1. Politics of Education
1.1. The Four Purposes of Education
1.1.1. Perspectives
1.1.2. The Role of the School: 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.
1.1.3. Explanations of Unequal Educational Performance: The liberal perspective argues that individual students or groups of students begin school with different life chances and therefore some groups have significantly more advantages than others.
1.1.4. Definition of Educational Problems: The radical perspective of the definition of educational problems are that the educational system has failed the poor, minorities, and women through classist, racist, sexist, and homophobic policies. Radicals perspective is also the schools have stifled critical understanding of the problems of American society. In general, the educational system promotes inequality of both opportunity and results.
1.2. 1) The intellectual purposes: This purpose of schooling is to teach basic cognitive skills. Examples of intellectual schooling is reading, writing, and mathematics.
1.3. 2) The political purposes: This purpose of schooling is to inculcate allegiance to the existing political order; 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.
1.4. 3) The social purposes: This purpose of schooling is to help solve social problems; to work as one of many institutions; to ensure social cohesion; and to socialize children into the various roles, behaviors, and values of the society.
1.5. 4) The economic purposes: This purpose of schooling is to select, train, and allocate individuals into the division of labor.
2. History of U.S. Education
2.1. The reform movement that I think had the most influence on education was when congress passed the Morrill Act in 1862. Before this act was passed Roman catholics, who viewed the common school as dominated by a Protestant ethos, founded their own schools. By 1860, public support of elementary schools was becoming prevalent throughout the U.S. Education beyond the elementary level was primarily province of private academies. The Morrill Act authorized the use of public money to establish public land grant universities, resulting in the establishment of large state universities.
2.2. Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, a variety of books provided scathing criticism of U.S. education. Here are a few author's that had their own interpretations of U.S. education. Jonathon Kozols's "Death at an Early Age(1967)" assailed the racist practices of the Boston public schools; Herbert Kohl's "36 Children(1967)" demonstrated the pedagogical possibilities of open education; and Charles S. Silberman's "Crisis in the Classroom(1969)" attached the bureaucratic, stultifying mindlessness of U.S. education.
3. Schools as Organizations
3.1. Tennessee State Senators: Bob Corker (R) & Lamar Alexander (R)
3.1.1. Tennessee House of Representatives: Diane Black (R), Scott DesJarlais (R), Jim Cooper (D), Phil Roe (R), David Kustoff (R), Chuck Fleischmann (R), Jimmy Duncan (R), & Steve Cohen (D)
3.1.2. Tennessee's State Superintendent: Candice Mcqueen
3.1.3. Tennessee Representative on State School board: Allison Chancey
3.1.4. Local Superintendent: Giles County School System: Phillip Wright
3.1.5. Local School Board: Giles County School System: District 1- Paul Allen, District 2- David Wamble, District 3- Joy McMasters, District 4- Katie Journey, District 5- Richie Brewer, District 6- Charles McElroy, & District 7- Bill Holt
3.2. Elements of Change within School Processes & School Cultures
3.3. 1) Conflict is a necessary part of change. Staff involvement in school restructuring is vital to elicit, manage, and resolve conflicts.
3.4. 2) New behaviors must be learned. Change must be made to establish new relationships and behaviors. Through change trust and communication will emerge.
3.5. 3) Team building must extend to the whole school. Shared decision making is a must to implement change. Otherwise, resistance to change will be persistent.
3.6. 4) Process and content are interrelated. The process a team uses in going about its work is as important as the content of educational changes it attempts.
3.7. Changing the culture of a school in order to make the school more learner centered requires time, effort, intelligence, and good will.
4. Equality of Opportunity
4.1. Class, race, and gender each impact educational outcomes.
4.1.1. Students in different social classes have different kinds of educational experiences. Class is directly related to achievement and to educational attainment; there is a direct correlation between parental income and children's performance on achievement tests, as well as placement in ability groups and curriculum track in high school. Social class and level of educational attainment are highly correlated. This finding represents a challenge to those who believe in equality of opportunity.
4.1.2. An individual's race has a direct impact on how much education he or she is likely to achieve. Among 16-24 year-olds, 5.2 percent of white students drop out of school, whereas 9.3 percent of African-American students and 17.6 percent of Hispanic-American students are likely to drop out of school. Minority students receive fewer and inferior educational opportunities than white students. Minorities do not receive the same educational opportunities as whites, and their rewards for educational attainment are significantly less.
4.1.3. Historically, an individual's gender was directly related to his or her educational attainment. Even though women are often rated as being better students than men, in the past they were less likely to attain the same level of education. In the last twenty years, gender differences between men and women, in terms of educational attainment, have been reduced.
