1. Educational Reform
1.1. School Based Reforms
1.1.1. Charter Schools
1.1.1.1. As a public school, charter schools are paid for with tax dollars.
1.1.1.2. Must be open to all students living in that school district.
1.1.1.3. Charter schools are public schools that are free from many of the regulations applied to traditional public schools, and in return are held accountable for students performances.
1.1.1.4. Charter schools provide a more effective and efficient alternative for low income children, especially in urban areas.
1.1.2. School to Work Programs
1.1.2.1. In 1994, President Bill Clinton signed a law that provided seed money to states and local partnerships of business, labor, government, education, and community organizations to develop school-to-work systems.
1.1.2.2. Relevant education, allowing students to explore different careers and see what sills are required in their working environment.
1.1.2.3. Skills obtained from structured raining and work based learning experiences, including necessary skills of a particular career as demonstrated in a working environment.
1.1.2.4. Valued credentials, establishing industry standard benchmarks and developing education and training standards that ensure that proper education is received for each career.
1.2. Community and Economic Reforms
1.2.1. Community Reform
1.2.1.1. Plan to educate not only the whole student, but also the whole community.
1.2.1.2. Full service schools focus on meeting students' and their families educational, physical, psychological and social needs.
1.2.1.3. Schools service as community centers within neighborhoods that are open extended hours to provide services for adults.
1.2.1.4. Specifically designed to target and improve at -risk neighborhoods, full service schools aim to prevent problems, as well as support them.
1.2.2. Economic Reform
1.2.2.1. More funding is needed to serve the children in the poorer school districts.
1.2.2.2. Extra funding provided to additional programs to eliminate disadvantages within the poorer school districts.
1.2.2.3. In 1998 the state was required to implement a package of supplement programs including preschool,as well as a plan to renovate urban school facilities.
1.2.2.4. Although all of the educational reforms have demonstrated the potential to improve schools for low income and minority children, especially in urban areas, by themselves they are limited in reducing the achievement gaps.
2. Curriculum and Pedagogy
2.1. Social Meliorist Curriculum
2.1.1. From a sociological vantage point, the organization of the curriculum has been stratified according to the social class composition of the school.
2.1.2. Private schools have always had a humanist curriculum with strong classification between academic subjects.
2.1.3. Public schools have had a social efficiency curriculum with strong classifications between academics and vocational subjects.
2.1.4. Stress the role of the curriculum in moving students to be aware of social problems and active in the views of changing the world.
2.2. Traditions of Teaching
2.2.1. Mimetic Tradition
2.2.1.1. Knowledge presented to a learner, rather than discovered by the learner.
2.2.1.2. Knowledge transmitted from one person to another through verbally or a text.
2.2.1.3. Not limited to book knowledge, can also be the acquisition of physical and motor skills, knowledge performed one way or the other.
2.2.1.4. Second hand knowledge passed down through lecture.
2.2.2. Transformative Tradition
2.2.2.1. A transformation of one kind or another in the person being taught. A metamorphosis so to speak.
2.2.2.2. The teacher molds the student and leaves their imprint on that student.
2.2.2.3. Values, traits, character, and attitudes are more the attitude of transformative teachings.
2.2.2.4. Discussion, argumentation, and demonstration is used rather than didactic lecture.
3. Educational Inequailty
3.1. Cultural Deprivation Theories
3.1.1. Working class and nonwhite families often lack the cultural resources, such as books and other education stimuli, and thus arrive at school at a significant disadvantage.
3.1.2. Assert that the poor have a deprived culture, one that lacks the value system of middle-class culture
3.1.3. Middle class culture values hard work and initiative, the delay immediate gratification for future reward, and the importance of schooling toward future success.
3.1.4. Culture of poverty eschews delayed gratification for immediate reward, rejects hard work and initiative as a means to success, and does not view schooling as the means to social mobility.
