1. Philosophy of Education
1.1. Pragmatism
1.1.1. Generic notions
1.1.1.1. Dewey's ideas about education, often referred to as progressive, proposed that educators start with the needs and interests of the child in the classroom. Dewey's progressive methodology rested on the notion that children were active, organic beings, growing and changing, and thus required a course of study that would reflect their particular stages of development.
1.1.2. Key researchers
1.1.2.1. Generally speaking, the founders of pragmatism are George Sanders Pierce (1839-1914), William James (1842-1910), and John Dewey (1859-1952). Other European philosophers from earlier periods that might be considered as pragmatists include Frances Bacon, John Locke, and Jean~Jacques Rousseau.
1.1.3. Goal of education
1.1.3.1. Dewey's vision of schools stressed the importance of the school as a place where ideas can be implemented, challenged, and restructured, with the goal of providing students with the knowledge of how to improve the social order and should function as preparation for life in a democratic society.
1.1.4. Role of teacher
1.1.4.1. The teacher assumes the peripheral position of facilitator. The teacher encourages, offers suggestions, questions, and helps plan and implement courses of study. The teacher also writes curriculum and must have a command of several disciplines in order to create and implement curriculum.
1.1.5. Method of instruction
1.1.5.1. 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, otherwise known as problem-solving or inquiry method.
1.1.6. Curriculum
1.1.6.1. Progressive schools generally follow Dewey's notion of a core curriculum, or an integrated curriculum. Progressive educators are not wedded to a fixed curriculum either; rather, curriculum changes as the social order changes and as children's interests and needs change.
2. Schools as Organizations
2.1. Senators
2.1.1. Richard Selby & Luther Strange
2.2. House of Representatives
2.2.1. Robert Aderholt
2.3. State Superintendant
2.3.1. Michael Sentance
2.4. Representative on State School Board
2.4.1. Mary Scott Hunter (President Pro Tem) District 08
2.5. Local Superintendant
2.5.1. Jason Barnett
2.6. Local School Board
2.6.1. Jeff Williams (Chairman), Randy Peppers (Vice Chairman), Matt G. Sharp (Member), Mark Richards (Member), & Robert Elliot (Member)
2.7. Elements of change within school processes and school cultures
2.7.1. The school is a unity of interacting personalities. The personalities of all who meet in the school are bound together in an organic relation. The life of the whole is in all its parts, yet the whole could not exist without any of its parts. The school is a social organism. School cultures are extremely vulnerable to disruption and the continuity is often maintained by the use of authority.
3. Curriculum and Pedagogy
3.1. Humanist curriculum
3.1.1. Reflects the idealist philosophy that knowledge of the traditional liberal arts is the cornerstone of an educated citizenry and that the purpose of education is to present to students the best of what has been thought and written.
3.2. 2 dominant traditions of teaching
3.2.1. Mimetic
3.2.1.1. The mimetic tradition is based on the viewpoint that the purpose of education is to transmit specific knowledge to students. It loosely coincides with the traditional (conservative) model.
3.2.2. Transformative
3.2.2.1. The transformative tradition believes that the purpose of education is to change the student in some meaningful way, including intellectually, creatively, spiritually, and ambiguously. It coincides with the progressive model.
4. Equality of Opportuntity
4.1. How Class, Race, and Gender impact educational outcomes
4.1.1. Class
4.1.1.1. Children from working-class and underclass families are more likely to underachieve, drop out, and resist the curriculum of the school. The higher an individual's social class, the more likely they are to go to college.
4.1.2. Race
4.1.2.1. Among 16-24 year olds, for instance, 5.2 percent of white students drop out of school, whereas 9.3 percent of African-American students and 17.6 of Hispanic-American students are likely to drop out of school.
4.1.3. Gender
4.1.3.1. Today, females are less likely to drop out of school than males, and are more likely to have a higher level of reading proficiency than males. The same is true for writing. Males outperform females in mathematics.
4.1.4. 2 responses to the Coleman Study (1982)
4.1.4.1. 1. Where an individual goes to school has little effect on his or her cognitive growth or educational mobility.
4.1.4.2. 2. The differences that do exist between public and Catholic schools are statistically significant, but in terms of significant differences in learning, the results are negligible.
5. Educational Inequality
5.1. 2 types of cultural deprivation theory
5.1.1. Cultural deprivation theory 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.
5.1.2. The culture of poverty asserts that the poor have a deprived culture. One that lacks the value system of middle-class culture. This results in educationally disadvantaged students who achieve poorly because they have not been raised to acquire the skills and dispositions required for satisfactory academic achievement.
5.2. 4 school-centered explanations for educational inequality
5.2.1. School financing
5.2.1.1. Public schools are financed through a combination of revenues from local, state, and federal sources. However the majority of funds come from state and local taxes, with local property taxes a significant source. The more value of property, the more money for the school.
5.2.2. Effective school research
5.2.2.1. Found that within-school differences were as or more significant than between-school differences.
5.2.3. Between-school differences: Curriculum and pedagogic practices
5.2.3.1. There are many differences in the lower, middle, and upper classes. The way their classes are normally taught are also as different as their finances.
5.2.4. Within-school differences: Curriculum and ability grouping
5.2.4.1. Students are capable of more than what the teacher thinks, and if teachers demanded and expected more, students would meet the raised expectations.
6. Educational Reform
6.1. 2 school-based reforms
6.1.1. Charter schools
6.1.1.1. 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 student performance. In essence they "swap red tape for results".
6.1.2. Vouchers
6.1.2.1. Vouchers is the use of public funds for sending children to private schools. Used to provide low-income children with the same opportunities of a better education as middle-income and high-income children.
