1. Politics of Education
1.1. Four Purposes of Education
1.1.1. Intellectual
1.1.1.1. To teach basic cognitive skills such as reading, writing, and mathematics. To transmit specific knowledge in literature, history, science, etc. To help students acquire higher-order thinking skills such as analysis, evaluation, and synthesis.
1.1.2. Political
1.1.2.1. 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. To teach children the basic laws of the society.
1.1.3. Social
1.1.3.1. To help solve social problems. To work as one of many institutions, such as the family and the church to ensure social cohesion. To socialize children into the various roles, behaviors, and value of the society.
1.1.4. Economic
1.1.4.1. To prepare students for their later occupational roles and to select, train, and allocate individuals into the division of labor.
1.2. Perspectives
1.2.1. The Conservative Perspective
1.2.1.1. The role of the school provides the necessary educational training to ensure that the most talented and hard-working individuals receive the tools necessary to maximize economic and social productivity. Schools also socialize children into the adult roles necessary to the maintenance of the social order. The school's function is seen as one of transmitting the cultural traditions through what is taught. The roles of the school is essential to both economic productivity and social stability.
1.2.2. The Liberal Perspective
1.2.2.1. The explanation of unequal performance is argued by liberals that individual students or groups of students begin school with different life chances and therefore some groups have significantly more advantages than others. Liberals feel that society must attempt through policies and programs to equalize the playing field so that students from disadvantaged backgrounds have a better chance.
1.2.3. The Conservative Perspective
1.2.3.1. The definition of educations problems is argued by the conservative perspective as several key points: 1) decline of standards - lowered academic standards and reduced educational quality; 2) decline of cultural literacy - schools watered down the traditional curriculum and thus weakened the school's ability to pass on the heritage of American and Western civilizations to children; 3) decline of values or of civilization - schools lost their traditional role of teaching moral standards and values; 4) decline of authority - schools lost their traditional disciplinary function and become chaotic in many cases; 5) schools are stifled by bureaucracy and inefficiency because they are state controlled and are immune from the laws of a competitive free market.
2. History of U.S. Education
2.1. Reform Movement with Influence on Education
2.1.1. President Clinton's Goals 2000 in 1994 was a school choice movement that sought to give parents the right to choose the public school in which to send their children. The traditional method was where one's school was based on neighborhood zoning patterns.
2.2. Historical Interpretation of US Education
2.2.1. A radical interpretation by David Nassaw in 1979 argued that public schools are compromised in the end by reform and resistance and that they do not belong to the corporation and that state nor to their communities but remain 'contested' institutions with several agendas and several purposes. He further argued that reforms have not made schools efficient in social channeling or control and the opponents of reform had not turned them into egalitarian institutions either. In short, this interpretation suggested that the public schools continued to be the social arena where the tension was reflected and the contest played out between promise of democracy and the rights of class division.
3. Sociological Perspectives
3.1. Functionalism
3.1.1. Functionalists point of view about the relation of school and society recognized that education had taken different forms at different times and places and was of critical importance in creating the moral unity necessary for social cohesion and harmony. They also believed that moral values were the foundation of society.
3.2. Conflict Theory
3.2.1. From a conflict point of view, schools were similar to social battlefields where students struggle against teachers, teachers against administration, etc.
3.3. Interactionalism
3.3.1. Interactional theories attempt to make commonplace strange by turning attention to everyday behaviors and interactions between students and students as well as between students and teachers.
3.4. Effects of Schooling With Great Impact
3.4.1. Knowledge and Attitude - Schools where students are compelled to take academic subjects and where there is consistent discipline see student achievement levels go up.
3.4.2. Employment - Research has shown that large organizations require high levels of education for all types of jobs. Students graduating college have greater employment opportunities.
3.4.3. Inside the Schools - Larger schools can offer students more facilities but may restrain initiative whereas smaller schools lack resources but may allow more student and teacher freedom. Whether large or small the content of what they teach is the most important.
3.4.4. Teacher Behavior - Teachers have a huge impact on student learning and behavior. Teachers have many interpersonal contacts each day with children in their classrooms. Teachers also wear many different occupational hats such as instructor, disciplinarian, employer, friend, confidant, educator, etc.
3.4.5. 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 and study within them.
4. Philosophy of Education
4.1. Existentialism
4.1.1. Existentialist generic notions' suggest that individuals are placed on this earth alone and must make some sense out of the chaos they encounter.
4.1.2. Key researchers of this philosophy are Soren Kierkegaard, Martin Buber, and Karl Jaspers.
4.1.3. The goal of education is that education should focus on the needs of individuals both cognitively and affectively.
4.1.4. The role of the teacher is that the teacher should understand their own 'lived worlds' and that of their students in order to help their students achieve the best they can.
4.1.5. The methods of instruction is that learning is viewed as intensely personal. That each child has a different learning style and it is up to the teacher to discover what works for each child.
4.1.6. The curriculum encourages personal interaction and exposing students at early ages to problems as well as possibilities.
