The New School


Book Description

Predicts that the American education system is going to experience a bubble burst, just as the housing market did, and offers advice and solutions for parents, educators and taxpayers on alternatives to the failing K-12 public school system. 20,000 first printing.




Designing the New American University


Book Description

A radical blueprint for reinventing American higher education. America’s research universities consistently dominate global rankings but may be entrenched in a model that no longer accomplishes their purposes. With their multiple roles of discovery, teaching, and public service, these institutions represent the gold standard in American higher education, but their evolution since the nineteenth century has been only incremental. The need for a new and complementary model that offers broader accessibility to an academic platform underpinned by knowledge production is critical to our well-being and economic competitiveness. Michael M. Crow, president of Arizona State University and an outspoken advocate for reinventing the public research university, conceived the New American University model when he moved from Columbia University to Arizona State in 2002. Following a comprehensive reconceptualization spanning more than a decade, ASU has emerged as an international academic and research powerhouse that serves as the foundational prototype for the new model. Crow has led the transformation of ASU into an egalitarian institution committed to academic excellence, inclusiveness to a broad demographic, and maximum societal impact. In Designing the New American University, Crow and coauthor William B. Dabars—a historian whose research focus is the American research university—examine the emergence of this set of institutions and the imperative for the new model, the tenets of which may be adapted by colleges and universities, both public and private. Through institutional innovation, say Crow and Dabars, universities are apt to realize unique and differentiated identities, which maximize their potential to generate the ideas, products, and processes that impact quality of life, standard of living, and national economic competitiveness. Designing the New American University will ignite a national discussion about the future evolution of the American research university.




The New American High School


Book Description

The late Theodore Sizer's vision for a truly democratic public high school system Our current high schools are ill-designed and inefficient. We have inherited a program of studies that in its overall structure has not changed in over a century. The question is What's next? Theodore Sizer, the founder of The Coalition of Essential Schools, was a passionate advocate for the American school system. In this, his last book, he offers a vision of what a future secondary education might look like. In a book that tells the story of his own odyssey, Sizer gives shape to a much-needed agenda for improving our high schools. Includes a vision for the future of our High Schools from one of America's greatest leaders of educational reform Written by Theodore Sizer founder of The Coalition of Essential Schools and author of landmark book Horace's Compromise This final book from the late Theodore Sizer reveals the man and his vision for our secondary education system.




Creating the New American School


Book Description

This book details the characteristics of schools that continue to provide their students with a good education. It integrates two important bodies of research in its findings: (1) the research on effective schools and the characteristics of effective schools; and (2) studies of effective business practices and the leadership behind those practices. Drawing on this research, the book makes 10 recommendations for those interested in moving a school toward excellence: (1) people improvement is crucial to school improvement; (2) excellent schools have a clear vision of their goals; (3) the day-to-day operation of excellent schools is guided by a few shared central values; (4) excellent schools have principals who are effective leaders; (5) the shaping of organizational culture and climate is critical to the creation of an excellent school; (6) the curriculum reflects the values of the school and provides a focus that helps teachers and students "stick to the knitting"; (7) excellent schools monitor what is important; (8) teachers in excellent schools are leaders within their classrooms; (9) excellent schools celebrate progress toward their vision; and (10) excellent schools are committed to continual renewal. (Contains 122 references.) (RJM)




The Death and Life of the Great American School System


Book Description

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.




The New American School


Book Description

The New American School will emerge from the ashes of the old. An underlying premise of the present book is that such a rebirth will occur in the process of restructuring. Restructuring in education is the designing, staffing, programming, and building of the school around learning, the central function of every educational organization. In the following pages, this definition will be elaborated, and methods will be offered for restructuring schools in order to realize a truly New American School.




Horace's School


Book Description

Since the late 1970s, Theodore Sizer has studied and worked among hundreds of American high schools. His research was first published in 1984 in Horace's Compromise, and since then, the scope ofally. Sizer now proposes a process of redesign which respects the best of the rich traditions of secondary schooling while doing far more to educate our youth.




Endangering Prosperity


Book Description

"Compares the performance of American schools with that of other countries against the background of an increasingly globalizing world, introducing new competition for talent, markets, capital, and opportunity, and shows mixed results for U.S. students and recommends areas where American schools and education should be improved"-- Provided by publisher.




The Fifth Wave


Book Description

Out of the crises of American higher education emerges a new class of large-scale public universities designed to accelerate social change through broad access to world-class knowledge production and cutting-edge technological innovation. America's research universities lead the world in discovery, creativity, and innovation—but are captive to a set of design constraints that no longer aligns with the changing needs of society. Their commitment to discovery and innovation, which is carried out largely in isolation from the socioeconomic challenges faced by most Americans, threatens to impede the capacity of these institutions to contribute decisively and consistently to the collective good. The global preeminence of our leading institutions, moreover, does not correlate with overall excellence in American higher education. Sadly, admissions practices that flatly exclude the majority of academically qualified applicants are now the norm in our leading universities, both public and private. In The Fifth Wave, Michael M. Crow and William B. Dabars argue that colleges and universities need to be comprehensively redesigned in order to educate millions more qualified students while leveraging the complementarities between discovery and accessibility. Building on the themes of their prior collaboration, Designing the New American University, this book examines the historical development of American higher education—the first four waves—and describes the emerging standard of institutions that will transform the field. What must emerge in this Fifth Wave of universities, Crow and Dabars posit, are institutions that are responsive to the needs of students, focused on access, embedded in their regions, and committed to solving global problems. The Fifth Wave in American higher education, Crow and Dabars write, comprises an emerging league of colleges and universities that aspires to accelerate positive social outcomes through the seamless integration of world-class knowledge production with cutting-edge technological innovation. This set of institutions is dedicated to the advancement of accessibility to the broadest possible demographic that is representative of the socioeconomic and intellectual diversity of our nation. Recognizing the fact that both cooperation and competition between universities is essential if higher education hopes to truly serve the needs of the nation, Fifth Wave schools like Arizona State University are already beginning to spearhead a network spanning academia, business and industry, government agencies and laboratories, and civil society organizations. Drawing from a variety of disciplines, including design, economics, public policy, organizational theory, science and technology studies, sociology, and even cognitive psychology and epistemology, The Fifth Wave is a must-read for anyone concerned with the future of higher education in our society.




The American School


Book Description

This current, comprehensive history of American education is designed to stimulate critical analysis and critical thinking by offering alternative interpretations of each historical period. In his signature straight-forward, concise style, Joel Spring provides a variety of interpretations of American schooling, from conservative to leftist, in order to spark the reader’s own critical thinking about history and schools. This tenth edition follows the history of American education from the seventeenth century to the integration into global capitalism of the twenty-first century to the tumultuous current political landscape. In particular, the updates focus on tracing the direct religious links between the colonial Puritans and the current-day Trump administration. Chapters 1 and 2 have been rewritten to take a closer look at religious traditions in American schools, leading up to the educational ideas of the current U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. An updated Chapter 15 further links traditional religious fundamentalist ideas and the twentieth century free market arguments of the Chicago school of economists to President Trump’s administration and the influence of the Alt-Right.