Inclusion and School Reform


Book Description

This book is a panoramic view of inclusive education, past, present, and future. Grounded in historical perspective and fueled by contemporary accomplishments, the insightful discussions in this volume cover a wide range of issues, from program implementation and classroom supports to court decisions and financing. The authors compare successes and setbacks from schools and studies nationwide, drawing the big picture of practice and research. Complementing their highly informed, balanced analysis of special education and inclusion programs are highlights of the results from a revealing national study of inclusive education. Emphasizing the need for the concurrent development of inclusion and school restructuring, this book gives policy makers, administrators, school board members, teachers and parents a solid understanding of the process of school reform, as well as a vision for the 21st century. - Back cover.




Reform, Inclusion and Teacher Education


Book Description

This ground-breaking book considers current perspective on educational reform in the Asia-Pacific regions with a focus on a new era of special education, particularly as this relates to the educational reform towards inclusive education.




The Irregular School


Book Description

The Irregular School explores the foundations of the current controversies and argues that continuing to think in terms of the regular school or the special school obstructs progress towards inclusive education.




The School Reform Landscape


Book Description

In The School Reform Landscape: Fear, Mythologies, and Lies, the authors take an in-depth and controversial look at school reform since the launch of Sputnik. They scrutinize school reform events, proposals, and policies from the last 60 years through the lens of critical social theory and examine the ongoing tensions between the need to keep a vibrant unitary system of public education and the ongoing assault by corporate and elite interests in creating a dual system. Some of events, proposals, and policies critiqued include the Sputnik myth, A Nation At Risk, No Child Left Behind, the lies of the Common Core State Standards Initiative, and other common reform schemes. The authors provide an evidence-based contrarian view of the free-market reform ideas and pierce the veil of the new reform policies to find that they are built not upon empirical evidence, but instead rest solidly on foundations of myth, fear, and lies. Ideas for a new set of reform policies, based on empirical evidence and supportive of a unitary, democratic system of education are presented.




Measuring Inclusive Education


Book Description

Volume 3 of International Perspectives on Inclusive Education focuses on measuring inclusive education from a range of perspectives. It is grounded upon a review of international conceptualizations of inclusive education and ways in which different systems are measuring its impact and effectiveness.




Tales from School


Book Description

This is a book about the struggle of many New Zealand families to have their children with learning disabilities included in local community schools. It reviews the influences in the post war period that shaped the state response to the right of all children to attend school. Reflections from both education policy makers and parents of that time are included. The book also examines the more recent impact of neoliberal politics on education policy and the consequences experienced by families with school-aged children with disabilities who may well become ‘collateral damage in the enterprise of improving schools.’ After examining the families’ experience the book asks how inclusion can be fostered in schools and classrooms? Practitioners and academics present research findings that indicate alternative ways of thinking and acting that attest to more ethical and humane responses to human difference. Citizens, school personnel, politicians and policy makers should be challenged by the tales from school arising from attempts to achieve a ‘world class, inclusive education system.’ Cover photograph by Rod Wills, “Oratia District School”




Educating One and All


Book Description

In the movement toward standards-based education, an important question stands out: How will this reform affect the 10% of school-aged children who have disabilities and thus qualify for special education? In Educating One and All, an expert committee addresses how to reconcile common learning for all students with individualized education for "one"â€"the unique student. The book makes recommendations to states and communities that have adopted standards-based reform and that seek policies and practices to make reform consistent with the requirements of special education. The committee explores the ideas, implementation issues, and legislative initiatives behind the tradition of special education for people with disabilities. It investigates the policy and practice implications of the current reform movement toward high educational standards for all students. Educating One and All examines the curricula and expected outcomes of standards-based education and the educational experience of students with disabilitiesâ€"and identifies points of alignment between the two areas. The volume documents the diverse population of students with disabilities and their school experiences. Because approaches to assessment and accountability are key to standards-based reforms, the committee analyzes how assessment systems currently address students with disabilities, including testing accommodations. The book addresses legal and resource implications, as well as parental participation in children's education.




Preparing Teachers


Book Description

Teachers make a difference. The success of any plan for improving educational outcomes depends on the teachers who carry it out and thus on the abilities of those attracted to the field and their preparation. Yet there are many questions about how teachers are being prepared and how they ought to be prepared. Yet, teacher preparation is often treated as an afterthought in discussions of improving the public education system. Preparing Teachers addresses the issue of teacher preparation with specific attention to reading, mathematics, and science. The book evaluates the characteristics of the candidates who enter teacher preparation programs, the sorts of instruction and experiences teacher candidates receive in preparation programs, and the extent that the required instruction and experiences are consistent with converging scientific evidence. Preparing Teachers also identifies a need for a data collection model to provide valid and reliable information about the content knowledge, pedagogical competence, and effectiveness of graduates from the various kinds of teacher preparation programs. Federal and state policy makers need reliable, outcomes-based information to make sound decisions, and teacher educators need to know how best to contribute to the development of effective teachers. Clearer understanding of the content and character of effective teacher preparation is critical to improving it and to ensuring that the same critiques and questions are not being repeated 10 years from now.




Revisiting "The Culture of the School and the Problem of Change"


Book Description

Revisiting “The Culture of the School and the Problem of Change” provocatively and seamlessly joins Seymour Sarason’s classic, landmark text on school change with his own insightful re?ections on those same issues in the face of today’s crisis in public schools. This is an extensive, monograph–length revisiting. Part I of this book reproduces the second edition of Sarason’s ground–breaking work, The Culture of the School and the Problem of Change, in which he detailed how change can affect a school’s culturally diverse environment—either through the implementation of new programs or as a result of federally imposed regulations. Throughout, many of the major assumptions about change in institutions are challenged. Speci?c events and examples demonstrate that any attempt to implement change involves some existing regularity within the school. Dr. Sarason also takes a close look at government involvement in change efforts in schooling—and includes a detailed examination of current efforts to implement PL 94–142 into public schools. He presents compelling evidence that the federal effort to change and improve schools has largely been a failure. Also included are investigations into the purposes of schooling and how these purposes can be affected by change, and the process by which educators and administrators formulate intended outcomes of change efforts. In Part II, Dr. Sarason “revisits” the text and the issues 25 years after the original publication. As he explains in his preface, to him the word crisis means “a point in time when a dangerous situation contains con?icting forces of an intensity or seriousness that in the near term will be dramatically altered depending on which forces win out. When I wrote the book a quarter century ago, I did not regard our schools as in crisis...[though] my intuition . . . was that a crisis would come sooner or later. It has, in my opinion, come.” Believing that “what happens in our cities and our schools will determine the fate of our society,” Dr. Sarason is deeply concerned that the reform arena is being manipulated by forces that are at best untroubled by and at worst intent on the dismantling of the public school system. That, coupled with his fear that even the system’s defenders are not focusing on the real issues, has infused Dr. Sarason’s return to the topic of educational change with a great sense of urgency. The important things he has to say will be welcomed by all who truly care about the state of the public schools that America’s children attend.