1. History of U.S. Education
1.1. 1917 Thomas Jefferson writes a Bill for a More General Diffusion of Knowledge, outlining his views on the popularization of elementary and grammar school education
1.2. 1833 Oberlin College in Ohio admits women, becoming the first coeducational college in the US
1.3. 1837 Horace Mann became the first secretary of the board of education. Mann lobbied for a state board of ed, and the Massachusetts legislature created one in 1837. He abandoned a successful career and struggled for free public education
1.3.1. Horace Mann, one of America's greatest reformers
1.4. 2002 President George Bush signs into law the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, aimed at eliminating student achievement gaps by 2014
1.4.1. http://www2.ed.gov/nclb/landing.jhtml
1.5. The Industrial Revolution propelled America forward to the technological society that it is today. Just as the schools today are undergoing a transformation due in part to rapidly changing technology, altered life-styles, and new, massive waves of immigrants, it could be argues that the schools at the turn
1.6. Psychologists as well as philosophers became actively involved in educational reform.
1.7. Committee of Ten; essentially the Cardinal Principles, the main goal of secondary education
1.7.1. Health
1.7.1.1. Command of fundamental processes
1.7.1.1.1. Ethical character (Ravitch, 1983, p.146
1.7.1.2. Worthy home-membership
1.7.1.2.1. Vocation
2. Curriculum & Pedagogy
2.1. The Developmentalist Curriculum is implemented with the interest and need of the student rather than what society thinks they need ~ I could advocate for this type of pedagogy ~ when students are having their needs and interests considered, they are more apt to stay engaged in their educational journey
2.2. The sociology of the curriculum concentrates on the function of what is taught in schools and its relationship to the role of schools within the society (pg. 291)
2.3. Sociologists of curriculum have focused on not only what is taught but WHY it is taught (pg. 291)
2.4. Conflict theorists believe that schools' hidden curriculum teaches the attitudes and behaviors required in the workplace and that the formal curriculum represents the dominant cultural interests in society
2.5. Conflict theorists do not believe that schools teach liberal values and attitudes such as tolerance and respect (pg 292).
2.6. With the developmentalist curriculum, the teacher is not the giver of all knowledge, but rather a coach or guide for student achievement and growth
3. Schools As Organizations
3.1. State Senator~ Jeff Sessions
3.2. House of Representatives~ James Abercrombie~ James Abercrombie~
3.3. Superintendent ~ Tommy Bice
3.4. Madison County Superintendent ~ Matt Massey
3.5. Huntsville City Schools Superintendent ~ Casey Wardinsky
3.6. The US Educational System is more complex than other countries: Most have a National Ministry of Education or a Dept of Ed that is able to exert considerable influence over the entire educational system (pg 224),
3.7. Great Britain ~ the educational system is more open and less class stratified than it was a quarter century ago. The national curriculum has also eliminated the comprehensive secondary school, which offered non-college curriculum for its mostly working-class students
3.8. The Japanese system of education is highly competitive. Most students excel in every measured international standard
3.9. Germany is significantly different than the US in regards to education. They select and sort their children at a relatively young age and track them into a tripartite system of secondary education ~ Their system is pretty much opposite of that in the US
4. Politics of Education
4.1. Conservative
4.1.1. Individuals and groups must compete in the social environment in order to survive. Human progress is dependent on individual initiative and drive (pg 23)
4.1.2. A social feature of the conservative viewpoint is the belief that the free market or market economy of capitalism is both the most economically productive system and the system most respectful to the human need (pg 24)
4.1.3. Sees the role of school as providing the necessary educational training to ensure that the most talented and hard-working individuals receive the tools necessary to maximize economic and social productivity.
4.2. Traditional Visions of Education
4.3. tend to view the schools necessary to the transmission of the traditional values of U.S. society, such as hard work, family unity, & individual initiative (pg 26)
4.4. believe schools should pass on the best of what was and what is (pg 27)
5. Sociological Perspectives
5.1. Employment opportunities increase when students take their education seriously. Most students that graduate from college will lead to greater employment opportunities. (pg. 122)
5.2. School structures influence student outcomes
5.3. Teachers have a huge impact of student learning. They are role models
5.4. De Facto Segregation ~
5.4.1. http://ic.galegroup.com/ic/uhic/ReferenceDetailsPage/ReferenceDetailsWindow?zid=ec317786f6e0d24f6124a3982518bc78&action=2&catId=GALE%7C00000000MXNC&documentId=GALE%7CCX3401803794&userGroupName=mlin_s_ccreg&jsid=4d647bb20e73906a0a4f88072e81205b
5.5. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/de_facto_segregation
5.6. More highly educated people are more likely to read newspapers, books, magazines, and take part in pubic affairs. (pg. 121)
