Reinterpreting Urban School Reform

Reinterpreting Urban School Reform PDF Author: Louis F. Miron
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791486923
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Get Book

Book Description
A critical look at urban school reform efforts.

Reinterpreting Urban School Reform

Reinterpreting Urban School Reform PDF Author: Louis F. Miron
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791486923
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Get Book

Book Description
A critical look at urban school reform efforts.

It Takes a City

It Takes a City PDF Author: Paul T. Hill
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 9780815723554
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Get Book

Book Description
Mayoral takeovers of big city public education systems are desperation measures. After decades of decline in school quality, something must be done to make sure city children learn enough to function as adults in American society. But how can city leaders make a real difference? This book, a sequel to Fixing Urban Schools (Brookings, 1998), is a practical guide for mayors, civic leaders, school board members, and involved citizens. Based on case studies of city reform initiatives in Boston, Memphis, New York City District #2, San Antonio, San Francisco, and Seattle, the book provides practical guidance on how to formulate a plan bold enough to work and how to deal with political opposition to change. It concludes that mayors and private sector leaders must stay engaged in education reform by creating new public-private institutions to support high quality schools.

A Decade of Urban School Reform

A Decade of Urban School Reform PDF Author: S. Paul Reville
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 338

Get Book

Book Description
A Decade of Urban School Reform looks at this critical era in the Boston schools and distills valuable insights and lessons for school leaders and reformers everywhere. In the last decade, the Boston Public Schools has undergone critical reforms that have been of intense interest to school leaders and policymakers throughout the country. Under the leadership of superintendent Thomas Payzant, the Boston schools implemented extensive reform strategies that yielded notable results. Fittingly, at the end of Payzant's superintendency in September 2006, the Boston Public Schools received the Broad Prize for Urban Education for being the most improved urban school district in the country. With chapters that explore questions pertaining to governance, human resources, instruction, data collection, disabilities, community engagement, and other topics, the book offers a detailed, comprehensive portrait of a school system managing the complex and daunting tasks of system-wide reform. The result is a timely, in-depth contribution to the small group of indispensable writings on urban school reform.

Spinning Wheels

Spinning Wheels PDF Author: Frederick M. Hess
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 9780815719953
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 252

Get Book

Book Description
Almost everyone agrees that America's urban schools are a mess. But while this agreement has fostered widespread support for aggressive reform, Frederick Hess argues that much of what ails urban education is actually the result of continuous or fragmentary reform. Hess explains that political incentives drive school superintendents to promote reforms--to demonstrate that they are "making a difference." Superintendents have to do this quickly, both because their tenure is usually three years or less and because urban communities are anxious to see educational improvement. However, the nature of urban school districts makes it very difficult to demonstrate concrete short-term improvement. The result is what he terms "policy churn," which distracts teachers and principals from efforts to refine classroom teaching while seldom resulting in successful long-term changes. Hess argues that policymakers have misallocated resources by pursuing the "right" structure or the "best" pedagogy while paying insufficient attention to the more mundane--and more important--questions of how to implement, refine, and sustain a particular approach in their particular district. Hess explains that previous research on high-performing schools suggests that the best schools are characterized by focus and by an ability to develop expertise in specific approaches to teaching and learning. To help educators and policymakers adopt and nurture a focused agenda, he recommends institutional changes that increase the effectiveness of performance outcomes and reduce the incentives to emphasize symbolic reform.

Teachers and Crisis

Teachers and Crisis PDF Author: Dennis Carlson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351612662
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Get Book

Book Description
Advocates of the ‘back-to-basics’ movement argue that a basic skills programme ensures that students are educated to a minimum level of literacy required to enter the labour force. Critics charge that these efforts only increase school bureaucracy and undermine teachers’ autonomy in the classroom. First published in 1992, this book moves beyond the rhetoric surrounding the basic skills debate by providing a thorough yet critical examination of urban education, urban school reform, and teachers’ work culture. Beginning with a sparkling theoretical discussion of the problems and pitfalls of back-to-basics reform efforts, author Dennis Carlson argues persuasively that the movement’s exclusive emphasis on functional literacy skills rather than higher-order thinking assures that students will remain on the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder. He then proceeds with an empirical study of two urban high school districts in which he documents the latent effects of back-to-basics on teachers’ work lives as well as staff-administration clashes over efforts to implement restructuring programmes. This book offers a sensible and sophisticated treatment of some of the important issues facing urban education and will be of great interest to anyone working in Education.

Urban Renewal and School Reform in Baltimore

Urban Renewal and School Reform in Baltimore PDF Author: Erkin Özay
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000093352
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 185

Get Book

Book Description
Urban Renewal and School Reform in Baltimore examines the role of the contemporary public school as an instrument of urban design. The central case study in this book, Henderson-Hopkins, is a PK-8 campus serving as the civic centerpiece of the East Baltimore Development Initiative. This study reflects on the persistent notions of urban renewal and their effectiveness for addressing the needs of disadvantaged neighborhoods and vulnerable communities. Situating the master plan and school project in the history and contemporary landscape of urban development and education debates, this book provides a detailed account of how Henderson-Hopkins sought to address several reformist objectives, such as improvement of the urban context, pedagogic outcomes, and holistic well-being of students. Bridging facets of urban design, development, and education policy, this book contributes to an expanded agenda for understanding the spatial implications of school-led redevelopment and school reform.

