1. Educational Reform
1.1. Effective Teachers
1.1.1. No Child Left Behind requires that all schools have highly qualified teachers in every classroom.
1.1.2. Out-of-field teaching - teachers being assigned to teach subjects which do not match their training or education
1.1.3. Race to the Top funding and and new contracts like the one in Washington, D.C. have addressed some of these issues.
1.2. School Finance
1.2.1. Rodriguez v. San Antonio
1.2.2. Robinson v. Cahil
1.2.3. In 1990, the court ruled that more funding would be awarded to poorer school districts and to provide additional programs to eliminate disadvantages.
2. History of U.S. Education
2.1. Utilitarianism
2.1.1. Benjamin Franklin, 1749, 'Proposals Related to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania"
2.1.1.1. Mastery of process
2.1.1.2. Curriculum
2.1.1.2.1. Reading, writing, public speaking,, and art are means of understand creative expression
2.1.1.2.2. Mathematics - accounting,
2.1.1.2.3. Biology, history, geography, politics, languages
2.1.1.3. Self improvement through education
2.2. U.S. Education
2.2.1. Education hadn't become a very popular concept in the early U.S. until 1789 when the Tenth Amendment was added to provide public education.
2.2.2. By 1820 there was a movement for education for women. The Troy Female Seminary was opened in 1821.
2.2.3. By 1894 John Dewey advocated active learning, starting with the needs and interests of the child; he emphasized the role of the experience in education and introduced the notion of teacher as facilitator of learning rather than the font from which all knowledge flows.
3. Educational Inequality
3.1. School Centered Explanation
3.1.1. Curriculum and Ability Grouping
3.1.1.1. Dividing students into groups based on teacher recommendations, standardized test scores, and sometimes characteristics such as race, class, or gender
3.1.1.2. Critics of tracking (Oakes, 1985; Sadovnik, 1991b) suggest that homogeneous grouping results in unequal education for different groups, with differences in academic outcomes often due to the differences in school climate, expectations, pedagogic practices, and curriculum between tracks.
3.1.1.3. Albert Shanker (1991) stated that education in the United States assumes that students in the lower tracks are not capable of doing academic work and thus schools do not offer them an academically challenging curriculum.
3.1.1.4. Oakes ( 1985, 2005) suggested that the lower tracks are far more likely to have didactic, teacher-directed practices, with rote learning and fact-based evaluation. Higher tracks are more like to have more dialectical, student-centered practices, with discussion and thinking-based evaluation.
3.1.1.5. When tracking is based on different curricula, students in different curriculum groups receive essentially different educations within the same school.
3.2. Sociological Explanation
3.2.1. Interactionism
3.2.1.1. One must understand how people within institutions such as families and schools interact on a daily basis in order to comprehend the factors explaining academic success and failure.
3.2.1.2. Two explanations
3.2.1.2.1. Student - Centered - centered on factors outside the school such as family, community, peers, culture, and the individual student
3.2.1.2.2. School - Centered - centered on factors within the school such as teachers and teaching methods, curriculum, ability grouping and curriculum tracking, school climate, and teacher expectations
4. Equality of Opportunity
4.1. Special Needs Individuals
4.1.1. All Handicaped Children Law/Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
4.1.2. Regular Education Initiative - mainstreaming children with disabilities into least restrictive environments
4.2. Response to Coleman Study: Round One
4.2.1. The most amazing statement is the result of this study. Schools are weakly related to student educational outcomes.
4.2.2. One implication is that poor students should go to school with middle class students in order to equalize their educational opportunities.
5. Curriculum and Pedagogy
5.1. Social Efficiency Curriculum
5.1.1. Belief that different groups of students, with different sets of needs and aspirations, should receive different types of schooling
5.1.2. Distortion of John Dewey's Progressive vision
5.1.3. Processes of differentiated curriculum, scientific management of the schools and curriculum, and standardized testing of students for placement into ability and/or curriculum tracks
5.2. Functionalist
5.2.1. Curriculum represents the knowledge that students need to become members of society
5.2.2. Transmits cultural heritage for cohesive social system
5.2.3. Give students the knowledge, language, and values to ensure social stability
6. Politics of Education
6.1. Conservative
6.1.1. Maximize economic and social productivity by providing best educational trainging
6.1.2. Socialize children into adult roles
6.1.3. Transmitting cultural traditions
6.2. Progessive
6.2.1. Education for solving social problems
6.2.2. Steady progress to make things better
6.2.3. Develop individual potential
7. Sociological Perspectives
7.1. Theoretical Perspective
7.1.1. Schools socially and culturally reproduce the existing society through the systematic socialization of its youngest members.
7.1.2. Schools promote gender definitions and stereotypes
7.1.3. Schools academically stratify students by curricular placement that influence the long term social, economic, and cultural destinies of children.
7.2. Effects of Schooling
7.2.1. Promote great attitudes and knowledge
8. Philosophy of Education
8.1. Key Reaserchers
8.1.1. Plato
8.1.2. Aristotle
8.1.3. Sir Francis Bacon
8.2. Goal of Education
8.2.1. Help individuals to understand and then apply the principles of science to help solve the problems plaguing the modern world
8.3. Role of Teacher
8.3.1. Teacher to transmit to their students the knowledge necessary for the continuance of the human race
8.3.2. Teacher should be knowledgeable in science, mathematics, and humanities
8.3.3. To enable students to learn objective methods of evaluating works such as art, music, poetry, and literature
8.4. Method of Instruction
8.4.1. Particularly lecture, and question and answer
8.4.2. Competency based assessments
8.4.3. Characteristics of particular manifestations
8.5. Curriculum
8.5.1. Science, math, reading, writing, and humanities
8.5.2. Basics viewed as knowledge for survival of society
9. Schools as Organizations
9.1. Major Stakeholders
9.1.1. State Superintendent
9.1.1.1. Tommy Bice
9.1.2. President of the Madison City School Board
9.1.2.1. Dr. Terri Johnson
9.1.3. Madison City Superintendent
9.1.3.1. Dr. Dee Fowler
9.2. France
9.2.1. Central government has control of the educational system
9.2.2. Two school systems
9.2.2.1. Ordinary students
9.2.2.2. Elite students
9.2.3. Highly stratified educational system