Author : Diane Ravitch
Publisher : Basic Books (AZ)
Page : 298 pages
File Size : 16,52 MB
Release : 2010-03-02
Category : Education
ISBN : 0465014917
Discusses how school choice, misapplied standards of accountability, the No Child Left Behind mandate, and the use of a corporate model have all led to a decline in public education and presents arguments for a return to strong neighborhood schools and quality teaching.
Author : Christopher A. Lubienski
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 299 pages
File Size : 48,36 MB
Release : 2013-11-07
Category : Education
ISBN : 022608907X
Nearly the whole of America’s partisan politics centers on a single question: Can markets solve our social problems? And for years this question has played out ferociously in the debates about how we should educate our children. From the growth of vouchers and charter schools to the implementation of No Child Left Behind, policy makers have increasingly turned to market-based models to help improve our schools, believing that private institutions—because they are competitively driven—are better than public ones. With The Public School Advantage, Christopher A. and Sarah Theule Lubienski offer powerful evidence to undercut this belief, showing that public schools in fact outperform private ones. For decades research showing that students at private schools perform better than students at public ones has been used to promote the benefits of the private sector in education, including vouchers and charter schools—but much of these data are now nearly half a century old. Drawing on two recent, large-scale, and nationally representative databases, the Lubienskis show that any benefit seen in private school performance now is more than explained by demographics. Private schools have higher scores not because they are better institutions but because their students largely come from more privileged backgrounds that offer greater educational support. After correcting for demographics, the Lubienskis go on to show that gains in student achievement at public schools are at least as great and often greater than those at private ones. Even more surprising, they show that the very mechanism that market-based reformers champion—autonomy—may be the crucial factor that prevents private schools from performing better. Alternatively, those practices that these reformers castigate, such as teacher certification and professional reforms of curriculum and instruction, turn out to have a significant effect on school improvement. Despite our politics, we all agree on the fundamental fact: education deserves our utmost care. The Public School Advantage offers exactly that. By examining schools within the diversity of populations in which they actually operate, it provides not ideologies but facts. And the facts say it clearly: education is better off when provided for the public by the public.
Author : Diane Ravitch
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 417 pages
File Size : 26,15 MB
Release : 2013-09-17
Category : Education
ISBN : 0385350899
From one of the foremost authorities on education in the United States, former U.S. assistant secretary of education, “whistle-blower extraordinaire” (The Wall Street Journal), author of the best-selling The Death and Life of the Great American School System (“Important and riveting”—Library Journal), The Language Police (“Impassioned . . . Fiercely argued . . . Every bit as alarming as it is illuminating”—The New York Times), and other notable books on education history and policy—an incisive, comprehensive look at today’s American school system that argues against those who claim it is broken and beyond repair; an impassioned but reasoned call to stop the privatization movement that is draining students and funding from our public schools. In Reign of Error, Diane Ravitch argues that the crisis in American education is not a crisis of academic achievement but a concerted effort to destroy public schools in this country. She makes clear that, contrary to the claims being made, public school test scores and graduation rates are the highest they’ve ever been, and dropout rates are at their lowest point. She argues that federal programs such as George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind and Barack Obama’s Race to the Top set unreasonable targets for American students, punish schools, and result in teachers being fired if their students underperform, unfairly branding those educators as failures. She warns that major foundations, individual billionaires, and Wall Street hedge fund managers are encouraging the privatization of public education, some for idealistic reasons, others for profit. Many who work with equity funds are eyeing public education as an emerging market for investors. Reign of Error begins where The Death and Life of the Great American School System left off, providing a deeper argument against privatization and for public education, and in a chapter-by-chapter breakdown, putting forth a plan for what can be done to preserve and improve it. She makes clear what is right about U.S. education, how policy makers are failing to address the root causes of educational failure, and how we can fix it. For Ravitch, public school education is about knowledge, about learning, about developing character, and about creating citizens for our society. It’s about helping to inspire independent thinkers, not just honing job skills or preparing people for college. Public school education is essential to our democracy, and its aim, since the founding of this country, has been to educate citizens who will help carry democracy into the future.
Author : Cara Fitzpatrick
Publisher : Basic Books
Page : 328 pages
File Size : 30,23 MB
Release : 2023-09-12
Category : History
ISBN : 1541646789
A Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist shows how conservatives have pushed for a revolution in public education—one that threatens the existence of the traditional public school America has relied on public schools for 150 years, but the system is increasingly under attack. With declining enrollment and diminished trust in public education, policies that steer tax dollars into private schools have grown rapidly. To understand how we got here, The Death of Public School argues, we must look back at the turbulent history of school choice. Cara Fitzpatrick uncovers the long journey of school choice, a story full of fascinating people and strange political alliances. She shows how school choice evolved from a segregationist tool in the South in the 1950s, to a policy embraced by advocates for educational equity in the North, to a conservative strategy for securing government funds for private schools in the twenty-first century. As a result, education is poised to become a private commodity rather than a universal good. The Death of Public School presents the compelling history of the fiercest battle in the history of American education—one that already has changed the future of public schooling.
