1. History of Education
1.1. Historical Interpretation
1.1.1. 1.The Old Deluder Law required towns of 50 or 100 families/households to make parents responsible for their children's education.
1.1.2. 2. The Old Deluder Law was formalized between 1642 and 1647. This school law was passed to chastise parents for not attending to their children's "ability to read and write".
1.1.3. 3. The Old Deluder Law was not popular throughout New England. Towns neglected to provide the education for their youth as directed by law. It remains a landmark in the history of U.S. education. It established a precedent for public responsibility for education.
1.2. Reform
1.2.1. 1. The National Commission on Excellence in 1983 was founded by President Reagan's Secretary of Education, Terrell Bell. He issued the report, A Nation at Risk.
1.2.2. 2. A Nation at Risk provided a serious indictment of U.S. education and cited high rates of adult illiteracy, declining SAT scores, and low scores on international comparisons of knowledge by U.S. students as samples of the downfall of literacy and standards.
1.2.3. 3. The committee stated that "the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people."
2. Educational Inequality
2.1. Sociological Explanations of Unequal Achievement
2.1.1. 1. The Reading Gap
2.1.2. 2. The Conversation Gap
2.1.3. 3. The Role Model Gap
2.2. School Centered Explanation
2.2.1. 1. School Financing
2.2.2. 2. Effective School Research
2.2.3. 3. Curriculum and Ability Grouping- Gender and Schooling
3. Equality of Opportunity
3.1. Educational Achievement And Attainment
3.1.1. 1.Attainment- ratios between sexes, ages, and races
3.1.2. 2.Students with Special Needs- EHA Law, IDEA, REI, HDAD
3.1.3. 3. Equality of Education Opportunity-The Coleman Study
3.2. Response to the Coleman Study
3.2.1. 1. Test scores and questionnaire responses obtained from first-, third-, sixth-, ninth-, and twelfth-grade students, and questionnaire responses from teachers and principals.
3.2.2. 2. Data on students include age, gender, race and ethnic identity, socioeconomic background, attitudes toward learning, education and career goals, and racial attitudes.
3.2.3. 3. Scores on teacher-administered standardized academic tests are also included. These scores reflect performance on tests assessing ability and achievement in verbal skills, nonverbal associations, reading comprehension, and mathematics. Data on teachers and principals include academic discipline, assessment of verbal facility, salary, education and teaching experience, and attitudes toward race.
4. Curriculum and Pedogogy
4.1. Historical Curriculum Theory
4.1.1. 1.Efficiency Curriculum- was a philosophically pragmatist approach developed in the early twentieth century as a putatively democratic response to the development of mass public secondary education.
4.1.2. 2. Pedagogical Progressivism the relationship between schooling and the activities of adults within society. Given the stratified nature of adult roles, the school curriculum was tailored to prepare students for these diverse places in society.
4.1.3. 3. Developmentalist Curriculum- related to the needs and interests of the student rather than the needs of society.
4.2. Sociological Curriculum Theory
4.2.1. 1. The sociology of curriculum concentrates on the functions of what is taught in schools and its relationship to the role of schools within society.
4.2.2. 2. The curriculum transmits to students the cultural heritage required for a cohesive social system. It gives students the knowledge, language, and values to ensure social stability, for without a shared common culture social order is not possible.
4.2.3. 3. The general functionalist theory is derived from the work of Emile Durkheim in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was concerned with the role of schools in combating the social and moral breakdown initiated by modernization.
5. Schools as Organization
5.1. Goverance
5.1.1. Senators- writes bills and laws based on academic achievements of the teachers by the students
5.1.2. House of Representatives- vote on the laws and bills that the Senate writes.
5.1.3. State Superintendent- sees that the school boards and legislators adhere that the state board representatives are knowledgeable of new laws and bills
5.1.4. State School Board Representatives votes on new laws that are to be passed on to the local school districts.
5.1.5. Local Superintendent to oversee the school systems and schools that are to adhere the new bills and laws that the senators and state superintendent pass.
5.1.6. Local School Board aide in bettering the schools and assuring the best quality of education for the students in the district.
5.2. Comparison to One Country
5.2.1. All of different parts included in governance but in one organization. It aides in financial and demographic of education.
6. School Reform
6.1. School-Based Reforms
6.1.1. 1. School Choice- Option of a choice of curriculum within a particular school to allowing students to attend any school in the district.
6.1.2. 2. Charter Schools- Public schools that are free from many of the regulations applied to traditional public schools, and in return are held for student performance.
6.1.3. 3. Tuition Vouchers- serves low-income and special needs students for the purpose of providing equal education.
6.2. Societal, Community, Economic, or Political Reforms
6.2.1. 1. American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. - Aid states in meeting the various components of NCLB
6.2.2. 2. Education Equality Project (EEP)- works to ensure that every school has a highly effective teacher and principal.
6.2.3. 3. Elementary and Secondary Education Act- greater education equity.
7. Politics of Education
7.1. Perspective
7.1.1. 1. Conservative was developed by Will Graham Sumner.
7.1.2. 2. Origin from 19th Century social Darwinist.
