into sections on each research phase, the book concludes with anafterword by NAS updating its own strategy for the future. This book willinterest those who want to better understand comprehensive school reform andits effects on teaching and learning within high-stakes accountabilityenvironments.




Workforce Education


Book Description

A roadmap for how we can rebuild America's working class by transforming workforce education and training. The American dream promised that if you worked hard, you could move up, with well-paying working-class jobs providing a gateway to an ever-growing middle class. Today, however, we have increasing inequality, not economic convergence. Technological advances are putting quality jobs out of reach for workers who lack the proper skills and training. In Workforce Education, William Bonvillian and Sanjay Sarma offer a roadmap for rebuilding America's working class. They argue that we need to train more workers more quickly, and they describe innovative methods of workforce education that are being developed across the country.




Education in America: Perspectives, Challenges and Opportunities


Book Description

Throughout American history, education has served as an institution of support, safety, growth, stability, and has risen to serve the public in times of great national need. In 2020, educational institutions have demonstrated the strength of schools, the creativity and innovative practices of educators, and the public's desire and need for compulsory and higher education to support the youth of America to lead the nation in new directions. Yet, despite the work of educators and even entire institutions, schools, colleges, and universities in the United States are still deeply flawed and in need of support for continued growth to meet the needs of the public in the 21st century. We are living in tumultuous times, whether the challenges come from known enemies, internal social unrest, vicious politics and lacking leadership, discrimination in multiple forms, and a global, deadly pandemic, the difficulties that face members of the American community are deeply entrenched and are positioned to be a formidable force for the foreseeable future. Until the institution, its leaders, and policy-makers acknowledge the relationship between these challenges and the needs of the youth, education's most important asset, the teachers, are left to fight a battle that cannot be won by individual effort. The future of American education depends upon institutionalized changes in how youth and adults are prepared to be active, participative, members of society. The works in this collection highlight vulnerabilities in education, focusing on matters of social justice; each chapter contributes measures to confront injustices in education and offers resolutions. The needs are clear, the works are persuasive, and the recommendations applicable.




Waiting for ""SUPERMAN""


Book Description

Each book includes a 15 gift card from DonorsChoose.org to give to a classroom in need. The American public school system is in crisis, failing millions of students, producing as many drop-outs as graduates, and threatening our economic future. By 2020, the United States will have 123 million high-skill jobs to fill -- and fewer than 50 million Americans qualified to fill them. Educators, parents, political leaders, business people, and concerned citizens are determined to save our educational system. Waiting for "Superman" offers powerful insights from some of those at the leading edge of educational innovation, including Bill and Melinda Gates, Michelle Rhee, Geoffrey Canada, and more. Waiting for "Superman" is an inspiring call for reform and includes special chapters that provide resources, ideas, and hands-on suggestions for improving the schools in your own community as well as throughout the nation. For parents, teachers, and concerned citizens alike, Waiting for "Superman" is an essential guide to the issues, challenges, and opportunities facing America's schools.




Who Controls Teachers' Work?


Book Description

Schools are places of learning but they are also workplaces, and teachers are employees. As such, are teachers more akin to professionals or to factory workers in the amount of control they have over their work? And what difference does it make? Drawing on large national surveys as well as wide-ranging interviews with high school teachers and administrators, Richard Ingersoll reveals the shortcomings in the two opposing viewpoints that dominate thought on this subject: that schools are too decentralized and lack adequate control and accountability; and that schools are too centralized, giving teachers too little autonomy. Both views, he shows, overlook one of the most important parts of teachers' work: schools are not simply organizations engineered to deliver academic instruction to students, as measured by test scores; schools and teachers also play a large part in the social and behavioral development of our children. As a result, both views overlook the power of implicit social controls in schools that are virtually invisible to outsiders but keenly felt by insiders. Given these blind spots, this book demonstrates that reforms from either camp begin with inaccurate premises about how schools work and so are bound not only to fail, but to exacerbate the problems they propose to solve.




Waiting for a Miracle


Book Description

It is the thesis of this provocative book that the deteriorating state of America's public school system is actually a reflection of the problems in our culture and society. In "Waiting For A Miracle," James P. Comer M.D., Maurice Falk Professor of Child Psychiatry at the Yale University Child Study Center and the author of Maggie's American Dream, and co-author of Raising Black Children, outlines the cause of these afflictions and presents an inspiring paradigm for a new way of thinking and acting with regard to children and family.At the root of the problem, he states, is a social failure to make a commitment to families, and to community and child development.Using many examples from his personal experience of growing up poor, and from more than thirty years of community involvement, Comer argues that schools can be the most important instrument of change in a society. He spells out how private, public and non-profit sectors can collaborate to enable children, families, and communities to survive and thrive.




Critical Issues in Special Education


Book Description

This book represents the contributions of prominent researchers, teacher educators, policy makers, teachers, and parents on current and emerging issues facing the field of special education, and their critical thinking on how to ensure that students with disabilities receive free appropriate education in the least restrictive environment. The authors present divergent perspectives on the issues and concerns, including: (a) the emergence of more constructivistic instruction approaches that focus increasingly on higher order thinking; (b) new organization structures for administering schools; (c) standards-based reform and the use of high stakes testing for evaluating students; (d) the changing population and the increasingly diverse demographics of the students served in the public schools; (e) the onset of the information age and the increasingly visible role of technology in the schools and the workplace; (f) concerns about student discipline and violence in schools; (g) the continuing shortage of qualified and certified special education teachers, and (h) trends in higher education focused on the reform of teacher education such as changing standards for knowledge and skills, preparing teachers for changing roles as mentors, and changes in the teacher education process that may have precipitated or influenced issues in the field. For special education providers such as parents and teachers and for anyone interested in the field of special education.