3.1.5. This deprivation results in educationally disadvantaged students who achieve poorly because they have not been raised to acquire the skills and dispositions required for satisfactory academic success.
3.2. School Centered Explanations
3.2.1. School Financing
3.2.1.1. There is a vast difference in funding between public schools located around suburbs and poor inner city schools.
3.2.1.2. Public schools are financed through a combination of revenues from local, state,a nd federal sources.
3.2.1.3. The majority of funds comes from state and local taxes. with local property taxes a significant source.
3.2.1.4. The higher the property values in the local communities the more finances provided to that school district.
3.2.2. Effective School Literature
3.2.2.1. A climate of high expectations for students by teachers and administrators.
3.2.2.2. Strong and effective leadership by a principle or school head leader.
3.2.2.3. Accountability processes for students and teachers and the monitoring of students learning.
3.2.2.4. A high degree of instructional time on task, where teachers spend great deal of their time teaching and students spend a great deal of their time learning.
3.2.2.5. Flexibility for teachers and administrators to experiment and adapt to new situations and problems.
3.2.3. Gender and Schooling
3.2.3.1. Feminist agree that schooling often limits the educational opportunities and life chances of women.
3.2.3.2. Boys and girls are socialized differently through a variety of school processes.
3.2.3.3. Curriculum portray men's and women's roles often in a stereotypical and traditional ways.
3.2.3.4. Curriculum silences women by omitting significant aspects of women's history and women's lives from discussion.
3.2.4. Curriculum and Pedagogic Practices
3.2.4.1. Schools in working class neighborhoods are far more likely to have authoritarian and teacher directed pedagogic practices, and to have a vocationally or social efficiency curriculum at the secondary level.
3.2.4.2. Schools in middle class communities are more likely to have less authoritarian figure and more student centered pedagogic practices and have a humanistic liberal arts college preparatory curriculum at the secondary level.
3.2.4.3. Upper class students are more likely to attend private schools with authoritarian pedagogic practices and a classical humanistic college preparatory curriculum at the secondary level.
4. Politics of Education
4.1. Purpose of Schooling
4.1.1. Intellectual Purpose
4.1.1.1. To teach basic cognitive skills such as reading, writing, and mathematics.
4.1.1.2. To transmit specific knowledge (e.g., literature, history, science).
4.1.1.3. Help students acquire higher-order thinking skills such as analysis, evaluation, and synthesis.
4.1.2. Political Purpose
4.1.2.1. To inculcate allegiance to the existing political order (patriotism).
4.1.2.2. To prepare students who will participate in this political order.
4.1.2.3. To teach children the basic laws of the society.
4.1.3. Social Purpose
4.1.3.1. To help solve social problems; work as one of many institutions, such as family and church to ensure social cohesion.
4.1.3.2. Socialize children into various roles, behaviors and values of the society.
4.1.4. Economic Purpose
4.1.4.1. Prepare students for their later occupational roles and to select, train, and allocate individuals into the division of labor.
4.1.4.2. The degree to which schools directly prepare students for work varies from society to society.
4.2. Conservative Perspective
4.2.1. Role of the School
4.2.1.1. Provide the necessary educational training to ensure the most talented, hard-working individuals receive the tolls necessary to maximize economic and social productivity.
4.2.1.2. Schools socialize children into the adult roles necessary to the maintenance of social order.
4.2.1.3. School's function is transmitting the cultural traditions through what is taught in the curriculum.
4.2.2. Explanation of Unequal Performance
4.2.2.1. Argue that individuals or group of students rise and fall on their own intelligence, hard work, and initiative.
4.2.2.2. Achievement is based on hard work and sacrifice.
4.2.2.3. School system is designed to allow students to the opportunity to succeed.
4.2.3. Definition of Educational Problems
4.2.3.1. Liberal and Radical demands for greater equality in the 1960' and 1970's lowered academic standards.
4.2.3.2. In response to liberal and radical demands for multicultural education, Conservatives felt schools watered down the traditional curriculum and thus weakened the school's ability to pass on the heritage of America and western civilizations to children.
