Politics, Disability, and Education Reform in the South


Book Description

Politics, Disability, and Education Reform in the South explores how race, gender, disability, and politics all came together to impact the career of one State Superintendent of Education in South Carolina who fought to improve educational conditions for African-Americans, women, and millworkers' children in South Carolina.




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.




Politics, Disability, and Education Reform in the South


Book Description

Politics, Disability, and Education Reform in the South explores how race, gender, disability, and politics all came together to impact the career of one State Superintendent of Education in South Carolina who fought to improve educational conditions for African-Americans, women, and millworkers' children in South Carolina.




Ghetto Schooling


Book Description

In this disturbing but ultimately hopeful personal account, Jean Anyon provides compelling evidence that the economic and political devastation of America's inner cities has robbed schools and teachers of the capacity to successfully implement current strategies of educational reform. She argues that without fundamental change in government and business policies and the redirection of major resources back into the schools and the communities they serve, urban schools are consigned to failure, and no effort at raising standards, improving teaching, or boosting achievement can occur. Based on her participation in an intensive four-year school reform project in the Newark, New Jersey public schools, the author vividly captures the anguish and anger of students and teachers caught in the tangle of a failing school system. Ghetto Schooling offers a penetrating historical analysis of more than a century of government and business policies that have drained the economic, political, and human resources of urban populations. Provocative and controversial, this book reveals the historical roots of the current crisis in ghetto schools and what must be done to reverse the downward spiral.




Educating through Popular Culture


Book Description

This edited volume serves as a place for teachers and scholars to begin seeking ways in which popular culture has been effectively tapped for research and teaching purposes around the country. The contents of the book came together in a way that allowed for a detailed examination of teaching with popular culture on many levels. The first part allows teachers in PreK-12 schools the opportunity to share their successful practices. The second part affords the same opportunity to teachers in community colleges and university settings. The third part shows the impact of US popular culture in classrooms around the world. The fourth part closes the loop, to some extent, showing how universities can prepare teachers to use popular culture with their future PreK-12 students. The final part of the book allows researchers to discuss the impact popular culture plays in their work. It also seeks to address a shortcoming in the field; while there are outlets to publish studies of popular culture, and outlets to publish pedagogical/practitioner pieces, there is no outlet to publish practitioner pieces on studying popular culture, in spite of the increased popularity and legitimacy of the field.




Politics, Disability, and Education Reform in the South


Book Description

Politics, Disability, and Education Reform in the South explores how race, gender, disability, and politics all came together to impact the career of one State Superintendent of Education in South Carolina who fought to improve educational conditions for African-Americans, women, and millworkers' children in South Carolina.




The Politics of Public Education


Book Description

At a time when public education and reform agendas are changing the way we approach education, this book critically examines the key issues facing the public with implications for education policy makers, professionals and researchers. Drawing on empirical evidence gathered over 20 years, Helen Gunter confronts current issues about social justice and segregation. She uses Arendtian ideas to help the reader to ‘think politically’ about education and how and why public services education can be reimagined for the future.




Disability & the Politics of Education


Book Description

Disability and the Politics of Education: An International Reader is a rich resource that deals comprehensively with the many aspects of the complex topic of disability studies in education. For nearly two decades, global attention has been given to education as a human right through global initiatives such as Education for All (EFA) and the Salamanca Statement. Yet according to UNESCO, reaching the goals of EFA remains one of the most daunting challenges facing the global community. Today, millions of the world's disabled children cannot obtain a basic childhood education, particularly in countries with limited resources. Even in the wealthiest countries, many disabled children and youth are educationally segregated from the nondisabled, particularly if they are labeled with significant cognitive impairment. International agencies such as the United Nations and the World Bank have generated funds for educational development but, unfortunately, these funds are administered with the assumption that «west is best», thereby urging developing countries to mimic educational policies in the United States and the United Kingdom in order to prove their aid-worthiness. This «McDonaldization» of education reproduces the labeling, resource allocation, and social dynamics long criticized in disability studies. The authors in this volume explore these subjects and other complexities of disability and the politics of education. In doing so, they demonstrate the importance and usefulness of international perspectives and comparative approaches.




U.S. Education Reform and National Security


Book Description

The United States' failure to educate its students leaves them unprepared to compete and threatens the country's ability to thrive in a global economy and maintain its leadership role. This report notes that while the United States invests more in K-12 public education than many other developed countries, its students are ill prepared to compete with their global peers. According to the results of the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), an international assessment that measures the performance of 15-year-olds in reading, mathematics, and science every three years, U.S. students rank fourteenth in reading, twenty-fifth in math, and seventeenth in science compared to students in other industrialized countries. The lack of preparedness poses threats on five national security fronts: economic growth and competitiveness, physical safety, intellectual property, U.S. global awareness, and U.S. unity and cohesion, says the report. Too many young people are not employable in an increasingly high-skilled and global economy, and too many are not qualified to join the military because they are physically unfit, have criminal records, or have an inadequate level of education. The report proposes three overarching policy recommendations: implement educational expectations and assessments in subjects vital to protecting national security; make structural changes to provide students with good choices; and, launch a "national security readiness audit" to hold schools and policymakers accountable for results and to raise public awareness.




Inclusive Education for the 21st Century


Book Description

Thoroughly revised throughout, this bestselling book returns in a new edition to take an even more comprehensive look at the question: How can teachers and schools create genuinely inclusive classrooms that meet the needs of every student? Inclusive Education for the 21st Century provides a rigorous overview of the foundational principles of inclusive education and the barriers to access and participation. It explores evidence-based strategies to support diverse learners, including specific changes in curriculum, pedagogy and assessment practices, and the use of data. It addresses the needs of children with physical, sensory and intellectual disabilities, as well as those with complex learning profiles, including mental health issues. This second edition is rich with new content, including six new chapters which address learning from international experience, multi-tiered systems of support, leading inclusive education reform, the importance of language and supporting friendships. A new section has been added to provide explicit support for implementing systemic inclusive education reform from the policy level right through to classroom practice. A new series of podcasts, featuring interviews with expert chapter authors, offers an engaging complement to the chapter topics and content. With many schools still operating under twentieth-century models that disadvantage students, this book presents the deep knowledge, tools and strategies to better equip pre- and in-service teachers and leaders to make inclusive education a reality in all schools.