1. Politics of Education
1.1. Purposes of Education
1.2. 1.) Intellectual Purposes- teach basic skills (math, writing and reading.)
1.3. 2.) Political Purposes- preparing people who will participate in political order.
1.4. 3.) Social Purposes- to help work out problems with family, churches, etc.
1.5. 4.) Economic Purposes- prepare students for work in the long run.
1.6. Perspective
1.6.1. Role of School- the conservative perspective sees the roles of the school as:
1.6.1.1. providing education to talented and hard-working individuals. They get you ready for adult roles.
1.6.2. Unequal Performance- Conservatives believe:
1.6.2.1. in order to succeed, you have to work hard and sacrifice.
1.6.3. Educational Problems- the conservative perspective argues the following points:
1.6.3.1. 1. decline of standards.
1.6.3.2. 2. decline of cultural literacy.
1.6.3.3. 3. decline of values or of civilization.
1.6.3.4. 4. decline of authority.
1.6.3.5. 5. schools are stifled by bureaucracy and inefficiency.
2. History of U.S. Education
2.1. Reform Movement
2.2. 1.) Educational Reaction and Reform and the Standards Era: 1980s-2012
2.2.1. Conservative critics began to react to the educational reforms of the 1960s and 1970s. They argued that liberal reforms in pedagogy and curriculum, and in the arena of educational opportunity had resulted in the decline of authority and standards.
2.2.1.1. As solutions, the commission offered five recommendations:
2.2.1.1.1. (1) all students graduating high school complete what was termed "new basics"
2.2.1.1.2. (2) schools at all levels expect higher achievement from their students than a 4 year university
2.2.1.1.3. (3) more time be devoted to teaching new basics
2.2.1.1.4. (4) preparations of teachers be strengthened and be made more respected and rewarded
2.2.1.1.5. (5) citizens require their elected representatives to support and fund these reforms.
2.2.2. Conservatives wanted to restore both standards and the traditional curriculum; liberals demanded that new drive for excellence not ignore the goals for equity; radicals believed It was another pendulum swing doomed to failure.
2.3. Historical Interpretation
2.4. 1.) The Democratic-Liberal School:
2.4.1. Believe that the history of U.S. education involves the progressive evolution, albeit flawed, of a school system committed to providing equality of opportunity for all.
2.4.1.1. More students for diverse backgrounds went to school for longer periods of time, the goals of education became more diverse, with social goals often becoming as or more important than intellectual ones.
2.4.1.1.1. Tend to interpret U.S. educational history optimistically, the evolution of the nation's schools have been a flawed, often conflictual march toward increased opportunities.
3. Sociological Perspectives
3.1. Theoretical Perspectives
3.1.1. 1.) Functional Theories
3.1.1.1. Society that stresses the interdependence of the social system. They examine how well the parts are integrated with each other. The earliest sociologist to embrace this point of view was Emile Durkheim. Schools were responsible for a whole host of social and economic problems.
3.1.2. 2.) Conflict Theories
3.1.2.1. On the ability of dominant groups to improve their will on subordinate groups through force, cooptation, and manipulation. Conflict sociologist do not see the relationship between school and society as unproblematic or straightforward.
3.1.3. 3.) Interactional Theories
3.1.3.1. Primarily critiques and extensions of the functional and conflict perspectives. Functional and conflict theories are very abstract, and emphasize structure and process at a very general level of analysis. Interactional theories attempt to make the common place strange by turning on their heads everyday taken-for-granted behaviors and interactions between students and students, and between students and teachers.
3.2. Effects of Schooling on Individuals
3.2.1. 1.) Knowledge and Attitudes-
3.2.1.1. The higher the social class background, the higher his/her achievement levels are.
3.2.1.2. Differences in school are related to differences in student outcomes.
3.2.1.3. Schools where students are compelled to take academic subjects and has consistent discipline makes student achievement levels go up.
3.2.1.4. More years of schooling leads to greater knowledge and social participation.
3.2.2. 2.) Teacher Behavior-
3.2.2.1. Teachers have a huge impact on students learning and behavior.
3.2.2.2. Teachers expectations play a major role in encouraging or discouraging students to work their full potential.
3.2.2.3. If you praise your students, they work better and feel better about themselves.
3.2.3. 3.) Student Peer Groups and Alienation-
3.2.3.1. Four types of college students: careerists, intellectuals, strivers, and unconnected.
3.2.3.2. Careerists came from middle/upper class backgrounds and lost confidence in college.
3.2.3.3. Intellectuals came from highly educated families, politically involved, earned awards.
3.2.3.4. Strivers had a working class background, ethnic/racial minorities, worked hard, and not a very high GPA.
3.2.3.5. Unconnected came from all backgrounds, participated in a few activities, and was least satisfied with their college experiences.
3.2.4. 4.) Tracking-
3.2.4.1. has a critical impact in student mobility
3.2.4.2. This has been found in many studies that tracking decisions are based on students' class and race, not by abilities and inclinations.