4.2.3.3. In response to liberal and radical demands for cultural relativism, Conservatives felt schools lost their traditional role of teaching moral standards and values.
5. Schools as Organizations
5.1. Govenerance
5.1.1. Senator
5.1.1.1. Arthur Orr
5.1.2. State Superintendent
5.1.2.1. Michael Sentance
5.1.3. House of Represenatives
5.1.3.1. Terri Collins
5.1.4. State School Board Represenative
5.1.4.1. Cynthia Sanders McCarty
5.1.5. Local Superintendent
5.1.5.1. Bill W. Hopkins Jr.
5.1.6. Local School Board
5.1.6.1. Tom Earwood
5.2. Elements of Change Within
5.2.1. School Processes and School Cultures
5.2.1.1. Conflict is necessary part of change. Staff involvement in school restructuring must be prepared to elicit, manage, and resolve conflict.
5.2.1.2. New behaviors must be learned. The change process must include building communication and trust and learning techniques of communications, collaboration, and conflict resolution.
5.2.1.3. Team building must extend to the entire school. Shared decisions making must consciously work out and give on going attention must extend to the entire school.
5.2.1.4. Process and content are interrelated. The process a team use in going about its work is as important as the content of educational changes it attempts.
6. Philosophy of Education
6.1. Pragmatism
6.1.1. Generic Notions
6.1.1.1. Influenced by the theory of evolution.
6.1.1.2. Children can learn skills both experientially as well as traditionally from information in books which would allow them to work cooperatively in a democratic society.
6.1.2. Key Researchers
6.1.2.1. Geroge Sanders Peirce (1839-1914)
6.1.2.1.1. Described pragmatism in part through a biblical phrase, "By their fruits ye shall know them."
6.1.2.2. William James (1842-1910)
6.1.2.2.1. James wrote the philosophy of pragmatism was to encourage people to find processes that works, in order to reach their desired ends.
6.1.2.3. John Dewey (1859-1952)
6.1.2.3.1. Dewey proposed that educators start with the needs and interest of the child in the classroom, allow the child to participate in planning his or her course of study.
6.1.3. Goal of Education
6.1.3.1. Philosophy had a responsibility to society and that ideas required laboratory testing.
6.1.3.2. Schools were a place ideas could be implemented, challenged, and restructured with the goal of providing students with the knowledge of how to improve social order.
6.1.3.3. To integrate children into not just any type of society, but a democratic one.
6.1.4. Role of Teacher
6.1.4.1. No longer the authoritarian figure from which all knowledge flows.
6.1.4.2. Teacher assumes the position of facilitator.
6.1.4.3. The teacher encourages, offers suggestions and helps plan the course of study.
6.1.5. Method of Instruction
6.1.5.1. Children learn both individually and in groups.
6.1.5.2. Children should ask themselves what do they want to know. (problem-solving)
6.1.5.3. Books written by both the teachers and students were used.
6.1.5.4. Field trips and projects were an integral part of the child's study.
6.1.6. Curriculum
6.1.6.1. Progressive schools used Dewey's notion of a core curriculum.
6.1.6.2. A particular subject manner under investigation by students would yield problems to be solved using math, science, history, reading, writing, music, art, wood, metal, cooking and sewing.
6.1.6.3. Not set on a fixed curriculum, rather one that changes with social order and children's interest.
7. History of U.S Education
7.1. The Rise of the Common School.
7.1.1. Led by Horace Mann of Massachusetts, a very successful lawyer.
7.1.2. He wanted free public education provided for Americans, who were mostly very illiterate.
7.1.3. He lobbied for a state board of education, and when one was created in 1837 in Massachusetts he became the first secretary.
