| Author | : Louis M. Gomez |
| Publisher | : Rowman & Littlefield |
| Total Pages | : 381 |
| Release | : 2023 |
| Genre | : Educational change |
| ISBN | : 1538173239 |
"A ground-breaking, practical resource for the burgeoning practice of continuous improvement in educational schools and districts nationwide"--
| Author | : Anthony S. Bryk |
| Publisher | : Harvard Education Press |
| Total Pages | : 309 |
| Release | : 2015-03-01 |
| Genre | : Education |
| ISBN | : 161250793X |
As a field, education has largely failed to learn from experience. Time after time, promising education reforms fall short of their goals and are abandoned as other promising ideas take their place. In Learning to Improve, the authors argue for a new approach. Rather than “implementing fast and learning slow,” they believe educators should adopt a more rigorous approach to improvement that allows the field to “learn fast to implement well.” Using ideas borrowed from improvement science, the authors show how a process of disciplined inquiry can be combined with the use of networks to identify, adapt, and successfully scale up promising interventions in education. Organized around six core principles, the book shows how “networked improvement communities” can bring together researchers and practitioners to accelerate learning in key areas of education. Examples include efforts to address the high rates of failure among students in community college remedial math courses and strategies for improving feedback to novice teachers. Learning to Improve offers a new paradigm for research and development in education that promises to be a powerful driver of improvement for the nation’s schools and colleges.
| Author | : Kenneth K. Wong |
| Publisher | : Georgetown University Press |
| Total Pages | : 271 |
| Release | : 2007 |
| Genre | : Education |
| ISBN | : 1589011791 |
In 2002 the No Child Left Behind Act rocked America's schools with new initiatives for results-based accountability. But years before NCLB was signed, a new movement was already under way by mayors to take control of city schools from school boards and integrate the management of public education with the overall governing of the city. The Education Mayor is a critical look at mayoral control of urban school districts, beginning with Boston's schools in 1992 and examining more than 100 school districts in 40 states. The authors seek to answer four central questions: * What does school governance look like under mayoral leadership? * How does mayoral control affect school and student performance? * What are the key factors for success or failure of integrated governance? * How does mayoral control effect practical changes in schools and classrooms? The results of their examination indicate that, although mayoral control of schools may not be appropriate for every district, it can successfully emphasize accountability across the education system, providing more leverage for each school district to strengthen its educational infrastructure and improve student performance. Based on extensive quantitative data as well as case studies, this analytical study provides a balanced look at America's education reform. As the first multidistrict empirical examination and most comprehensive overall evaluation of mayoral school reform, The Education Mayor is a must-read for academics, policymakers, educational administrators, and civic and political leaders concerned about public education.
| Author | : Larry Cuban |
| Publisher | : Teachers College Press |
| Total Pages | : 191 |
| Release | : 2014-04-15 |
| Genre | : Education |
| ISBN | : 0807774375 |
Drastic reform measures are being implemented in growing numbers of urban communities as the public’s patience has finally run out with perpetually nonperforming public schools. This authoritative and eye-opening volume examines governance changes in six cities during the 1990s, where either mayoral control of schools has occurred or where noneducators have been appointed to lead school districts. Featuring up-close, in-depth case studies of Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, Boston, San Diego, and Seattle, this book explores the reasons why these cities chose to alter their traditional school governance structures and analyzes what happened when the reforms were implemented and whether or not teachers and students performed better because of them. “Provides useful perspectives on the complexities of educational change that is relevant to all kinds of school systems . . . of interest to elected officials, other policymakers, business leaders, and educators.” —Richard W. Riley, Former U.S. Secretary of Education “A ‘must-read’ for policymakers intent on improving the academic performance of children in America’s urban centers . . . offers important insight and an excellent overview of the reforms being tested in the six urban centers.” —Ted Sanders, President, Education Commission of the States “Every urban political official, indeed, every governor, business leader, and state legislator should study the urban school reforms described in this book” —James B. Hunt, Jr., Former Governor of North Carolina and Chairman, James B. Hunt Jr. Institute for Educational Leadership and Policy “A ‘must-read’ for educators. This book clearly defines what it takes to make significant changes in urban districts” —Floretta McKenzie, Former Superintendent, District of Columbia Public Schools
| Author | : David Osborne |
| Publisher | : Bloomsbury Publishing USA |
| Total Pages | : 433 |
| Release | : 2017-09-05 |
| Genre | : Education |
| ISBN | : 1632869918 |
From David Osborne, the author of Reinventing Government--a biting analysis of the failure of America's public schools and a comprehensive plan for revitalizing American education. In Reinventing America's Schools, David Osborne, one of the world's foremost experts on public sector reform, offers a comprehensive analysis of the charter school movements and presents a theory that will do for American schools what his New York Times bestseller Reinventing Government did for public governance in 1992. In 2005, when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, the city got an unexpected opportunity to recreate their school system from scratch. The state's Recovery School District (RSD), created to turn around failing schools, gradually transformed all of its New Orleans schools into charter schools, and the results are shaking the very foundations of American education. Test scores, school performance scores, graduation and dropout rates, ACT scores, college-going rates, and independent studies all tell the same story: the city's RSD schools have tripled their effectiveness in eight years. Now other cities are following suit, with state governments reinventing failing schools in Newark, Camden, Memphis, Denver, Indianapolis, Cleveland, and Oakland. In this book, Osborne uses compelling stories from cities like New Orleans and lays out the history and possible future of public education. Ultimately, he uses his extensive research to argue that in today's world, we should treat every public school like a charter school and grant them autonomy, accountability, diversity of school designs, and parental choice.
