1. Chapter Eight: Equality of Opportunity and Educational Outcomes
1.1. Describe how class, race, and gender each impact educational outcomes. What were the two responses to the Coleman Study from 1982?
1.1.1. The way that class, race, and gender each impact educational outcomes; class depending on the social class you fall under most people is not expected to complete school because, don't have the funds to do so. The longer someone stays in school the more money it will cost. If you are in the lower class or working class chances are those children wont be able to get the financial help from their parents.
1.1.1.1. Race; is related to educational outcomes is undeniable, although, given the nature of U.S. society, it is extremely difficult to separate race from class. In a society as segregated as that in the United States, it is not surprising that minority students receive fewer and inferior educational opportunities than white students. Explanations as to why minorities underachieve compared to whites vary. Minorities do not receive the same educational opportunities as whites, and their rewards for educational attainment are significantly less.
1.1.2. Gender, 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. The one area that males do better than females is in mathematics, the most convincing of which is related to the behavior of classroom teachers who tend to assume that female will not do as well on their ACTs than females. It should be added that more women are now attending post secondary institutions than men, although it is true that many of the postsecondary institutions that women attend are less academically and socially prestigious than those postsecondary institutions attended by men. in the last 20 years the gender differences between men and women in terms of educational attainment, have been reduced.
2. Chapter Nine: Explanations of Educational Inequality
2.1. Explain the two types of cultural deprivation theory. Describe at least four school-centered explanations for educational inequality.
2.1.1. The culture of proverty 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. According to cultural deprivation theorists such as Deutsch, this deprivation results in educationally disadvantage students who achieve poorly because they have not been raised to acquire the skills and disposition required for satisfactory academic achievements.
2.1.2. Theory concerned the relative failure of many of the compensatory education programs that were based on its assumptions about why disadvantaged children have lower levels of achievements than more advantaged children.
2.1.3. Effective School Reseach; The concern with unequal educational performance of nonwhite and working-class students is at the heart of such inquiry. the funding that within-school differences are as or more significant than between-school differences raised questions about the common-sense argument that students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds do poorly simply because they attend inferior schools.
2.1.3.1. Curriculum and Ability Grouping; The fact that different groups of students in the same schools perform very differently suggests that there may be school characteristics affecting these outcomes.
2.1.3.1.1. School Financing; 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. Property taxes are based on the value of the property in local communities and therefore is a proportional tax.
3. Chapter Ten: Educational Reform and School Improvement
3.1. Describe two school-based reforms (school-based, school-business partnerships, privatization, school-to-work programs, teacher education or teacher quality) Describe at two societal, economic, community, or political reforms.
3.1.1. School-business partnership have attracted considerable media attention, but there is little convincing evidence that they have significantly improved schools or that, as a means of reform, school-business partnerships will address the fundamental problems facing U.S. education.
3.1.1.1. School-to-Work-Programs Their intent was extend what had been a vocational emphasis to non-collage-bound students regarding skills necessary for successful employment and to stress the importance of work based learning.
3.1.2. The types of reforms, included state intervention, cost money, and low income, high-minority schools often have significantly less money to spend, despite the availability of federal Title 1 funds.
3.1.2.1. For several decades at least, school accountability has been a prominent issue on the national education scene. Accountability has taken many forms, often involving state regulations or oversight. It has included state certification of school personnel and of school districts: statewide testing and assessments of pupils; state monitoring of local fiscal, management, and educational practices; local districts reporting to the state; state dissemination of report cards and other district and school-specific information to the public; and state intervention in the operation of local districts when problems were identified and solutions were determined to be beyond the local capacity.
4. Chapter Six: Schools as Organizations
4.1. Identify major stakeholders in YOUR district by name (state senators, House of Representatives, state superintendent, representative on state school board, local superintendent, and local school board) Identify and describe the elements of change within school processes and school cultures.
4.1.1. I live in district 5, and the stakeholders are as followed; State senator, Greg Reed, House of Representatives, Mo Brooks, State Superintendent, Pam Hill
4.1.2. Serving on one or more legislative committees is an important part of a state senator's job. Committees have regularly scheduled meetings to review proposed legislation. At each meeting, committee members listen to presentations from bill sponsors and public testimony from lobbyists and other interested parties
4.1.3. A state representative is a politician who serves in a state-level legislative branch
4.1.4. Local school boards have been an integral feature of the U.S. public education system for nearly 100 years, and they are widely regarded as the principal democratic body capable of representing citizens in local education decisions. The formal institutional roles assigned to school boards, and the designated position board members play as representatives of the community, would lead one to believe that the school board has a decisive role in public education policy and school system administration. In the minds of many lay citizens, school boards have considerable influence over educational decisions and provide a key social and political connection to the schooling process
4.2. 1. Explain a curriculum theory which you advocate (humanist, social efficiency, developmentalist, or social meliorist). 2. Identify and describe the two dominant traditions of teaching.
4.2.1. 1. the Social Efficiency Theory is more of a social criticism of the effect of education on certain populations. Social Efficiency Theory doesn’t focus on learning philosophies but provides answers to the question, “What are the real results of our education system?” Social Efficiency Theory is also distinctive because its creators and proponents are economists (Bowles and Gintis) and an anthropologist (Ogbu) as opposed to educators
4.2.2. 2. The mimetic method tradition is based on the viewpoint that the purpose of education is to transmit specific knowledge to students. its called the didactic method, where the teacher and students relies on lecture and presentation to get the information to the students.