5.7. Americans believe that schools have a significant impact on learning and on social and economic mobility.
5.8. Research has indicated that the more education individuals receive, the more likely they are to read newspapers, books, magazines, and take part in politics and social / public affairs (pg. 121)
6. Getting started
6.1. Add a sibling idea by hitting ENTER
6.2. This is a sibling idea
6.3. Add a child idea by hitting TAB
6.3.1. This is a child idea
6.4. Choose icons and images to decorate your mind map
6.5. Connect topics with the arrow tool in the upper left corner of your screen
6.6. Add links, tasks or files to your topics, using the widgets in the sidebar
6.7. Change your map layout by opening the layout options in the upper left corner of your screen
6.8. Advanced
6.8.1. Open the Theme menu from the bottom of your map editor to change your map theme
6.8.2. Create a presentation of your mind map by clicking the presentation icon in the bottom left corner of your screen
6.8.2.1. Simply hold down COMMAND i.e. CTRL and Click & Drag to create a slide for one or multiple topics
6.8.2.2. Set transitions for your slides
6.8.2.3. Click "Start Slideshow" to view your presentation
6.8.3. Open the Sharing Settings from the bottom of your map editor to share the map with a friend or publish it to the web
6.8.3.1. You can share your map with anyone via email
6.8.3.2. You can publish your map and enable anyone with an internet access to find it
6.8.3.3. You can embed your map on a blog or website
7. Philosophy of Education
7.1. PRAGMATISM
7.1.1. Encourages people to find processes that work in order to achieve their desired ends (pg. 186)
7.1.2. GENERIC NOTIONS: The school became an "embryonic community" where children could learn skills both experientially as well as from books, in addition to traditional information, which would enable them to work cooperatively in a democratic society (pg. 187).
7.1.3. GOAL OF EDUCATION: Dewey's vision in his view that the role of the school was to integrate children into not just any society, but a democratic one (pg. 188).
7.1.4. ROLE OF TEACHER: The teacher is no longer the giver of knowledge; no longer the authoritarian; offers suggestions, poses questions, writes curriculum and must have a command of various disciplines in place
7.1.5. KEY RESEARCHERS:
7.1.5.1. William James
7.1.5.1.1. John Dewey
7.1.5.1.2. George Sanders Pierce
7.1.6. METHOD OF INSTRUCTION: problem-solving and inquiry based ; children work individually and then in groups; filed trips and projects implemented
7.1.7. CURRICULUM: core and integrated ; working from the known to the unknown (expanding environments)
8. Equality of Opportunity
8.1. For the wealthy student, the schools that they attend don't really relate to the money that they will inherit, and very poor students, their economic and social disadvantages are so profound that schools have little or almost no hope of altering their life chances (Sadovnik, et.al. pg 369)
8.2. http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2015/01/28/us-education-still-separate-and-unequa
8.3. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/five-things-know-todays-report-unequal-education/
8.4. An individuals race still has a large impact on the quality of education that they achieve, regardless of the school that they attend. A larger percentage of African American students are more likely to drop out of school verses whites.
8.5. In a society as segregated as that in the US, it is not surprising that minority students receive fewer and inferior educational opportunities than their white peers (Sadovnik, et. al. pg. 343).
8.6. It is not surprising that lower levels of proficiency are reflected by the fact that minorities, on average, have lower SAT scores than whites. Furthermore, this is also linked to being awarded scholarships to college.
8.7. Minorities, such as African Americans do not receive the same educational opportunities as whites, and their rewards for educational attainment are significantly less.
9. Educational Inequality
9.1. African American, and other ethnic groups are often negatively affected by societal and school processes, social class background has the most powerful effect on educational achievement and attainment (Sadovnik, et al pg 420)
9.2. The problems encountered by students whose first language is not English are increasingly the subject of educational research (Sadovnik, et al pg 420)
9.3. Student- Centered Within School Differences (academically) - significant range of student performance in relation to different schools
9.4. Research by Coleman, Kilgore, Hoffer, 1982 suggests that the significant within-school differences do in fact suggest that schools do make a difference
9.5. Differences in academic performance among groups of students within the same school states that there are individual differences in intelligence and initiative (Sadnovik, et. al pg 428)
9.6. School processes are central to understanding educational performance
10. Educational Reform
10.1. From the latter part of the 1980s through the end of the 1990s , reforms that emphasized teacher empowerment, school-based management, and school choice, charter schools, and tuition vouchers became the most crucial ones to consider (Sadnovik, pg 513)
10.2. 1983 A Nation at Risk ~ An attempt to improve the quality of US schools.
10.2.1. The decades include two specific waves of reform, the first beginning in 1983 and the second in 1985 and continuing through 2012, the period must be understood as a conservative response to the progressive reforms of the 1960s and the 1970s, if not, the entire progressive agenda for the twentieth century.
10.3. 1980s the major reform actors shifted from the federal to the state to the local levels. In the 1990s and 2000s, President Clinton's Goals 2000, President Bush's No Child Left Behind, and President Obama's Race to the Top, placed federal government, through the Department of ED, attempted to balance its ideological belief that education is not a federal governmental matter (Sadnovik, pg 512)
10.4. 1980s (late) ~ School Choice was at the forefront of the educational reform movement. Presidents Reagan and Bush supported choice and one influential White House report enumerated a number of reasons why choice was the right reform (pg 521)
10.5. Societal, Community, Economic, and Political Reform
10.5.1. State Intervention and Mayoral Control in Local School Districts
10.5.1.1. Some systems include school or district takeover as ultimate accountability measures; some provide only for takeover ; some indicate a preference for assistance to local boards and administrators, with takeover as a last resort
10.6. There are perceived disadvantages of state takeover: suggests that some local communities lack the capacity to operate effective public schools, and that the state has ready answers and personnel capable of turning around poor performance of the most educationally disadvantaged students (pg 536).
10.6.1. Takeover tends to rely on narrow learning measures (such as standardized test scores) as the primary criteria for takeover decisions (pg 536).