5. Schools as Organizations
5.1. AL State Board of Education
5.1.1. President - Governor Robert J. Bentley
5.1.2. Vice President, District 04 Representative - Yvette Richardson
5.1.3. President Pro Tem, District 08 Representative - Mary Scott Hunter
5.1.4. Secretary & Executive Officer - Michael Sentance
5.1.5. District 07 Representative - Jeffrey Newman
5.1.6. District 06 Representative - Cynthia Sanders McCarty
5.1.7. District 05 Representative - Ella B. Bell
5.1.8. District 03 Representative - Stephanie Bell
5.1.9. District 02 Representative - Betty Peters
5.1.10. District 01 Representative - Matthew S. Brown
5.2. State Superintendent
5.2.1. Michael Sentance
5.3. District 08
5.3.1. State Senator District 08 - Steve Livingston
5.3.2. House District 24 - Nathaniel Ledbetter
5.3.3. DeKalb County
5.3.3.1. Superintendent - Hugh Taylor
5.3.3.2. Assistant Superintendent - Brian Thomas
6. Curriculum & Pedagogy
6.1. Developmentalist Curriculum Theory
6.1.1. A curriculum theory that is related to the needs and interests of the students rather than the needs of society.
6.1.2. This progressive approach to teaching is student centered and is concerned with relating the curriculum to the needs and interests of the child at particular development stages.
6.1.3. This approach stresses flexibility in both what is taught and how it is taught, with emphasis on the development of each student's individual capacities.
6.1.4. The development curriculum stresses the importance of relating schooling to the life experiences of each child in a way that would make education come alive in a meaningful manner.
6.2. Dominant Traditions of Teaching
6.2.1. Mimetic
6.2.1.1. It is the easier of the two forms of dominant traditions to describe.
6.2.1.2. It is closer to what most people today seem to think education is all about.
6.2.1.3. It is more harmonious with all that is thought of as scientific and rigorous within education than in its competitor.
6.2.1.4. Comes from the Greek word mimetic where 'mime' and 'mimic' come from because it gives a central place to the transmission of factual and procedural knowledge from one person to another.
6.2.1.5. The key idea is that some kind of knowledge or skill can be doubly possessed, first by the teacher and then by the student.
6.2.1.6. Consists of a five step procedure for transmitting knowledge: 1)Test 2)Present 3)Perform/Evaluate 4)Reward/Fix, Enter Remedial Loop 5)Advance.
6.2.2. Transformative
6.2.2.1. Mode 1: Personal Modeling - Teacher must be living exemplars of certain values to present a model of behavior.
6.2.2.2. Mode 2: Soft Suasion - Role of teacher student is reversed, almost as student teaching the teacher.
6.2.2.3. Mode 3: Use of Narrative - A specific kind of stories that is considered proper or just are accepted.
7. Equality of Opportunity
7.1. Impact of Educational Outcomes
7.1.1. Class - 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.
7.1.2. Race - In a society as segregated as that in the US minority students receive fewer and inferior educational opportunities than white students.
7.1.3. Gender - Society discriminates against women occupationally and socially, men receive preferential treatment within schools and when competing for prestigious academic prizes.
7.2. The Coleman Study 1982
7.2.1. Response 1 - Differences among schools such as public and private do make a difference. It was argued that private schools were more learning effective learning environments that public schools because private schools place emphasis on academic activities and enforce discipline consistent with student achievement.
7.2.2. Response 2 - Studies comparing public schools with private schools have found that private schools have certain organizational characteristics related to student outcomes particularly for low-income students.
8. Educational Inequality
8.1. Cultural Deprivation Theories
8.1.1. One theory suggests that working-class and nonwhite families often lack the cultural resources such as books and other educational stimuli thus arriving at school at a significant disadvantage.
8.1.2. The other theory asset that poor have a deprived culture that lacks the value system of middle-class culture. Middle-class culture values hard work and initiative whereas the culture of poverty rejects hard work and initiative as a means to success.
8.2. School-Centered Explanations
8.2.1. Genetic Differences - Unequal educational performance by working-class and non-white students due to genetic differences is argued by analyses of a particular race is less intelligence than whites.
8.2.2. School Financing - Comparing public school in affluent suburbs and public schools in poor inner cities suggests more affluent communities are able to provide more per-pupil spending that poorer districts often at a proportionately less rate.
8.2.3. Between-School Differences - School climates affect academic performance such as schools in working-class neighborhoods are far more likely to have authoritarian and teacher-directed pedagogic practices whereas middle-class communities are more likely to have less authoritarian and more student-centered pedagogic practices.
8.2.4. Within-School Differences - Different groups of students in the same school perform differently suggest that there are school characteristics affecting the outcomes such as division into reading groups and separate classes.
9. Educational Reform
9.1. School Based Reforms
9.1.1. School-Business Partnerships - Business leaders were increasingly concerned that the nation's school were not producing the kinds of graduates necessary for a revitalization of the US economy. As a result several school-business partnerships were formed such as Boston Compact that began in 1982.
9.1.2. Privatization - The traditional distinction between public and private education became blurred with private education companies increasingly involved in public education in the 1990s. For profit-companies took over the management of failing schools and districts.
9.2. Societal, Economic, Community, Political Reforms
9.2.1. School Finance Reforms - More funding was needed to serve the children in the poorer school districts as well as the state was required to implement a package of supplemental programs including preschool and a plan to renovate urban school facilities.
9.2.2. Full Service and Community Schools - Examined a plan to educate not only the whole child but the whole community. Focused on meeting students' and their families educational, physical, psychological and social needs in a coordinated and collaborative fashion between schools and community services.