Reformers, Teachers, Writers


Book Description

In Reformers, Teachers, Writers, Neal Lerner explores the distinction between curriculum and pedagogy in writing studies—and the ways in which failing to attend to that distinction results in the failure of educational reform. Lerner’s mixed-methods approach—quantitative, qualitative, textual, historical, narrative, and theoretical—reflects the importance and effects of curriculum in a wide variety of settings, whether in writing centers, writing classrooms, or students’ out-of-school lives, as well as the many methodological approaches available to understand curriculum in writing studies. The richness of this approach allows for multiple considerations of the distinction and relationship between pedagogy and curriculum. Chapters are grouped into three parts: disciplinary inquiries, experiential inquiries, and empirical inquiries, exploring the presence and effect of curriculum and its relationship to pedagogy in multiple sites, both historical and contemporary, and for multiple stakeholders. Reformers, Teachers, Writers calls out writing studies’ inattention to curriculum, which hampers efforts to enact meaningful reform and to have an impact on larger conversations about education and writing. The book will be invaluable to scholars, teachers, and administrators interested in rhetoric and composition, writing studies, and education.




The Teacher Wars


Book Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A groundbreaking history of 175 years of American education that brings the lessons of the past to bear on the dilemmas we face today—and brilliantly illuminates the path forward for public schools. “[A] lively account." —New York Times Book Review In The Teacher Wars, a rich, lively, and unprecedented history of public school teaching, Dana Goldstein reveals that teachers have been embattled for nearly two centuries. She uncovers the surprising roots of hot button issues, from teacher tenure to charter schools, and finds that recent popular ideas to improve schools—instituting merit pay, evaluating teachers by student test scores, ranking and firing veteran teachers, and recruiting “elite” graduates to teach—are all approaches that have been tried in the past without producing widespread change.




The Meaningful Writing Project


Book Description

"Unprecedented look into the writing projects students find meaningful. The results of a three-year study consisting of surveys and interviews of seniors and faculty across three diverse institutions that consider the qualities of experiences, students' perceptions of their experiences, and analyze instructors' perspectives on assignment design/delivery "--Provided by publisher.




This Is Not A Test


Book Description

José Vilson writes about race, class, and education through stories from the classroom and researched essays. His rise from rookie math teacher to prominent teacher leader takes a twist when he takes on education reform through his now-blocked eponymous blog, TheJoseVilson.com. He calls for the reclaiming of the education profession while seeking social justice. José Vilson is a middle school math educator for in the Inwood/Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City. He writes for Edutopia, GOOD, and TransformED / Future of Teaching, and his work has appeared in Education Week, CNN.com, Huffington Post, and El Diario / La Prensa.




More Than a Score


Book Description

"Jesse Hagopian brought a rare moment of truth to the corporate-dominated Education Nation show when he spoke on behalf of his colleagues at Garfield High in Seattle. He instantly became the voice and face of the movement to stop pointless and punitive high-stakes testing."—Diane Ravitch, author of Reign of Terror In cities across the country, students are walking out, parents are opting their children out, and teachers are rallying against the abuses of high-stakes standardized testing. These are the stories—in their own words—of some of those who are defying the corporate education reformers and fueling a national movement to reclaim public education. Alongside the voices of students, parents, teachers, and grassroots education activists, the book features renowned education researchers and advocates, including Nancy Carrlson-Paige, Karen Lewis, and Monty Neill. Jesse Hagopian teaches history and is the Black Student Union adviser at Garfield High School, the site of the historic boycott of the MAP test in 2013. He is an associate editor of Rethinking Schools, and winner of the 2013 "Secondary School Teacher of Year" award from the Academy of Education Arts and Sciences. He is a contributing author to Education and Capitalism: Struggles for Learning and Liberation and 101 Changemakers: Rebels and Radicals Who Changed US History, and writes regularly for Truthout, Black Agenda Report, and the Seattle Times Op-Ed page.




Confessions of a School Reformer


Book Description

In 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 Era of the first half of the twentieth century, the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s through the 1970s, and the standards-based school reform movement of the 1980s 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.




