No Child Left Behind and the Illusion of Reform

No Child Left Behind and the Illusion of Reform
Author: Thomas Stewart Poetter
Publisher:
Total Pages: 152
Release: 2006
Genre: Education
ISBN:

No Child Left Behind and the Illusion of Reform highlights the scholarship of eight doctoral students in curriculum and their professor, who took on the legal, political, philosophical, social, cultural, economic, and curricular assumptions of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). This book, the manifestation of their work, is a critical examination of the impact of the NCLB on the lives of children, families, and teachers; and the elusive, but powerful, dynamic found between the rhetorical machinations of the law and the ideological touchstones that dominate the American political terrain. This book openly challenges the law with arguments founded on solid research, scholarship, and data. No Child Left Behind and the Illusion of Reform argues that this law is not only a bad idea for children, but also for teachers, parents, schools, and communities because it undermines good teaching through an over-emphasis on testing and measurement. NCLB also pits schools against each other in a competition for limited resources. The book argues that the law sets impossible goals, which further and unnecessarily defeat and deflate the institution of public education.

Sartre and No Child Left Behind

Sartre and No Child Left Behind
Author: Darian M. Parker
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2015-12-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0739191608

Sartre and No Child Left Behind: An Existential Psychoanalytic Anthropology of Urban Schooling asks two fundamental questions: “Who do students become as a result of inhabiting impoverished urban schools for eight hours a day, five days a week, over the course of several years? What happens to the hearts, minds, and spirits of these children?” Using nine months of field observation and interviews with students, teachers, and administrators at a New York City middle school—The Academy (pseudonym)—the book offers an in-depth analysis of students’ psychological and emotional experiences of the Title I school environment. Ultimately, the book demonstrates how the children’s experiences become a part of a vicious chain of events. The history of racial segregation guarantees inferior schooling conditions, and as a result, the students perform poorly; the school closes; gentrification efforts accelerate these closings; and ultimately, the school’s community dies a whisper-less death. Propelling the study is a new anthropological theory of human consciousness. By synthesizing the insights of Sartre, Africana existentialists, phenomenologists, and sociocultural anthropologists, Parker offers a preliminary outline for a theory that he names “existential psychoanalytic anthropology.” Based on Sartre’s existential psychoanalysis, which asserts that we choose who we are from a field of possible beings that we encounter in our cultural environment, existential psychoanalytic anthropology studies the complex ways that culture and consciousness work together to form an individual being.

Reign of Error

Reign of Error
Author: Diane Ravitch
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 417
Release: 2013-09-17
Genre: 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.

Education Reform in the American States

Education Reform in the American States
Author: Jerry McBeath
Publisher: IAP
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2008-04-01
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1607527421

Education Reform in the American States is a timely evaluation of the accountability movement in American public education, culminating in the No Child Left Behind Act, federal legislation of 2002. The authors treat the current accountability movement, placing it in historical context and addressing the evolution in public education policymaking from the overwhelming emphasis on state and local discretion to increasing federal oversight and mandates related to federal funding. They provide case studies of the educational accountability movements in nine states and analyze the factors and forces which explain progress in achievement levels as measured on standardized tests and the states' prospects for meeting their NCLB targets. The book and the individual case studies acknowledge the merits of NCLB while exposing several significant flaws and unintended harmful consequences of the act, particularly its incentives for states to lower their standards in order to meet annual yearly progress targets and its threat to withdraw federal funds from districts with the highest percentage of disadvantaged students. The audience for this study includes local, state and federal education policy makers; administrators and instructors in schools of education and other teaching programs, educators; and the general public.

Educating Everybody's Children

Educating Everybody's Children
Author: Robert W. Cole
Publisher: ASCD
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2008
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1416606742

This revised and expanded 2nd edition of Educating Everybody's Children provides educators with research-proven instructional strategies to meet the varying needs of students from economically, ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

Educational Goods

Educational Goods
Author: Harry Brighouse
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2018-01-24
Genre: Education
ISBN: 022651417X

This book, jointly authored by two distinguished philosophers and two prominent social scientists, has an ambitious aim: to improve decision-making in education policy. First they dive into the goals of education policy and explain the terms "educational goods" and "childhood goods," adding precision and clarity to the discussion of the distributive values that are essential for good decision-making about education. Then they provide a framework for individual decision-makers that enables them to combine values and evidence in the evaluation of educational policy options. Finally they delve into the particular policy issues of school finance, school accountability, and school choice, and they show how decision makers might approach them in the light of this decision-making framework. The authors are not advocated particular policy choices, however. The focus instead is a smart framework that will make it easier for policymakers (and readers) to identify and think through what they disagree with others about.

Addicted to Reform

Addicted to Reform
Author: John Merrow
Publisher: The New Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2017-08-15
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1620972433

The prize-winning PBS correspondent's provocative antidote to America's misguided approaches to K-12 school reform During an illustrious four-decade career at NPR and PBS, John Merrow—winner of the George Polk Award, the Peabody Award, and the McGraw Prize—reported from every state in the union, as well as from dozens of countries, on everything from the rise of district-wide cheating scandals and the corporate greed driving an ADD epidemic to teacher-training controversies and America's obsession with standardized testing. Along the way, he taught in a high school, at a historically black college, and at a federal penitentiary. Now, the revered education correspondent of PBS NewsHour distills his best thinking on education into a twelve-step approach to fixing a K–12 system that Merrow describes as being "addicted to reform" but unwilling to address the real issue: American public schools are ill-equipped to prepare young people for the challenges of the twenty-first century. This insightful book looks at how to turn digital natives into digital citizens and why it should be harder to become a teacher but easier to be one. Merrow offers smart, essential chapters—including "Measure What Matters," and "Embrace Teachers"—that reflect his countless hours spent covering classrooms as well as corridors of power. His signature candid style of reportage comes to life as he shares lively anecdotes, schoolyard tales, and memories that are at once instructive and endearing. Addicted to Reform is written with the kind of passionate concern that could come only from a lifetime devoted to the people and places that constitute the foundation of our nation. It is a "big book" that forms an astute and urgent blueprint for providing a quality education to every American child.