| Author | : Eric A. Hanushek |
| Publisher | : Brookings Institution Press |
| Total Pages | : 224 |
| Release | : 2010-12-01 |
| Genre | : Political Science |
| ISBN | : 0815717687 |
Educational reform is a big business in the United States. Parents, educators, and policymakers generally agree that something must be done to improve schools, but the consensus ends there. The myriad of reform documents and policy discussions that have appeared over the past decade have not helped to pinpoint exactly what should be done. The case for investment in education is an economic one: schooling improves the productivity and earnings of individuals and promotes stronger economic growth and better functioning of society. Recent trends in schooling have, however, lessened the value of society's investments as costs have risen dramatically while student performance has stayed flat or even fallen. The task is to improve performance while controlling costs. This book is the culmination of extensive discussions among a panel of economists led by Eric Hanushek. They conclude that economic considerations have been entirely absent from the development of educational policies and that economic reality is sorely needed in discussions of new policies. The book outlines an improvement plan that emphasizes changing incentives in schools and gathering information about effective approaches. Available research and analysis demonstrates that current central decisionmaking has worked poorly. Concentrating on inputs such as pupil-teacher ratios or teacher graduate degrees appears quite inferior to systems that directly reward performance. Nonetheless, since experience with such alternatives is very limited, a program of extensive evaluation appears to be in order. Attempts to institute radical change on the basis of currently available information involve substantial risks of failure. Many people today find proposals such as charter schools, expanded use of merit pay, or educational vouchers to be appealing. Yet there is little evidence of their effectiveness, and widespread adoption of these proposals is sure to run into substantial problems of im
| Author | : David L. Kirp |
| Publisher | : Oxford University Press |
| Total Pages | : 271 |
| Release | : 2015 |
| Genre | : Education |
| ISBN | : 0199391092 |
In Improbable Scholars, David L. Kirp challenges the conventional wisdom about public schools and education reform in America through an in-depth look at Union City, New Jersey's high-performing urban school district. In this compelling study, Kirp reveals Union's city's revolutionary secret: running an exemplary school system doesn't demand heroics, just hard and steady work.
| Author | : Anthony Bryk |
| Publisher | : Russell Sage Foundation |
| Total Pages | : 238 |
| Release | : 2002-09-05 |
| Genre | : Education |
| ISBN | : 161044096X |
Most Americans agree on the necessity of education reform, but there is little consensus about how this goal might be achieved. The rhetoric of standards and vouchers has occupied center stage, polarizing public opinion and affording little room for reflection on the intangible conditions that make for good schools. Trust in Schools engages this debate with a compelling examination of the importance of social relationships in the successful implementation of school reform. Over the course of three years, Bryk and Schneider, together with a diverse team of other researchers and school practitioners, studied reform in twelve Chicago elementary schools. Each school was undergoing extensive reorganization in response to the Chicago School Reform Act of 1988, which called for greater involvement of parents and local community leaders in their neighborhood schools. Drawing on years longitudinal survey and achievement data, as well as in-depth interviews with principals, teachers, parents, and local community leaders, the authors develop a thorough account of how effective social relationships—which they term relational trust—can serve as a prime resource for school improvement. Using case studies of the network of relationships that make up the school community, Bryk and Schneider examine how the myriad social exchanges that make up daily life in a school community generate, or fail to generate, a successful educational environment. The personal dynamics among teachers, students, and their parents, for example, influence whether students regularly attend school and sustain their efforts in the difficult task of learning. In schools characterized by high relational trust, educators were more likely to experiment with new practices and work together with parents to advance improvements. As a result, these schools were also more likely to demonstrate marked gains in student learning. In contrast, schools with weak trust relations saw virtually no improvement in their reading or mathematics scores. Trust in Schools demonstrates convincingly that the quality of social relationships operating in and around schools is central to their functioning, and strongly predicts positive student outcomes. This book offer insights into how trust can be built and sustained in school communities, and identifies some features of public school systems that can impede such development. Bryk and Schneider show how a broad base of trust across a school community can provide a critical resource as education professional and parents embark on major school reforms. A Volume in the American Sociological Association's Rose Series in Sociology
| Author | : David K. Cohen |
| Publisher | : University of Chicago Press |
| Total Pages | : 236 |
| Release | : 2013-12-06 |
| Genre | : Education |
| ISBN | : 022608941X |
One of the great challenges now facing education reformers in the United States is how to devise a consistent and intelligent framework for instruction that will work across the nation’s notoriously fragmented and politically conflicted school systems. Various programs have tried to do that, but only a few have succeeded. Improvement by Design looks at three different programs, seeking to understand why two of them—America’s Choice and Success for All—worked, and why the third—Accelerated Schools Project—did not. The authors identify four critical puzzles that the successful programs were able to solve: design, implementation, improvement, and sustainability. Pinpointing the specific solutions that clearly improved instruction, they identify the key elements that all successful reform programs share. Offering urgently needed guidance for state and local school systems as they attempt to respond to future reform proposals, Improvement by Design gets America one step closer to truly successful education systems.