3.2.5. 5.) Education and Inequality-
3.2.5.1. Class influences what people think, by shaping the way they think.
3.2.5.2. People are stratified by race, ethnicity, age and gender.
3.2.5.3. Americans like in hierarchical society where mobility is blocked because of structural inequalities that have little to nothing to do with individuals' merits or abilities.
4. Philosophy of Education
4.1. World View (Existentialism- roots can be traced back to the Bible)
4.1.1. Generic Notions-
4.1.1.1. It is not a particular school of philosophy at all.
4.1.1.2. Existentialists pose questions as to how their concerns impact on the lives of individuals.
4.1.1.3. People are placed on Earth and must make some sense of the chaotic world.
4.1.2. Key Researchers-
4.1.2.1. Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
4.1.2.2. Martin Buber (1878-1965)
4.1.2.3. Karl Jaspers (1883-1969)
4.1.2.4. Jean Paul Sartre (1905-1986)
4.1.3. Goal of Education-
4.1.3.1. focus on the needs of individuals, cognitively and affectively
4.1.3.2. they believe they should stress and tensions living in the world should be addressed.
4.1.4. Role of Teacher-
4.1.4.1. Understand your own world to understand a students.
4.1.4.2. Take risks and work non-stop to get the best of their students.
4.1.4.3. Empower students to choose and act on their own.
4.1.5. Method of Instruction-
4.1.5.1. Learning is intensely personal.
4.1.5.2. Each child has a different learning style, and the teacher needs to find out what works best for each student.
4.1.5.3. Students are constantly learning, an d eventually come up with knowledge of the past, present, and future.
4.1.5.4. The teacher needs to ask questions, generate activities, and work together with students.
4.1.6. Curriculum-
4.1.6.1. Is heavily based with toward humanities.
4.1.6.2. Art, drama, and music encourage personal interaction.
4.1.6.3. Expose students early on to problems and possibilities and also horrors that human kind is possible of doing.
5. Schools as Organizations
5.1. Major Stakeholders
5.1.1. State Senators- Richard Shelby
5.1.1.1. House of Representative- lower house of the Alabama Legislature.
5.1.2. State Superintendent- Michael Sentance
5.1.3. Local Superintendent- Matt Massey
5.1.4. All Members on Local School Board-
5.1.4.1. Nathan Curry
5.1.4.2. Angie Bates
5.1.4.3. Mary Louisse Stowe
5.1.4.4. Dave Weis
5.1.4.5. Shere Rucker
5.2. Elements of Change
5.2.1. 1.) School Processes
5.2.1.1. It is the principal who establishes the goals for the school, the level of social and academic expectations, and the effectiveness of the discipline.
5.2.1.2. The demands of the bureaucracy can often be destructive to the very spontaneity and freedom that is required by teachers and students if they are to develop intellectually and personally.
5.2.2. 2.) School Cultures
5.2.2.1. School cultures are extremely vulnerable to disruption and that continuity is often maintained by the use of authority.
5.2.2.2. The culture of any one particular school is the product of the political compromises that have been created in order for the school to be viable.
6. Curriculum & Pedagogy
6.1. Curriculum Theory
6.1.1. Developmentalists-
6.1.1.1. Related to the needs and interests of students rather than the needs of society.
6.1.1.2. Relationships between the child and the curriculum.
6.1.1.3. Emphasized the process of teaching as well as its content.
6.1.1.4. Student centered and was concerned with relating the curriculum to the needs and interests of each child at particular developmental stages.
6.1.1.5. Stressed flexibility in both what was taught and how it was taught
6.2. Dominant Traditions of Teaching
6.2.1. 1.) Mimetic Tradition-
6.2.1.1. Easier of the two to explain.
6.2.1.2. Closer to what people today think education is all about.
6.2.1.3. Knowledge that can be passed from one to the other.
6.2.2. Transformative Tradition-
6.2.2.1. Deems successful teaching to be capable of accomplishing: a transformation of one kind or another in the person being taught.
7. Equality of Opportunity
7.1. Educational Outcomes
7.1.1. Class
7.1.1.1. Students in different social classes have different kinds of educational experiences.
7.1.1.2. Education is extremely important.
7.1.1.3. Number of books in a family's home is related to the academic achievement of its children.
7.1.1.4. There is little doubt that the high an individual's social class, the more likely he or she is to enroll in college.
7.1.2. Race
7.1.2.1. Society is still highly stratified by race.
7.1.2.2. An individual's race has a direct impact on how much education he or she is likely to achieve.
7.1.2.3. Minorities do not receive the same educational opportunities as whites, and their rewards for educational attainment are significantly less.
7.1.3. Gender
7.1.3.1. An individual's gender was directly related to his or her educational attainment.
7.1.3.2. 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.
7.1.3.3. Gender differences between men and women, in terms of educational attainment, have been reduced.
7.1.3.4. There are still significant advantages for men when competing for the most prestigious academic prizes.
7.1.3.5. Little doubt that society discriminates against women occupationally and socially.
7.2. Coleman Study from 1982
7.2.1. When they compared the average test scores of public school and private school sophomores, there was not one subject in which public school students scored higher than private school students.
