Public Education in Virginia


Book Description




Keep On Keeping On


Book Description

Virginia was a battleground state in the struggle to implement Brown v. Board of Education, with one of the South’s largest and strongest NAACP units fighting against a program of noncompliance crafted by the state’s political leaders. Keep On Keeping On offers a detailed examination of how African Americans and the NAACP in Virginia successfully pursued a legal agenda that provided new educational opportunities for the state’s black population in the face of fierce opposition from segregationists and the Democratic Party of Harry F. Byrd Sr. Keep On Keeping On is the first book to offer a comprehensive view of African Americans’ efforts to obtain racial equality in Virginia in the later twentieth century. Brian J. Daugherity considers the relationship between the various levels of the NAACP, the ideas and actions of other African American organizations, and the stances of Virginia’s political leaders, white liberals and moderates, and segregationists. In doing so, the author provides a better understanding of the connections between the actions of white political leaders and those of black civil rights activists working to bring about school desegregation. Blending social, legal, southern, and African American history, this book sheds new light on the civil rights movement and white resistance to civil rights in Virginia and the South.




Southern Stalemate


Book Description

In 1959, Virginia’s Prince Edward County closed its public schools rather than obey a court order to desegregate. For five years, black children were left to fend for themselves while the courts decided if the county could continue to deny its citizens public education. Investigating this remarkable and nearly forgotten story of local, state, and federal political confrontation, Christopher Bonastia recounts the test of wills that pitted resolute African Americans against equally steadfast white segregationists in a battle over the future of public education in America. Beginning in 1951 when black high school students protested unequal facilities and continuing through the return of whites to public schools in the 1970s and 1980s, Bonastia describes the struggle over education during the civil rights era and the human suffering that came with it, as well as the inspiring determination of black residents to see justice served. Artfully exploring the lessons of the Prince Edward saga, Southern Stalemate unearths new insights about the evolution of modern conservatism and the politics of race in America.




A Little Child Shall Lead Them


Book Description

In the twentieth-century struggle for racial equality, there was perhaps no setting more fraught and contentious than the public schools of the American south. In Prince Edward County, Virginia, in 1951, a student strike for better school facilities became part of the NAACP legal campaign for school desegregation. That step ultimately brought this rural, agricultural county to the Supreme Court of the United States as one of five consolidated cases in the historic 1954 ruling, Brown v. Board of Education. Unique among those cases, Prince Edward County took the extreme stance of closing its public school system entirely rather than comply with the desegregation ruling of the Court. The schools were closed for five years, from 1959 to 1964, until the Supreme Court ruling in Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County ordered the restoration of public education in the county. This historical anthology brings together court cases, government documents, personal and scholarly writings, speeches, and journalism to represent the diverse voices and viewpoints of the battle in Prince Edward County for—and against—educational equality. Providing historical context and contemporary analysis, this book offers a new perspective of a largely overlooked episode and seeks to help place the struggle for public education in Prince Edward County into its proper place in the civil rights era.




Integrated General Education


Book Description

General education has been an essential part of American higher education for a long time. Unfortunately, it is often seen as something to "get out of the way" so that the student can go on to take the more "important" courses within a chosen major. This volume changes that perception. Topics discussed include: Integrated General Education: A Brief Look Back Why are Outcomes So Difficult to Achieve? Making General Education Matter: Structures and Strategies Unifying the Undergraduate Curriculum Through Inquiry-Guided Learning University of the Pacific's Bookend Seminars on a Good Society Core Curriculum Revision at TCU: How Faculty Created and Are Maintaining the TCU Core Curriculum Creating an Integrative General Education: The Bates Experience Building an Integrated Student Learning Outcomes Assessment for General Education: Three Case Studies Meaningful General Education Assessment That is Integrated and Transformative Institutions of higher education have a responsibility to develop a meaningful general education curriculum that cultivates qualities of thinking, communication, and problem solving (to name a few of the general education goals that many institutions share). What is missing from many institutions, though, is the concept of integrating general education with the overall educational curriculum. If this is done, general education courses are no longer something to take quickly so they can be checked off; instead; they become part of the educational development of the student. This integration benefits the student, certainly, but also the larger society--baccalaureate graduates steeped in the liberal arts will become future leaders. Having been prepared with a broad knowledge base, our current students will be able to think more critically and make good use of information to solve problems that have not yet even been identified. This is the 121st volume of the Jossey-Bass higher education quarterly report series New Directions for Teaching and Learning, which offers a comprehensive range of ideas and techniques for improving college teaching based on the experience of seasoned instructors and the latest findings of educational and psychological researchers.




General Education Essentials


Book Description

General Education Essentials "Full-time and part-time faculty in any discipline and at any size campus with any type of mission can pick up this volume and learn something that will help her or him improve teaching and learning.???"—From the Foreword by Terrel L. Rhodes, vice president for Curriculum, Quality, and Assessment, Association of American Colleges and Universities Every year, hundreds of small colleges, state schools, and large, research-oriented universities across the United States (and, increasingly, Europe and Asia) revisit their core and general education curricula, often moving toward more integrative models. And every year, faculty members who are highly skilled in narrowly defined fields ask two simple questions: "Why?" and "How is this going to affect me?" General Education Essentials seeks to answer these and other questions by providing a much-needed overview of and a rationale for the recent shift in general education curricular design, a sense of how this shift can affect a faculty member's teaching, and an understanding of how all of this might impact course and student assessment. Filled with examples from a variety of disciplines that will spark insights, General Education Essentials explores the techniques that can be used to ensure that students are gaining the skills they need to be perceptive scholars and productive citizens. "This is THE ONE BOOK for academics to get up to speed about reforming general education." —Jerry Gaff, senior scholar, Association of American Colleges and Universities




A Federal Right to Education


Book Description

How the United States can provide equal educational opportunity to every child The United States Supreme Court closed the courthouse door to federal litigation to narrow educational funding and opportunity gaps in schools when it ruled in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez in 1973 that the Constitution does not guarantee a right to education. Rodriguez pushed reformers back to the state courts where they have had some success in securing reforms to school funding systems through education and equal protection clauses in state constitutions, but far less success in changing the basic structure of school funding in ways that would ensure access to equitable and adequate funding for schools. Given the limitations of state school funding litigation, education reformers continue to seek new avenues to remedy inequitable disparities in educational opportunity and achievement, including recently returning to federal court. This book is the first comprehensive examination of three issues regarding a federal right to education: why federal intervention is needed to close educational opportunity and achievement gaps; the constitutional and statutory legal avenues that could be employed to guarantee a federal right to education; and, the scope of what a federal right to education should guarantee. A Federal Right to Education provides a timely and thoughtful analysis of how the United States could fulfill its unmet promise to provide equal educational opportunity and the American Dream to every child, regardless of race, class, language proficiency, or neighborhood.




Instructional Strategies in General Education and Putting the Individuals With Disabilities Act (IDEA) Into Practice


Book Description

Diverse learners with particular needs require a specialized curriculum that will help them develop socially and intellectually. As educational technologies and theoretical approaches to learning continue to advance, so do the opportunities for exceptional children. Instructional Strategies in General Education and Putting the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA) into Practice is a pivotal reference source for the latest teaching strategies for educators with special needs students. Featuring extensive coverage on relevant areas such as instructional adaptions, locomotor apparatus diseases, and intellectual disabilities, this publication is an ideal resource for school administrators, general and special education classroom teachers, and graduate-level students seeking current research on instructional strategies for educating students with disabilities.