Inquiry as Stance

Inquiry as Stance
Author: Marilyn Cochran-Smith
Publisher: Teachers College Press
Total Pages: 417
Release: 2015-04-25
Genre: Education
ISBN: 080777216X

In this long-awaited sequel to Inside/Outside: Teacher Research and Knowledge, two leaders in the field of practitioner research offer a radically different view of the relationship of knowledge and practice and of the role of practitioners in educational change. In their new book, the authors put forward the notion of inquiry as stance as a challenge to the current arrangements and outcomes of schools and other educational contexts. They call for practitioner researchers in local settings across the United States and around the world to ally their work with others as part of larger social and intellectual movements for social change and social justice. Part I is a set of five essays that conceptualize inquiry as a stance and as a transformative theory of action that repositions the collective intellectual capacity of practitioners. Part II is a set of eight chapters written by eight differently positioned practitioners who are or were engaged in practitioner research in K–12 schools or teacher education. Part III offers a unique format for exploring inquiry as stance in the next generation—a readers’ theatre script that juxtaposes and co-mingles 20 practitioners’ voices in a performance-oriented format. Together the three parts of the book point to rich possibilities for practitioner inquiry in the next generation. Contributors: Rebecca Akin, Gerald Campano, Delvin Dinkins, Kelly A. Harper, Gillian Maimon, Gary McPhail, Swati Mehta, Rob Simon,and Diane Waff “Cochran-Smith and Lytle once again prove themselves to be among the best at melding theory and practice. Instead of merely making the case for practitioner inquiry they go the next step to show us exactly what this genre brings to our field—rigor, relevance, and passion. The interplay of conceptual clarity and powerful exemplars make this a text we will read well into the next decade.” —Gloria Ladson-Billings, University of Wisconsin–Madison “Once again, Marilyn Cochran-Smith and Susan Lytle point the way to new and hopeful understandings of practitioner research. Rather than blame teachers for all that is wrong with education, they and their fellow authors remind us that if school reform is to have any chance of fulfilling its stated goal of equal opportunity for all students, teachers must have a significant voice in research, policy, and practice. With its focus on social justice and its view of practitioner research as transformative, this is a powerful and welcome sequel to their classic Inside/Outside.” —Sonia Nieto, Professor Emerita, University of Massachusetts, Amherst “Inquiry as Stance should be a blockbuster. This brilliant sequel re-calibrates relationships between practitioner inquiry and social justice.” —Carole Edelsky, Professor Emerita, Arizona State University “This optimistic and generous book is sure to become a central reference for teacher-researchers in K–16 schools and their colleagues and supporters throughout the system.” —Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, Director, National Programs and Site Development, National Writing Project, University of California, Berkeley “This view of the intellectual and personal work of teaching is a major counter to the contemporary emphasis on testing and packaged curricula.” —Cynthia Ballenger, reading specialist, Cambridge Public Schools “Once again Cochran-Smith, Lytle, and their colleagues bring us an invaluable book on the enormous possibilities of practitioner research.” —Luis C. Moll, College of Education, University of Arizona

Literacy Policies and Practices in Conflict

Literacy Policies and Practices in Conflict
Author: Nancy Rankie Shelton
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 164
Release: 2014-12-05
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 113631217X

Current U.S. school reform efforts link school success, student achievement, and teacher performance to standardized tests and narrowly prescribed curricula. How do test-driven, mandated curricula in urban school systems overtly and subtly impact teachers’ efforts to provide technologically advanced, challenging classroom environments that foster literacy development for all students? How do these federal policies affect instruction at the classroom level? The premise of this book is that, in order for teachers to confront and/or counteract the pressures placed on them from these policies, it is necessary to first understand them. This book takes a close look at the tensions that exist between federal mandates and contemporary literacy needs and how those tensions impact classroom practices. Providing a clear sociopolitical overview and analysis, it combines theoretical explanations with examples from current ethnographic research. Readers are challenged to (re)consider whether meeting test performance benchmarks should be the hallmark of school success when the goal of test performance supersedes the goal of producing highly literate, productive citizens of the future.

Educational Change

Educational Change
Author: Clifford H. Edwards
Publisher: R&L Education
Total Pages: 213
Release: 2011
Genre: Education
ISBN: 160709987X

"Clifford H. Edwards presents a convincing case for the power of learning communities to more genuinely reflect the nature of the broader American society and to more authentically empower students as learners. How else can it be than the means necessarily being consistent with the ends? `Shades of John Dewey,' you might say! Yes, but more validly, the research findings of Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky are extensively actualized---that is, knowledge is constructed by the individual child/learner while immersed in a social context, whether family or school. Traditional education has always ignored how children truly learn, resulting in very limited learning outcomes---while the classroom itself has often been a scene of contrary wills between teacher and student."---Lary M. Arnoldsen, EdD, emeritus professor of secondary education, Brigham Young University --