7.2.1.1. In reading, vocabulary, mathematics, science, civics, and writing tests, private school students outperformed public school students sometimes by a wide margin.
7.2.2. 1.) What Coleman and his associates saw as significant, others saw as nearly insignificant.
7.2.2.1. Subsequent studies that have compared public and private schools have also found that private schools seem to "do it better."
7.2.3. 2.) 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.
7.2.3.1. Education reform must focus on eliminating the high level of segregation that remains in the United States' education system and that schools must bring an end to tracking systems and biases that favor white and middle-class students.
8. Educational Inequality
8.1. Cultural Differences
8.1.1. Cultural Difference Theories
8.1.1.1. 1.) John Ogbu argues that African-American children do less well in school because they adapt to their well oppressed position in the class and caste structure.
8.1.1.1.1. Cultural differences between the culture of the school and the culture of working-class and non-white students has resulted in calls for changes in school curriculum and pedagogy to more adequately represent the cultures of minority children.
8.1.1.1.2. Ogbu's research also examines the relationship between language and educational achievement among low-income, inner-city African American students.
8.1.1.2. 2.) The second type sees working-class and nonwhite students as resisting the dominant culture of the schools.
8.1.1.2.1. Rothstein argues that investments in improving the health of low-income children will significantly reduce the achievement gaps based on income.
8.1.1.2.2. The key is to move past the ideological and to eliminate the social and educational barriers to school success for working-class and nonwhite students.
8.1.1.2.3. One must recognize that unequal educational achievement cannot be explained by looking at students and their families alone; one must also look at the schools themselves.
8.2. School-Centered
8.2.1. 1.) School Financing
8.2.1.1. Since property values are significantly higher in more affluent communities, these communities are able to raise more money for schools.
8.2.1.2. Funding based on local property taxes is discriminatory under the Equal Protection Clause.
8.2.2. 2.) Effective School Research
8.2.2.1. Differences in school resources and quality do not adequately explain between-school differences in academic achievement was viewed by teachers as a mixed blessing.
8.2.2.2. 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.
8.2.3. 3.) Curriculum and Pedagogic Practices
8.2.3.1. Suggested that 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.
8.2.3.2. Middle-class communities are more likely to have less authoritarian and more student-centered pedagogic practices and to have a humanistic liberal arts college preparatory curriculum at the secondary level.
8.2.3.3. Upper-class students are more likely to attend elite private schools, with authoritarian pedagogic practices and a classical-humanistic college preparatory curriculum at the secondary level.
8.2.4. 4.) Curriculum and Ability Grouping
8.2.4.1. An important organizational component of U.S. schooling.
8.2.4.2. A functionalists 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 or society's most essential positions.
8.2.4.3. The differences in the tracks explain the differences in the academic attainment between tracks.
9. Educational Reform
9.1. School Based Reforms
9.1.1. 1.) School Business Partnerships
9.1.1.1. 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.
9.1.1.2. School business partnerships were formed, the most notable of which was the Boston Compact begun in 1982.
9.1.1.3. Corporate and business support for public schools has fallen dramatically since the 1970's.
9.1.1.4. These have attracted considerable media attention, but there is a little convincing evidence that they have significantly improved schools.
9.1.2. 2.) Teacher Quality
9.1.2.1. Highly qualified teachers in every classroom highlighted the problem of unqualified teachers in urban schools.
9.1.2.2. Highly qualified teachers may actually become unqualified in that circumstance.
9.1.2.3. Programs aimed at solving urban school staffing problems at the supply level through alternative teacher education programs such as Teach for America.
9.1.2.4. They fail to address the organizational problems within schools that are responsible for high turnover rates.
9.2. Reforms that Impact Education
9.2.1. 1.) Full Service and Community Schools
9.2.1.1. Examine and plan to educate not only the whole child, but also the whole community.
9.2.1.2. Full service schools focus on meeting students' and their families educational, physical. psychological, and social needs in a coordinated and collaborative fashion between school and community services.
9.2.1.3. Target and improve at-risk neighborhoods, full-service schools aim to prevent problems, as well as to support them.
9.2.1.4. Problems of society as a means of improving public education, there is no evidence that full-service schools affect student achievement.
9.2.2. 2.) Connecting School, Community, and Societal Reforms
9.2.2.1. Combination of school, community and societal level reforms are necessary to reduce the achievement gap.
9.2.2.2. The school reform must be based on a number of essential supports, including:
9.2.2.2.1. Leadership as the driver for change;
9.2.2.2.2. parent-community ties;
9.2.2.2.3. professional capacity;
9.2.2.2.4. student-centered learning climate;
9.2.2.2.5. instructional guidance
9.2.2.3. They demonstrate that these supports are most needed and difficult to implement in the highest poverty schools and that educational reforms must include policies aimed at the amelioration of the effects of poverty.
9.2.2.4. The U.S. educational system will continue to fail many of its students at great cost to society as a whole if it does not equalize access to educational opportunity and support meaningful learning.