The Big Lies of School Reform


Book Description

The Big Lies of School Reform provides a critical interruption to the ongoing policy conversations taking place around public education in the United States today. By analyzing the discourse employed by politicians, lobbyists, think tanks, and special interest groups, the authors uncover the hidden assumptions that often underlie popular statements about school reform, and demonstrate how misinformation or half-truths have been used to reshape public education in ways that serve the interests of private enterprise. Through a thoughtful series of essays that each identify one “lie“ about popular school reform initiatives, the authors of this collection reveal the concrete impacts of these falsehoods—from directing funding to shaping curricula to defining student achievement. Luminary contributors including Deborah Meier, Jeannie Oakes, Gloria Ladson-Billings, and Jim Cummins explain how reform movements affect teachers and administrators, and how widely-accepted mistruths can hinder genuine efforts to keep public education equitable, effective, and above all, truly public. Topics covered include common core standards, tracking, alternative paths to licensure, and the disempowerment of teachers’ unions. Beyond critically examining the popular rhetoric, the contributors offer visions for improving educational access, opportunity, and outcomes for all students and educators, and for protecting public education as a common good.




Reforming Reading, Writing, and Mathematics


Book Description

In this book S.G. Grant reports his study of how four Michigan elementary school teachers manage a range of reforms (such as new tests, textbooks, and curriculum frameworks) in three different school subjects (reading, writing, and mathematics). Two significant findings emerge from his comparison of these responses: teachers' responses vary across classrooms (even when they teach in the same school building) and also across the reforms (a teacher might embrace reforms in one subject area, but ignore proposed changes in another). This study of teachers' responses to reading, writing, and mathematics reform and the prospects for systemic reform is part of a growing trend to look at the intersection of curriculum policy and teachers' classroom practice. It is unique in the way the author looks at teachers' responses to multiple subject matter reforms; uses those responses as part of an analysis of the recent move toward systemic reform; and employs empirical findings as a means of examining the current movement toward systemic reform. Reforming Reading, Writing, and Mathematics is important reading for researchers, practitioners, and graduate students of educational policy, teaching and learning in reading, writing, and mathematics, and elementary education, and for policy analysts in universities, foundations, and government.




Teaching Writing in English as a Foreign Language


Book Description

This book explores teachers’ cognitions about the teaching of writing in English as a foreign language (EFL) and their teaching practice, as well as factors influencing the formation and reformation process of their cognition. Taking stock of Bakhtin’s dialogism as the theoretical framework, the authors argue that the formation and reformation of teacher cognition is a dialogic process. A systematic analysis of participating teachers’ cognition formation and re-formation process suggests the highly individual nature of teachers’ cognitions. EFL researchers and teachers, teacher educators, teacher education policymakers, university administrators and EFL textbook writers could draw on the findings of the study to provide better resources to implement the teaching of EFL writing more effectively. The study has adopted a mixed-methods approach, whose quantitative results show the patterns and differences of teacher cognition among teachers of different backgrounds and with different schooling, education and working experiences. The qualitative findings show in detail teachers' cognition formation and reformation processes and the factors contributing to such processes, revealing convergence and divergence of teachers’ stated cognitions, with a focus on the discrepancy between teacher cognition and teaching practice. These are useful lenses through which researchers and teachers will find significant implications for offering EFL writing instruction more effectively.




A Political Education


Book Description

In 2012, Chicago's school year began with the city's first teachers' strike in a quarter century and ended with the largest mass closure of public schools in U.S. history. On one side, a union leader and veteran black woman educator drew upon organizing strategies from black and Latinx communities to demand increased school resources. On the other side, the mayor, backed by the Obama administration, argued that only corporate-style education reform could set the struggling school system aright. The stark differences in positions resonated nationally, challenging the long-standing alliance between teachers' unions and the Democratic Party. Elizabeth Todd-Breland recovers the hidden history underlying this battle. She tells the story of black education reformers' community-based strategies to improve education beginning during the 1960s, as support for desegregation transformed into community control, experimental schooling models that pre-dated charter schools, and black teachers' challenges to a newly assertive teachers' union. This book reveals how these strategies collided with the burgeoning neoliberal educational apparatus during the late twentieth century, laying bare ruptures and enduring tensions between the politics of black achievement, urban inequality, and U.S. democracy.