Author : Johann N. Neem
Publisher : JHU Press
Page : 257 pages
File Size : 42,9 MB
Release : 2017-08
Category : Education
ISBN : 1421423219
The unknown history of American public education. At a time when Americans are debating the future of public education, Johann N. Neem tells the inspiring story of how and why Americans built a robust public school system in the decades between the Revolution and the Civil War. It’s a story in which ordinary people in towns across the country worked together to form districts and build schoolhouses and reformers sought to expand tax support and give every child a liberal education. By the time of the Civil War, most northern states had made common schools free, and many southern states were heading in the same direction. Americans made schooling a public good. Yet back then, like today, Americans disagreed over the kind of education needed, who should pay for it, and how schools should be governed. Neem explores the history and meaning of these disagreements. As Americans debated, teachers and students went about the daily work of teaching and learning. Neem takes us into the classrooms of yore so that we may experience public schools from the perspective of the people whose daily lives were most affected by them. Ultimately, Neem concludes, public schools encouraged a diverse people to see themselves as one nation. By studying the origins of America’s public schools, Neem urges us to focus on the defining features of democratic education: promoting equality, nurturing human beings, preparing citizens, and fostering civic solidarity.
Author : Sandra Stotsky
Publisher : R&L Education
Page : 217 pages
File Size : 23,65 MB
Release : 2012
Category : Education
ISBN : 1610485580
This book is addressed to teachers who know that the secondary literature curriculum in our public schools is in shambles. Unless experienced and well-read English teachers can develop coherent and increasingly demanding literature curricula in their schools, average high school students will remain at about the fifth or sixth grade reading level--where they now are to judge from several independent sources. This book seeks to challenge education policy makers, test developers, and educators who discourage the assignment of appropriately difficult works to high school students and make construction of a coherent literature curriculum impossible. It first traces the history of the literature curriculum in our middle schools and high schools and shows how it has been diminished and distorted in the past half-century. It then offers examples of coherent literature curricula and spells out the cognitive principles upon which coherence is based. Finally, it suggests what English teachers in our public schools could do to develop a literature curriculum that gives all their students an adequate basis for participation in an English-speaking civic culture.
Author : Eric B. Olsen
Publisher : Xlibris Corporation
Page : 206 pages
File Size : 10,69 MB
Release : 2009-12
Category : Education
ISBN : 9781441585271
The Death of Education The sad and shocking truth about the failure of our public schools to teach. One teacher fs experience. by Eric B. Olsen When I went into teaching over a decade ago my personal commitment was to do everything within my power to make sure my students had the most rigorous and beneficial educational experience possible. Unfortunately, I succeeded. In creating a new paradigm in the classroom, one that values analytical thought and an emphasis on true learning rather than rote memorization, I came in direct conflict with a public education system that doesn ft want teachers to teach and doesn ft want students to learn. But it fs not politicians and policy that are to blame. The real reason for the lack of teaching in today fs classrooms is as close as your neighborhood school: Parents, who know the system isn ft working but are willing to look the other way as long as their students are getting good grades. Administrators, failed teachers themselves, who are prevented by teacher fs unions from any meaningful assessment of teachers they purport to oversee. Teachers, conforming like sheep to decades of failed methodology without even realizing it is their own ineptitude that has caused the very lack of student intelligence and engagement they bemoan. The failure of education in our country is no secret, but a successful campaign of misdirection waged by educators themselves continues to keep us from understanding why. The Death of Education finally exposes the truth, shining a light inside public school classrooms that have been dark for far too long.
Author : Pedro A. Noguera
Publisher : Teachers College Press
Page : 193 pages
File Size : 30,59 MB
Release : 2020
Category : Education
ISBN : 0807778559
Over a decade ago, the first edition of City Schools and the American Dream debuted just as reformers were gearing up to make sweeping changes in urban education. Despite the rhetoric and many reform initiatives, urban schools continue to struggle under the weight of serious challenges. What went wrong and is there hope for future change? More than a new edition, this sequel to the original bestseller has been substantially revised to include insights from new research, recent demographic trends, and emerging political realities. In addition to surveying the various limitations that urban schools face, the book also highlights programs, communities, and schools that are making good on public education’s promise of equity. With renewed commitment and sense of urgency, this new edition provides a clear-eyed vision of what it will take to ensure the success of city schools and their students. “City schools continue to play one of the most important roles in our quest to restore democracy. This is a must-read . . . again!” —Gloria Ladson-Billings, University of Wisconsin–Madison “The authors provide concrete examples of innovative strategies and practices employed by urban schools that are succeeding against all odds.” —Betty A. Rosa, chancellor, New York State Board of Regents “This is the book every teacher, parent, policymaker, and engaged citizen should read.” —Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco, UCLA
Author : Sarah Mondale
Publisher : Beacon Press
Page : 260 pages
File Size : 22,98 MB
Release : 2002-08-16
Category : Education
ISBN : 9780807042212
Esteemed historians of education David Tyack, Carl Kaestle, Diane Ravitch, James Anderson, and Larry Cuban journey through history and across the nation to recapture the idealism of our education pioneers, Thomas Jefferson and Horace Mann. We learn how, in the first quarter of the twentieth century, massive immigration, child labor laws, and the explosive growth of cities fueled school attendance and transformed public education, and how in the 1950s public schools became a major battleground in the fight for equality for minorities and women. The debate rages on: Do today's reforms challenge our forebears' notion of a common school for all Americans? Or are they our only recourse today? This lavishly illustrated companion book to the acclaimed PBS documentary, School, is essential reading for anyone who cares about public education.
Author : Robert N. Gross
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 225 pages
File Size : 13,58 MB
Release : 2018
Category : Education
ISBN : 0190644575
Americans choose from a dizzying array of schools, loosely categorized as "public" and "private." How did these distinctions emerge, and what do they tell us about the relationship in the United States between public authority and private enterprise? Challenged by the rise of Catholic and other parochial schools in the nineteenth century, states sought to protect the public school monopoly through regulation. Ultimately, however, Robert N. Gross shows how the public policies that resulted produced a stable educational marketplace, where choice flourished.