7.1.3. 3. Belief that the free market or market economy of capitalism is both the most economically productive economic system.
7.2. Vision
7.2.1. 1. The conservative perspective views the use of school as ensuring the proper educational training to ensure the most applicable teachers receive the necessities to maximize economic and social productivity.
7.2.2. 2. The liberal perspective also ensures the proper training, but also makes sure the students have equal opportunities to be successful in society.
7.2.3. 3. The radical perspective views education needs to end inequalities and cancel the unequal economic conditions.
8. Sociology of Education
8.1. Relationship Between School and Society
8.1.1. 1. Socialization is when the values, beliefs, and norms of society are internalized within children so that they come to think and act like other members of society.
8.1.2. 2. Theory is an integration of all known principles, laws, and information pertaining to a specific area of study. Theory is one's best conceptual guide to understanding the relation between school and society because it gives one the intellectual scaffolding from which to hang empirical findings.
8.1.3. 3. A conflict point of view, schools are similar to social battlefields, where students struggle against teachers, teachers against administration and etc. Yet, the ideologist masks the true relationship within the school,which, in turn reflect and correspond to the power relations within the larger society.
8.2. Three Effects of Schooling on Individuals
8.2.1. 1. Knowledge and Attitudes- studies show the students who come from a wealthy class and family are more prone to have higher tests scores and better grades than those of the lower class. In addition, the resources provided by schools also has a major impact on a student's success. The schools who have more academic policies and programs, often have higher academic grades than of those schools who have little policies and programs.
8.2.2. 2. Employment- A higher education and job performance are not directly related. Those who have a higher education are not necessarily the ones who are the best workers. Higher education allows persons higher-status jobs early in their career which provides a higher income rate. Research studies shows that African-American males with higher education earn as much as their white male counterparts.
8.2.3. 3. Education and Mobility- Civil Religion is an abiding faith among most Americans that education is the great equalizer in the "great status of race."
8.2.3.1. Contest mobility is where students are selected at an early age for academic and university education and where social class background is very important in determining who will receive academic and vocational training.
9. Philosophy of Education
9.1. Generic Notions
9.1.1. Philosophy of education is firmly rooted in practice, whereas philosophy, as a discipline, stands on its own with no specific end in mind. In Realism, Idealism, Pragmatism, Existentialism and Phenomenology.
9.2. Key Researchers
9.2.1. Aristotle- Realism
9.2.2. Plato- Realism
9.2.3. William Bennett- Idealism
9.2.4. Francis Bacon- Modern Realism
9.2.5. John Dewey- Pragmatism
9.2.6. Soren Kierkergaard- Existentialism
9.3. Goal of Education
9.3.1. Idealism- Find truth through ideas rather than through the examination of the false shadowy world of matter. Teachers encourage their students to search
9.3.2. Realism- Both Plato and Aristotle believed that important questions concerning such notions as the good life, truth, beauty, and so on could be answered through the study of ideas, using the dialectical method.
9.3.3. Pragmatism- Dewey's vision of schools was rooted in the social order; he did not see ideas as separate from social conditions.
9.3.4. Existentialism and Phenomenology- believe that education should focus on the needs of individuals, both cognitively and affectively. They also believe that education should street individuality.
9.4. Role of the Teacher
9.4.1. Idealism- to analyze and discuss ideas with students in order for students to move to new levels of awareness so that ultimately they can be transformed.
9.4.2. Realism- Teaches should be steeped in the basic academic disciplines in order to transmit to their students the knowledge necessary for the continuance of the human race.
9.4.3. Pragmatism- The teacher is no longer the authoritarian figure from which all knowledge flows. The teacher assumes the peripheral position of facilitator.
9.4.4. Existentialism and Phenomenology- Teachers should understand their own "lived worlds" as well as that of their students in order to help their students achieve the best "lived worlds" they can.
9.5. Curriculum
9.5.1. Idealists teachers put great importance on the study of the classics. All contemporary problems have their roots in the past and can best be understood by examining how previous individuals dealt with them.
9.5.2. Realists teachers consists of teaching the basics of science, math, reading, writing, and humanities. They believe that there is a body of knowledge that is essential for the student to master in order to be part of society.
9.5.3. Pragmatism- usually schools follow Dewey's notion of a core curriculum, or an integrated curriculum.
9.5.4. Existentialism and Phenomenology- heavily biased toward the humanities. Literature especially has meaning for them since literature is able to evoke responses in readers that might move them to new levels of awareness.
9.6. Method of Instruction
9.6.1. Idealists teachers take an active part in their students' learning. They lecture from time to time to fill in background material not covered in the reading. They typically use the dialectic approach described by Plato.
9.6.2. Realists would support methods in lecture, and question and answer. Realists believe in objective criteria for judging the value of artistic and literary works.
9.6.3. Pragmatism- Dewey proposed that children learn both individually and in groups. He believed that children should start their mode of inquiry by posing questions about what they want to know.
9.6.4. Existentialism and Phenomenology- They view learning as intensely personal. They believe that each child has a different learning style and it is up to the teacher to discover what works for each child.