Urban School Reform

Urban School Reform PDF Author: Frederick M. Hess
Publisher: Harvard Education Press
ISBN: 1612500757
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 380

Get Book

Book Description
An indispensable book for administrators, policymakers, scholars, and practitioners, Urban School Reform presents a revealing portrait of reform efforts while identifying the full range of issues that education reformers will need to address in districts across the country in the years ahead. Today's urban school reformers face a bewildering array of challenges. Urgent problems pertaining to governance, management, labor relations, classroom instruction, and numerous other areas face those who wish to reform and improve urban schools. Having undergone one of the nation's most comprehensive school reform efforts in recent years, San Diego has been a site of nationwide interest--one that is uncommonly well suited to learning about the challenges facing all reformers. This timely book addresses the full range of critical issues pertaining to urban school reform by looking closely at the recent reform efforts in San Diego. In essays by an impressive gathering of scholars and practitioners from across the country, the book considers crucial dimensions of reform efforts in the San Diego schools, including performance, governance, the external environment, central leadership and management, district infrastructure, support services, and school-level instructional efforts. The result is a full-scale assessment of San Diego's reform efforts--a record of unmistakable relevance and value to other urban reform movements throughout the United States.

Urban School Reform

Urban School Reform PDF Author: Frederick M. Hess
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 392

Get Book

Book Description
An indispensable book for administrators, policymakers, scholars, and practitioners, Urban School Reform presents a revealing portrait of reform efforts while identifying the full range of issues that education reformers will need to address in districts across the country in the years ahead. Today's urban school reformers face a bewildering array of challenges. Urgent problems pertaining to governance, management, labor relations, classroom instruction, and numerous other areas face those who wish to reform and improve urban schools. Having undergone one of the nation's most comprehensive school reform efforts in recent years, San Diego has been a site of nationwide interest--one that is uncommonly well suited to learning about the challenges facing all reformers. This timely book addresses the full range of critical issues pertaining to urban school reform by looking closely at the recent reform efforts in San Diego. In essays by an impressive gathering of scholars and practitioners from across the country, the book considers crucial dimensions of reform efforts in the San Diego schools, including performance, governance, the external environment, central leadership and management, district infrastructure, support services, and school-level instructional efforts. The result is a full-scale assessment of San Diego's reform efforts--a record of unmistakable relevance and value to other urban reform movements throughout the United States.

Politics, Language, and Culture

Politics, Language, and Culture PDF Author: Joseph W. Check
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313012814
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 239

Get Book

Book Description
Politics, language, and culture are three of the most powerful forces affecting education today, yet they have been little discussed in relation to systemic school reform, the new status quo of urban schools. This book looks at their effects through the eyes of teachers, administrators, and insider/outsiders who are actually living reform at the school level in four widely different urban school systems: Chicago, San Francisco and Oakland, California, and Boston. The book also creates a statistical and conceptual picture of urban education and school reform as national phenomena with deep historical roots, and offers a composite case study of an urban elementary school undergoing reform. The author argues that urban school reform is failing becasue its basic strategy is misguided and because reform thinking has consciously ignored three essential sources of knowledge about school change. Strategically, efforts for reform have relied heavily on the widespread replication of nationally promoted exemplary programs. This approach assumes that local schools lack the knowledge and will to solve their own problems and require prescriptive intervention from national models. In fact, the exemplary programs approach has yielded very limited success. What is needed instead is the creation and long-term support of unique, local exemplary contexts that combine best-practice approaches with local knowledge, conditions, and resources.

Community Organizing for Urban School Reform

Community Organizing for Urban School Reform PDF Author: Dennis Shirley
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292774958
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Get Book

Book Description
Observers of all political persuasions agree that our urban schools are in a state of crisis. Yet most efforts at school reform treat schools as isolated institutions, disconnected from the communities in which they are embedded and insulated from the political realities which surround them. Community Organizing for Urban School Reform tells the story of a radically different approach to educational change. Using a case study approach, Dennis Shirley describes how working-class parents, public school teachers, clergy, social workers, business partners, and a host of other engaged citizens have worked to improve education in inner-city schools. Their combined efforts are linked through the community organizations of the Industrial Areas Foundation, which have developed a network of over seventy "Alliance Schools" in poor and working-class neighborhoods throughout Texas. This deeply democratic struggle for school reform contains important lessons for all of the nation's urban areas. It provides a striking point of contrast to orthodox models of change and places the political empowerment of low-income parents at the heart of genuine school improvement and civic renewal.