6.2. 2 political reforms
6.2.1. America 2000
6.2.1.1. America 2000 was built on 4 themes: 1. create better and more accountable schools. 2. create a new generation of American schools for tomorrow's students. 3. transform America into a nation of students. 4. make our communities a place where learning will happen.
6.2.2. No Child Left Behind
6.2.2.1. No Child Left Behind represented a logical extension of a standards movement that tossed the left's critique of U.S. education back on itself. Based on the critique that U.S. education has historically underserved low-income and minority children through curriculum tracking, poor instruction, and low-quality teachers in urban schools, NCLB mandates the uniform standards for all students in order to reduce and eventually eliminate the social class and race achievement gap by 2014.
7. Politics of Education
7.1. 4 purposes of education
7.1.1. The INTILLECTUAL purposes of schooling are to teach basic cognitive skills such as reading, writing, and mathematics; to transmit specific knowledge; and to help students acquire higher-order thinking skills such as analysis, evaluation, and synthesis.
7.1.2. The POLITICAL purposes of schooling are to inculcate allegiance to the existing political order (patriotism); to prepare citizens who will participate in this political order, to help assimilate diverse cultural groups into a common political order; and to teach children the basic laws of society.
7.1.3. The SOCIAL purposes of schooling are to help solve social problems; to work as one of many institutions, such as the family and the church to ensure social cohesion; and to socialize children into the various roles, behaviors, and values of the society. This process referred to by sociologists as socialization, is a key ingredient to the stability of any society.
7.1.4. The ECONOMIC purposes of schooling are to prepare students for their later occupational roles and to select, train, and allocate individuals into the division of labor. The degree to which schools directly prepare students for work varies from society to society, but most schools have at least an indirect role in this process.
7.2. Conservative perspective on the role of the school, explanations of unequal performance, and definition of educational problems
7.2.1. The conservative perspective sees the role of the 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. Therefore, the conservative perspective views the role of the school as essential to both economic productivity and social stability.
7.2.2. Conservatives argue that individuals or groups of students rise and fall on their own intelligence, hard work, and initiative, and that achievement is based on hard work and sacrifice. The school system, from this vantage point, is designed to allow individuals the opportunity to succeed.
7.2.3. The conservative perspective offers 5 different viewpoints on the problems of education: 1. School systematically lowered academic standards and reduced educational quality. 2. Schools watered down the traditional curriculum and thus weakened the school's ability to pass on the heritage of the American and Western civilizations to children. 3. Schools lost their traditional role of teaching moral standards and values. 4. Schools lost their traditional disciplinary function and often became chaotic. 5. Because the are state controlled and are immune from the laws of a competitive free market, schools are stifled by bureaucracy and inefficiency.
8. History of U.S. Education
8.1. The struggle for free public education was led by Horace Mann of Massachusetts. He abandoned his successful career as a lawyer, lobbied for a state board of education, and when it was created in 1837 by the Massachusetts legislature, Horace Mann became its first secretary. His annual reports served as models for public school reforms throughout the nation.
8.2. Historian Merle Curti (1959/1971) attributed the use of formal schooling to the interests of the colonists in protecting freedoms such as thought, religion, and press-freedoms necessary for the maintenance of a democratic society.
9. Sociological Perspectives
9.1. Functionalists tend to assume that consensus is the normal state in society and that conflict represents a breakdown of shared values. Education reform, then, from a functional point of view, is supposed to create structures, programs, and curricula that are technically advanced, rational, and encourage social unity.
9.2. From a conflict point of view, schools are similar to social battlefields, where students struggle against teachers, teachers against administrators, and so on. In effect, the achievement ideology convinces students and teachers that schools promote learning, and sort and select students according to their abilities and not according to their social status. In this view, the achievement ideology disguises the real power relations within the school, which, in turn, reflect and correspond to the power relations within the larger society. (Bowles and Gintis, 1976).
9.3. Interactional theories about the relation of school and society are primarily critiques and extensions of the functional and conflict perspectives. For example, the processes by which students are labeled gifted or learning disabled are, from an interactional point of view, important to analyze, because such processes carry with them many implicit assumptions about learning and children.
9.4. 5 effects of schooling on individuals
9.4.1. Knowledge and attitudes
9.4.1.1. Education is also related to individuals' sense of well-being and self-esteem. Thus, it is clear that, even taking into account the importance of individual social class background when evaluating the impact of education, more years of schooling leads to greater knowledge and social participation.
9.4.2. Inside the schools
9.4.2.1. As you know, not all students have the same curriculum. It is also a fact that curriculum placement within schools has a direct impact on the probabilities of students attending college.
9.4.3. Teacher behavior
9.4.3.1. Persell (1977) found that when teachers demanded more from their students and praised them more, students learned more and felt better about themselves. Research indicates that many teachers have lower expectations for minority and working-class students; this suggests that these students may be trapped within a vicious cycle of low expectation-low achievement-low expectation.
9.4.4. Student peer groups and alienation
9.4.4.1. In today's culture, violence is far more acceptable, even glorified in the popular media. Being "bad" is misconstrued as being tough and smart. School children are bombarded with imaginary and actual violence in their homes, in their schools, and on the streets. It has been estimated that by the time the average child is 12 years old, he or she has been exposed to 18,000 television murders.
9.4.5. Inadequate schools
9.4.5.1. Students who attend suburban schools and private schools get a better educational experience than other children (Coleman, Hoffer, & Kilgore, 1982). Students who attend the most elite private schools obtain substantial educational benefits, both in terms of their actual educational experience and the social value of their diplomas (Cookson & Persell, 1985).