7.1.4. His reports served as models for public school reforms throughout the nation.
7.1.5. Through his efforts and reports the first teacher training school was established in Lexington, Massachusetts in 1839.
7.1.6. Mann argued that free public funded schools would address the the concern of stability and social mobility.
7.2. Historical Interpretation of U.S Education "The Radical-Revisionist School"
7.2.1. Beginning in the 1960's, the vision of the democratic-liberal historians began to be challenged by historians, sociologist, and political economists.
7.2.2. Three historians leading the charge were; Micheal Katz, Joel Spring, and Clarence Karier.
7.2.3. They argued that the history of U.S education is the story of expanded success for very different reasons and with different results.
7.2.4. Radicals believed the educational school system expanded to meet the needs of the elites in society for the control of the working class and immigrants.
7.2.5. They pointed out that each educational reform led to stratification within the educational system, with working-class poor, and minority students getting the short end of the stick.
8. Sociological Perspectives
8.1. Relationship Between School and Society
8.1.1. Socialization
8.1.1.1. The values, beliefs, and norm of society are internalized within the children so that they come to think and act like other members of society.
8.1.2. Functional Theories
8.1.2.1. Functionalist view society as a kind of machine, where one part articulates with another to produce the dynamic energy required to make society work.
8.1.3. Conflict Theories
8.1.3.1. Conflict sociologist believe society is not held together by shared values alone, but the ability to dominate groups through force, cooptation, and manipulation.
8.1.3.2. The glue of society is economic, political, cultural and military power.
8.1.4. Interactionalism
8.1.4.1. The relationship of school and society are primarily critiques and extensions of the functional and conflict perspectives.
8.2. Effect of Schooling on Individuals
8.2.1. Employment: Graduating from college will lead to greater employment opportunities.
8.2.2. Knowledge: How to use problem solving skills in jobs to complete a task.
8.2.3. Education: Learn basic skills needed in society. The higher the education the more opportunities you may receive.
8.2.4. Mobility: Knowledge and social skills learned in school can help you advance up the ladder in society.
8.2.5. Attitude: Education is related to one's attitude to their sense of well-being and self-esteem.
9. Equality of Oppurtunity
9.1. Impact of Educational Outcomes
9.1.1. Class
9.1.1.1. Families from upper and middle class families expect their children to finish school. Teachers seem to favor this group of students.
9.1.1.2. Families from underclass and working class have lower levels of expectations for their children. This results in more dropouts in school.
9.1.1.3. From a cultural view, schools represents the values of middle to upper class families.
9.1.2. Race
9.1.2.1. Among 16-24 year-old, 5.2 percent of white students, 9.3 percent of African Americans, and 17.6 of Hispanic Americans drop out of school.
9.1.2.2. Minorities do not receive the same amount of educational opportunities compared to white students. and their rewards for educational attainment are significantly less.
9.1.2.3. Minorities have lower SAT scores which has an effect on them receiving scholarships and going to college.
9.1.3. Gender
9.1.3.1. Females are less likely to drop out of school than males, and are more likely to have a higher level of reading proficiency and writing.
9.1.3.2. Males seem to out perform females in mathematics.
9.1.3.3. Males are more likeley to score higher on SAT's than females are.
9.1.3.4. Over that last 20 years gender differences between male and females, in terms of educational attainment have been reduced,
9.2. Responses from the Coleman Study 1982
9.2.1. High School Achievement
9.2.1.1. The differences that do exist between public and Catholic schooling are statistically significant, but in terms of significant differences in learning, the results are negligible.
9.2.1.2. Catholic schools seem to advantage low-income minority students in urban areas.
9.2.2. Equality of Educational Oppurtunity
9.2.2.1. Where an individual goes to school is often related to his or her race and socioeconomic background, but the racial and socioeconomic composition of a school has a greater effect on a student achievement than an individual's race and class.
9.2.2.2. Study concluded that schools must bring an end to tracking systems and biases tat favor white and middle-class students.