1. Chp. 3 History of US Education
1.1. Reform Movement: I believe Terrell Bell's National Commission of Excellence (1983) is one of the more influential educational reforms within the past 30 to 40 years. It targets both the decline in academic achievement seen in student test scores and the imperfection in the standards which the students are subject to. The commission offers 5 recommendation as solutions to these problems: 1) students from high school must complete the "new basics", 2) 4-year colleges and universities raise their standards and schools at all levels expect more from their students, 3) more time be devoted to teaching the new basics, 4) teacher preparation strengthened, and 5) citizens require their elected representatives to support and fund these reforms
1.2. Historical Interpretation of US Education: The Democratic-Liberal School
1.2.1. Main focus is a school system committed to providing equality of opportunity for all. A part of the Progressive Revolution. Cubberly (1934) and Curti (1959/1971) have portrayed the Common School Era as a victory for democratic movements and the first step in opening U.S education to all. Lawrence A. Cremin portrays the evolution of U.S. education in terms of 2 related processes: popularization and multitudinousness. The educational history in the United States involved both the expansion of opportunity and purpose. Social goals sometimes becoming more important than intellectual ones.
2. Chp. 2 Politics of Education
2.1. 4 Purposes of Education
2.1.1. 1. Intellectual - teach basic cognitive skills, transmit specific knowledge, help students acquire higher order thinking skills
2.1.2. 2. Political - create patriotism, prepare citizens who will participate in this political order, help assimilate diverse cultural groups into a common political order, and teach children the basic laws of the society
2.1.3. 3. Social - help solve social problems, work to ensure social cohesion, socialize children into the various roles, behaviors, and values of the society
2.1.4. 4. Economic - prepare students for their later occupational roles; select, train, and allocate individuals into the division of labor
2.2. Perspective: Liberal
2.2.1. 1. The Role of School: providing the necessary education to ensure that all students have an equal opportunity to succeed in society; socialize children into societal roles; stress the pluralistic nature of U.S. society and the school's role in teaching children to respect cultural diversity; enabling the individual to develop his/her talents, creative, and sense of self.
2.2.2. 2. The Questions of Unequal Performance: certain students begin school with different life opportunities which therefore show that certain students have significantly more advantages than others. As a result, society must attempt through policies and programs to equalize the playing field so that students from disadvantaged backgrounds have a better chance.
2.2.3. 3. Definition of Educational Problems: schools have limited the life chances of poor and minority children and therefore cause the problem of underachievement; schools place too much emphasis on discipline and authority, thus limiting their role in helping their students out as individuals; the difference between quality and climate between urban and suburban schools and schools with low socioeconomic backgrounds and high backgrounds is the central problem related to inequalities of results; traditionalist curriculum leaves out the diverse cultures of the groups that comprise the pluralistic society
3. Chp. 4 Sociology of Education
3.1. Theoretical Perspectives:
3.1.1. Functionalism: stresses the independence of the social system; society works like a machine; Emile Durkheim, practically invented the sociology of education, said education is critical in creating the moral unity necessary for social cohesion and harmony; consensus is the normal state in a society and conflict represents breakdown of shared values; in a well functioning society, schools socialize students into the appropriate values and sort and select students according to their abilities; all about social unity
3.1.2. Conflict Theory: social order is based on the ability of dominant groups to impose their will on subordinate groups through force, cooperation, and manipulation; the glue of society is economic, political, cultural, and military power; does not see the relation between school and society as unproblematic or straightforward; emphasizes struggle; schools are social battlefields; believes antagonism are muted due to the authority and power of the school and achievement ideology; Karl Marx is the intellectual founder of the conflict school; some key thinkers include Max Weber and Randall Collins
3.1.3. Interactionalism: primarily critiques and extensions of the functional and conflict perspectives; attempt to make the commonplace strange by turning on their heads everyday taken-for-granted behaviors and interactions between students and students, and students and teachers; examine the microsociological aspects of school life
3.2. 5 Effects of Schooling
3.2.1. Teacher Behavior
3.2.1.1. According to Jackson (1968) teachers have as many as 1,000 interpersonal contacts each day with students; they set the standards and influence student self-esteem and sense of efficacy; Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) found that teachers’ expectation directly influenced student achievement; Persell (1977) found that when teachers demanded more from their students and praised them more, students learned more and felt better about themselves
3.2.2. Inadequate Schools
3.2.2.1. The way in which children are educated today will not prepare them for the future; differences between schools and school systems reinforce existing inequalities, for example, students who attend suburban or private schools tend to get a better education, social experience, and social value of their diploma over students in urban education which has failed to teach minority and poor children properly
3.2.3. Tracking