4.2. The two responses to the Coleman Sturdy from 1982:
4.3. 1) What then of Coleman, Hoffer, Kilgore's claim that Catholic schools are educationally superior to public schools? If trivial advantage is what they mean by such a claim, then we suppose we would have to agree. But judged against reasonable benchmarks, there is little basis for this conclusion. Alexander and Pallas (1983, p. 122).
4.4. 2) Formal decomposition of the variance attributable to individual background and the social composition of the schools suggests that going to a high-poverty school or a highly segregated African American school has a profound effect on a student's achievement outcomes, above and beyond the effect of individual poverty or minority status. Specifically, both the racial/ ethnic and social class composition of a student's school are 1 3/4 times more important than a student's individual race/ ethnicity or social class for understanding educational outcomes. Borman and Dowling (2010, p. 1202).
5. Educational Reform
6. Two School-Based Reforms
6.1. 1) School-Business Partnerships: During the 1980's, business leaders became increasingly concerned that the nation's schools were not producing the kinds of graduates necessary for a revitalization of the U.S. economy. Several school-business partnerships were formed. In 1991, the Committee to support Philadelphia Public Schools pledged management assistance and training to the Philadelphia School District to restructure and implement a site-based management plan. In return, the city promised that by 1995 it would raise test scores of its graduates and improve grade promotion rates. School-business partnerships have attracted media attention, but there is little convincing evidence that they have significantly improved schools.
6.2. 2) School-to-Work Programs: On May 4, 1994, President Bill Clinton signed the School-to-Work Opportunities Act of 1994. This law provided seed money to states and local partnerships of business, labor, government, education, and community organizations to develop school-to-work systems. The law did not create a new program, but allowed states and their partners to bring together efforts at education reform, worker preparation, and economic development to create a system- a system to prepare youth for the high-wage, high-skill careers of today's and tomorrow's global economy.
6.2.1. Community Reforms: Another way to attack education inequity is to examine and plan to educate not only the whole child, but also the whole community. School's service as community centers within neighborhoods that are open extended hours to provide a multitude of services such as adult education, health clinics, recreation facilities, after-school programs, mental health services, drug and alcohol programs, job placement and training programs, and tutoring services.
6.2.2. Political Reforms: Following the Supreme Court's 1973 decision in Rodriguez v. San Antonio, which declare there is no constitutional right to an equal education, school finance equity and adequacy advocates litigated at the state level. Even before Rodriguez, Robinson v. Cahill was filed in 1970 against the state of New Jersey, citing discrimination in funding for some school districts, which prosecutors believed was creating disparities in urban students' education by failing to provide all students with a "thorough and efficient" education, as guaranteed under the New Jersey State Constitution.
7. Sociology of Education
7.1. Theoretical perspective 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. There are 3 major theories about the relation between school and society: functional, conflict, and interactional.
7.1.1. Functionalism stresses the interdependence of the social system; these researchers often examine how well the parts are integrated with each other. Emile Dukrkheim recognized that education had taken different forms at different times and places, he believed that education was of critical importance in creating the moral unity necessary for social cohesion and harmony.
7.1.2. Conflict theory emphasizes struggle. From a conflict point of view, schools are similar to social battlefields, where students struggle against teachers, teachers against administrators, and so on.
7.1.3. Interactional theories attempt to make the commonplace strange by turning on their heads everyday taken-for-granted behaviors and interactions between student and students, and students and teachers. 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 the assumptions about learning and children.
7.2. 5 Effects of Schooling on Individuals
7.2.1. 1) Employment: Getting a college and professional degree is important for earning more money, but education alone does not fully explain differences in levels of income.
7.2.2. 2) Teacher Behavior: Teachers are models for students and teachers set standards for students and influence student self-esteem and sense of efficacy.
7.2.3. 3) Student Peer Groups and Alienation: Student cultures play an important role in shaping students' educational experiences. Schools develop cultures, traditions, and restraints that influence those who work or study within them.
7.2.4. 4) Tracking: Tracking refers to the placement of students in curricular programs based on students' abilities and inclinations. Students in "high-ability" tracks use more interesting materials; receive the best teachers; and have more extracurricular activities. Students in lower tracks experience more alienation and authoritarian teachers than high-track students.
7.2.5. 5) Gender: Men and women do not share equally in the U.S. society. Girls start school cognitively and socially ahead of boys, by the end of high school, girls have lower self-esteem and lower aspirations than boys. Most teachers are women and most administrators are men.
8. Philosophy of Education
8.1. Student-Centered Philosophy
8.1.1. Pragmatism: Pragmatism is generally viewed as an American philosophy that developed in the later part of the 19th century. Pragmatism is a philosophy that encourages people to find processes that work in order to achieve their desired ends. A pragmatic schema might look like this: problem>speculativethought>action>results.
