Results by title
76 books match the query 'Educational change' and 5 start with r
Realizing Educational Rights
Advancing School Reform through Courts and CommunitiesAnne Newman
University of Chicago Press, 2013
Newman argues that an adequate K–12 education is the right of all citizens, as a matter of equality, and emphasizes that this right must be shielded from the sway of partisan and majoritarian policy making far more than it currently is. She then examines how educational rights are realized in our current democratic structure, offering two case studies of leading types of rights-based activism: school finance litigation on the state level and the mobilization of citizens through community-based organizations. Bringing these case studies together with rich philosophical analysis, Realizing Educational Rights advances understanding of the relationships among moral and legal rights, education reform, and democratic politics.
Reforming the Reform
Problems of Public Schooling in the American Welfare StateSusan L. Moffitt, Michaela Krug O'Neill, and David K. Cohen
University of Chicago Press, 2023
School reform is almost always born out of big dreams and well-meaning desires to change the status quo. But between lofty reform legislation and the students whose education is at stake, there are numerous additional policies and policymakers who determine how reforms operate. Even in the best cases, school reform initiatives can perpetuate problems created by earlier reforms or existing injustices, all while introducing new complications. In Reforming the Reform, political scientist Susan L. Moffitt, education policy scholar Michaela Krug O’Neill, and the late policy and education scholar David K. Cohen take on a wide-ranging examination of the many intricacies of school reform.
With a particular focus on policymakers in the spaces between legislation and implementation, such as the countless school superintendents and district leaders tasked with developing new policies in the unique context of their district or schools, the authors identify common problems that arise when trying to operationalize ambitious reform ideas. Their research draws on more than 250 interviews with administrators in Tennessee and California (chosen as contrasts for their different political makeup and centralization of the education system) and is presented here alongside survey data from across the United States as well as archival data to demonstrate how public schools shoulder enormous responsibilities for the American social safety net. They provide a general explanation for problems facing social policy reforms in federalist systems (including healthcare) and offer pathways forward for education policy in particular.
Reinventing Public Education
How Contracting Can Transform America's SchoolsPaul Hill, Lawrence C. Pierce, and James W. Guthrie
University of Chicago Press, 1997
Reinventing Public Education shows how contracting would radically change the way we operate our schools, while keeping them public and accessible to all, and making them better able to meet standards of achievement and equity. Using public funds, local school boards would select private providers to operate individual schools under formal contracts specifying the type and quality of instruction.
In a hands-on, concrete fashion, the authors provide a thorough explanation of the pros and cons of school contracting and how it would work in practice. They show how contracting would free local school boards from operating schools so they can focus on improving educational policy; how it would allow parents to choose the best school for their children; and, finally, how it would ensure that schools are held accountable and academic standards are met.
While retaining a strong public role in education, contracting enables schools to be more imaginative, adaptable, and suited to the needs of children and families. In presenting an alternative vision for America’s schools, Reinventing Public Education is too important to be ignored.
Remaking the American University
Market-Smart and Mission-CenteredZemsky, Robert
Rutgers University Press, 2005
At one time, universities educated new generations and were a source of social change. Today colleges and universities are less places of public purpose, than agencies of personal advantage. Remaking the American University provides a penetrating analysis of the ways market forces have shaped and distorted the behaviors, purposes, and ultimately the missions of universities and colleges over the past half-century.
The authors describe how a competitive preoccupation with rankings and markets published by the media spawned an admissions arms race that drains institutional resources and energies. Equally revealing are the depictions of the ways faculty distance themselves from their universities with the resulting increase in the number of administrators, which contributes substantially to institutional costs. Other chapters focus on the impact of intercollegiate athletics on educational mission, even among selective institutions; on the unforeseen result of higher education's "outsourcing" a substantial share of the scholarly publication function to for-profit interests; and on the potentially dire consequences of today's zealous investments in e-learning.
A central question extends through this series of explorations: Can universities and colleges today still choose to be places of public purpose? In the answers they provide, both sobering and enlightening, the authors underscore a consistent and powerful lesson-academic institutions cannot ignore the workings of the markets. The challenge ahead is to learn how to better use those markets to achieve public purposes.
Response to Reform
Composition and the Professionalization of TeachingMargaret J. Marshall
Southern Illinois University Press, 2003
Response to Reform: Composition and the Professionalization of Teaching critiques the politics of labor and gender biases inherent in the composition workplace that prevent literacy teachers from attaining professional status and respect. Scrutinizing the relationship between scholarship and teaching, Margaret J. Marshall calls for a reconceptualization of what it means to prepare for and enter the field of composition instruction.
Interrogating the approach the education system takes to certify teachers without actually “professionalizing” their careers, Marshall contends that these programs rely on outdated rhetorics of labor that only widen the gap between teaching and other professional jobs. Such attempts to re-educate literacy teachers exploit and marginalize their work, and thus prevent them from claiming the status of academic professionals. In providing an overview of the history of and language used to literacy instruction, she also points out that while women are overrepresented in composition instruction, they are underrepresented in tenure track and administrative positions.
To correct and combat these inequities, Marshall advocates an alternate alignment of power structures and rhetorical choices. In a wide-ranging survey that sheds new light on the composition workplace as well as higher education at large, Response to Reform: Composition and the Professionalization of Teaching boldly asks us to do away with the reductive language we inherit from the past that characterize teaching and professionalization, as well as our customary responses to public criticism of education. The result is a new articulation of composition as a meritorious profession.