3.2.3.1. Though initially it refers to students who are placed in curriculum programs based on their abilities and inclinations, in actuality many are placed based on other criteria, such as class or race; students placed in “high ability” tracks spend more time on actual teaching and learning activities, receive better teachers, interesting material, better laboratory facilities, and more extracurricular activities than do their lower-track peers; moreover, track placement directly affects cognitive development; students in lower-tracks experience more alienation and authoritarian teachers than high-track students
3.2.4. De Facto Segregation
3.2.4.1. Racially mixed schools benefit minorities and do not suppress white achievement; one study found that African-American students from low income communities who attended racially mixed schools were more likely to graduate from high school and college; segregation/resegregation is partially due to the fact that many live in racially segregated neighborhoods
3.2.5. Gender Discrimination
3.2.5.1. Men and women do not share equally in U.S. society; though females start school cognitively and socially ahead of boys, by the end of high schools girls have lower self-esteem and lower aspirations than boys do; studies do show that boys get more teacher attention (good and bad); textbooks have been biased against women by their accomplishments and social contributions; this form of discrimination, though more subtle than other forms of discrimination, is rooted in society
4. Chp. 5 Philosophy of Education
4.1. World View: Existentialism
4.1.1. Generic Notions: Existentialists pose questions as to how their concerns impact on the lives of individuals; they basically believe that individuals are placed on this earth alone and must make some sense out of the chaos they encounter; Sartre believed “existence precedes essence” - one must create their own meaning, which is done by the choices one makes in his life; individuals are constantly in a state of becoming
4.1.2. Key Researchers: Soren Kierkegaard, Martin Buber, Karl Jaspers, Jean Paul Sartre, Maxine Greene
4.1.3. Goal of Education: Education should focus on the needs of individuals, both cognitively and affectively; education should stress individuality and include discussion of the non-rational and rational world along with addressing the tensions of living in the world
4.1.4. Role of Teacher: Teachers should understand their own personal “lived worlds” and that of their students’ so they can best help their students achieve the best “lived worlds” they can; teachers must take risks, expose themselves to the resistance of students, and work constantly to “take the scales off the eyes” of their students; introspection is useful
4.1.5. Method of Instruction: Learning is intensely personal; each child has a different learning style and each teacher has the responsibility to discover this style and teach accordingly; the role of a teacher is to help students understand the world through posing questions, generating activities, and working together
4.1.6. Curriculum: Curriculum is heavily biased toward the humanities; believe literature especially has meaning; existentialists believe in exposing students at an early age to problems as well as possibilities, and to the horrors as well as accomplishments humankind is capable of producing
5. Chp. 6 Schools as Organizations
5.1. Major Stakeholders in Madison County School District
5.1.1. Alabama State Senators: Richard Shelby and Jefferson Sessions
5.1.2. Alabama House of Representatives: Mo Brooks (5th District)
5.1.3. Alabama State Superintendent of Education: Michael Sentance
5.1.4. Representative on State School Board: Connie Spears (District 9)
5.1.5. Local Superintendent: Matt Massey
5.1.6. Local School Board: Nathan Curry, Angie Bates, Mary Louise Stowe, David Vess, and Jeff Anderson
5.2. Elements of Change within School Processes and School Cultures
5.2.1. Conflict - must be prepared to elicit, manage, and resolve conflict
5.2.2. Learn New Behaviors - change requires new relationships and behaviors;the change process must include building communication and trust, enabling leadership and initiative to emerge, and learning techniques of communication, collaboration, and conflict resolution
5.2.3. Team Building must extend to the entire school - unification of staff
5.2.4. Process and Content are Interrelated
6. Chp. 7 Curriculum and Pedagogy
6.1. Advocated Curriculum Theory: developmentalist curriculum
6.1.1. related to the needs and interests of the student rather than the needs of society; relating the curriculum to the needs and interests of each child at particular developmental stages; flexibility in what is taught and how it is taught, with an emphasis on the development of each student's individual capacities; teacher is a facilitator of student growth
6.2. 2 Dominant Traditions of Teaching
6.2.1. Mimetic Tradition - the point of education is to transmit specific knowledge to students; best way to do this is through the didactic method (method that relies on the lecture or presentation as the main form of communication); stresses the importance of rational sequencing in the teaching process and assessment of the learning process; teaching = science
6.2.2. Transformative Tradition - the purpose of education is to change the student in some meaningful way (intellectually, creatively, spiritually, and emotionally); provide a more multidimensional theory to teaching; teaching and learning are inextricably linked; student is an integral part of the learning process, it is a conversation; questioning is at the core of methodology; harder to measure; changing human consciousness = changing society
7. Chp. 8 Equality of Opportunity
7.1. How Class, Race, and Gender each impact educational outcomes:
7.1.1. Class: social classes have different types of experiences; school is expensive, the longer in school the more likely a child will need parental financial support - tends to favor the middle to upper class; these families tend to expect more out of their child's education; knowing/not knowing "standard" English can put a child at an advantage or disadvantage; study after study says class is related to achievement