8.1.1.1. Generic Notions: John Dewey's form of pragmatism-instrumentalism and experimentalism- was founded on the new psychology, behaviorism, and the philosophy of pragmatism. The school became an "embryonic community" where children could learn skills both experientially as well as from books. Dewey's ideas about education proposed that educators start with the needs and interests of the child in the classroom, allow the child to participate in planning his or her own course study, employ project method or group learning,and depend heavily on experiential learning.
8.1.1.2. Key Researchers: The key researcher for pragmatism was John Dewey.
8.1.1.3. Goal of Education: Dewey's philosophy of education made a conscious attempt to balance the social role of the school with its effects on the social, intellectual, and personal development of individuals. Dewey believed that the schools should balance the needs of society and community on one hand and the needs of the individual on the other.
8.1.1.4. Role of the Teacher: The teacher is no longer the authoritarian figure from which all knowledge flows. 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 the curriculum and must have a command of several disciplines in order to create and implement curriculum.
8.1.1.5. Methods of Instruction: 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. Formal instruction was abandoned. Traditional blocks of time for specific discipline instruction were eliminated. Furniture was discarded. Children could talk quietly, could stand up and stretch, and could pursue independant study or group work.
8.1.1.6. Curriculum: Dewey had an emphasis on the need for the curriculum to be related to the needs and interests fo the child. He was in favor of a child-centered curriculum instead of a traditional subject matter.
9. Curriculum and Pedagogy
9.1. The curriculum theory I will advocate will be the developmentalist curriculum. My major is collaborative teaching K-6, so I think this theory will appeal to my student's best.
9.2. The developmentalist curriculum is related to the needs and interests of the student rather than the needs of society. This curriculum theory emphasizes the process of teaching as well as its content. This approach is student centered and is concerned with relating the curriculum to the needs and interests of each child at particular developmental stages. The flexibility in what is taught and how it is taught will work well in Special Education.
9.3. The two dominant traditions of teaching are: 1) the mimetic 2) the transformative.
9.3.1. The mimetic tradition is based on the viewpoint that the purpose of education is to transmit specific knowledge to students. The best method of doing this is through what is termed the didactic method, a method that commonly relies on the lecture or presentation as the main form of communication.
9.3.2. The transformative tradition is based on the idea that education's purpose is to change the student in some meaningful way, including intellectually, creatively, spiritually, and emotionally. Transformative educators do not see transmission of knowledge as the only component of education and thus they provide a more multidimensional theory of teaching. They reject the authoritarian relationship between teacher and student and argue instead that teaching and learning are inextricably linked.
10. Education Inequality
10.1. Theory one: Oscar Lewis' (1966) thesis about poverty in Mexico, cultural deprivation theorists assert that the poor have a deprived culture- one that lacks the value system of middle-class culture. According to this perspective, middle-class culture values hard work and initiative, the delay of immediate gratification for future reward, and the importance of schooling as a means to future success.
10.2. Cultural Deprivation Theory: popularized in the 1960's, 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.
10.2.1. Four School-Centered Explanations for Educational Inequality:
10.2.2. 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 property in local communities and therefore, is a proportional tax. Since property values are significantly higher in more affluent communities, these communities are able to raise significantly more money for schools through this form of taxation than poorer communities with lower property values. Additionally, since families in more affluent communities have higher incomes, they pay proportionately less of their incomes for their higher school taxes.
10.2.3. 2) Effective School Research- The concern with unequal educational performance of nonwhite and working-class students is at the heart of such inquiry. The finding 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. If there are significant differences in student performance between schools within lower socioeconomic neighborhoods, then there have to be school effects.
10.2.4. 3) 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. Ability grouping and curriculum grouping is an important organizational component of U.S. schooling. From a functionalist perspective, tracking is viewed as an important mechanism by which students are separated based on ability and to ensure that the "best and brightest" receive the type of education required to prepare them for society's most essential positions. Conflict theorists, conversely, suggest that tracking is a mechanism for separating groups, often based on ascriptive characteristics, and that it is an important mechanism in reproducing inequalities.
10.2.5. 4) Gender and Schooling- The argument that women are more caring and connected, and men more competitive and intellectual, may reproduce sexist stereotypes that historically justified the domestic roles of women. These feminists believe that traditional male and female characteristics are part of the full range of human possibilities, and that schools should socialize both boys and girls to be caring and connected. Feminists agree that schooling often limits the educational opportunities and life chances of women in a number of ways. Boys and girls are socialized differently. Curriculum materials portray men's and women's roles in a stereotypical and traditional way. The organization of schools reinforces gender roles and gender inequality.