7.1.2. Race: one's race has a direct impact on how much education he/she is likely to receive; higher percentage of hispanic students that drop out than whites and blacks; difficult to separate race from class
7.1.3. Gender: in the past women were not likely to attain the same level of education as men, now it is equalized and more women attend post secondary schools than men; men still outperform women in mathematics; in the last 20 years, gender differences have decreased
7.2. The 2 responses to the Coleman Study of 1982:
7.2.1. 1. Questioned interpretation of data - what they found as significant, others did not; the differences that do exist between public and Catholic schools are statistically significant, but the differences in learning are negligible
7.2.2. 2. Borman and Dowling evaluate educational data in similar manner as Coleman - findings partially confirm both original data of 1966 and the later data of 1982; where an individual goes to school is often related to her race and socioeconomic background, but the racial and socioeconomic composition of a school has a greater effect on student achievement than an individual's race and class
8. Chp. 9 Education Inequality
8.1. 2 Types of Cultural Deprivation Theory
8.1.1. 1. Suggests that working-class and nonwhite families often lack the cultural resources, such as books and other educational stimuli, and thus arrive at school at a significant disadvantage
8.1.2. 2. The poor have a depraved culture; unlike the middle-class culture that values hard work, delayed gratification for future reward, and the understanding of the importance of schooling as a means to future success, the culture of poverty rejects hard work, eschews delayed gratification for immediate response, and does not view schooling as a means of social mobility
8.2. 4 School-Centered Explanations for educational inequality
8.2.1. School Funding - inner city schools do not get as much funding per year as suburban based schools; based on local, state, and federal taxes - meaning if one lives in a low income area, the less amount of funding that will be provided for schooling
8.2.2. Between-School Differences: Curriculum and Pedagogic Practices - there is not a lot of research to back this up; lower-class schools tend to have authoritarian and teacher-directed pedagogic practices, and to have a vocationally or social efficacy curriculum at the secondary level; middle-class communities are more likely to have a less authoritarian and more student-centered pedagogic class community; upper-class students are more likely to have authoritarian pedagogic practices and classical-humanistic college predatory curriculum;
8.2.3. Within-School Differences: Curriculum and Ability Grouping - curriculum tracking; in elementary school students are divided into reading groups and separate classes based on teacher recommendations, standardized test scores, and sometimes ascriptive characteristics such as race, class, or gender; at the secondary level students are divided by both ability and curriculum; a lot of debate, mostly emotional and idealogical; functionalist perspective - tracking is viewed as an important mechanism to ensure the "best and the brightest" receive the type of education required to prepare them for society's most essential positions; researchers agree that tracking affects educational attainment and achievement, independent of student characteristics
8.2.4. Gender and Schooling - questions the significance of how men and women see the world differently; feminist scholarship on schooling has attempted to understand the ways in which the schools limit the educational and life chances of women (achievement differences, women and school administration, the history of coeducation, the relationship between pedagogy and attitudes and knowledge, etc.); some schools have adopted Gilligan's claim that schools devalue connectedness and caring in favor of male behaviors such as competition; another ways schooling often limits the educational opportunities for women is the reinforcement of gender roles and gender inequality
9. Chp. 10 Education Reform
9.1. School Based Reform
9.1.1. Charter Schools: self-governing institution with wide control over its own curriculum, instruction, staffing, budget, internal organization, calendar, etc.; paid for with tax dollars and must be open to all students in the school district; can be started by anyone and are supposed to demonstrate results to the public agencies that review and approve their charter, as well as monitor their progress
9.1.2. Privatization: the traditional distinction between public and private schools became blurred during the 1990s; corporations saw the multi-billion-dollar education industry as a lucrative market; for-profit organizations took over management of failing schools and districts; some for-profits companies have the majority of contracts for supplemental tutoring under NCLB
9.2. 2 Societal, Community, Economic, and Political Reforms
9.2.1. Full Service and Community Schools: one way to attack education inequity is to examine and plan to educate not only the whole child but also the whole community; full service schools focus on meeting students' and their families educational, physical, psychological, add social needs a coordinated and collaborative fashion between school and community services; designed to target and improve at-risk neighborhoods
9.2.2. Harlem Children's Zone: Geoffrey Canada wants to empower African American students right where they are at instead of taking them out of their neighborhood; provides programs for parents in Harlem before their children are even born in an attempt to infuse all knowledge that middle-class parents know they should do for their fetuses and infants in a "sensitive way;" Canada's formula, along with an extended school day and tutoring for at-risk students paid off in 2007 when a significant number of his middle-school students improved their states test results to meet grade level requirements in math and reading