1. Schools as Organizations
1.1. Federal Alabama Senators
1.1.1. Doug Jones & Richard Shelby
1.2. State Senators
1.2.1. Tim Melson,
1.3. State Superintendent
1.3.1. Matt Massey
1.4. Representative on State School Board
1.4.1. Kay Ivey
1.5. Members of local School Board
1.5.1. Nathan Curry, Angie Bates, Mary Louise Stowe, Dave Weis, Shere Rucker
1.6. School Processes
1.6.1. A school organization is different than any other organization, powerful cultural qualities of schools make them so potent in terms of emotional recall, cognitive outcomes, and change.
1.7. School Cultures
1.7.1. In order for change, conflict must be in place, new heavier s must be learned, team building must be strengthened within the school, and process and content must be interrelated.
2. Equality of Opprotunity and Educational Outcomes
2.1. Class
2.1.1. There is a direct correlation between parental income and children’s performance. Children from working class and underclass families are more likely to underachieve, drop out, and resist the curriculum of school. The more elite class are more likely to go on to college. In sum, socal class and level educational ttained are highly correlated.
2.2. Race
2.2.1. “Minorities do not receive the same educational opportunities as whites, and their rewards for educational attainment are significantly less.”(343)
2.3. Gender
2.3.1. “Overall, males are more likely to score higher on the SAT’s 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 institutions are less academically and socially prestigious than the ones attended by men.”(343) Historically, females have been discrimated in the educational world.
2.4. Coleman Study 1982
2.4.1. “ Wat Coleman saw as significant, others saw as insignificant. Subsequent studies state that yes, more private schools seem to have certain organizational characteristics that are related to student outcomes, but are these relationships as significant as Coleman claimed?”(368)
2.4.2. Another response argued that “education reform must focus on elemintating the high level of segregation that remains in the US educational system and that schools must bring an end to tracking systems and biases that favor white and middle-class student.”(369) Borman and Cowling state that their findings only partially confirm Coleman’s study.
3. Educational Reform and School Improvement
3.1. School Based Reforms
3.1.1. School-Business Partnerships
3.1.1.1. Business leaders became increasingly concerned that the nations schools were not producing the kinds of graduates necessary for a revitilization of the US economy. School-business partnerships were created for manegment assistance and training. These restructures and implementation of a site ]based management plan increased test scores. 526
3.1.2. School-to-Work Programs
3.1.2.1. The intenet of school to work programs were to extend what had been a vocational emphasis to non-college-bound students regarding skill necessary or successful employment and to stress the importance of work-based-training. 527
3.2. Economic Reforms
3.2.1. In 1998, the state was required to implement a package of supplemental programs, including preschool, as well as a plan to renovate urban school facilities. Abbot V implemented additional entitlements for urban schools, including whole school reform, full day kindergarten, a plan to eliminate overcrowding and provide adequate space for educational programs at Abbot Schools. 538
3.2.2. Financing for other programs including social services, increased security, a technology alternative education, school to work, and summer school programs to help allow better success rates.
3.3. Community Reforms
3.3.1. Newark’s Broader Bolder Approach is a model of community based reforms. Full service schools focus on meeting students’ and their families educational, physical, psychological, and social needs coordinated and collaborative fashion between school and community services. 539
3.3.2. Harlem Children’s Zone provide sources for even before the children are born to implement knowledge and reading skills in middle to low class children.
3.4. Political Reforms
3.4.1. State policy makers increasingly are directing attention on how to reward schools and districts that perform well. As of 2000, 38 states had some form of rewards or sanctions in place for the school systems.
3.4.2. State intervention, cost money, and low-income, high-minority schools often have less money to spend, despite the availability of the federal Title 1 funds. Through County Fiscal Offices, work with schools to adjust these problems.
3.5. Societal Reforms
3.5.1. Charter schools is a societal reform that has helped fight for improvement. Allowing students to attend a more successful school with students alike, allows for poverty to take the back burner is society and schools.
3.5.2. Professional capacity has changed, in aims for a more successful school system despit location and money. The ability for society to be viewed and provided with the professional team they need helps the society as a whole.
4. History of U.S Education
4.1. The Rise of Common School
4.1.1. Horace Mann, a lawyer, “lobbied for a state board of education”(67) In result, Massachusetts created a board of education in 1837. Mann became the secretary that led annual reports and surveys, the first ‘normal school’ was establihed in 1839.
4.2. A Historical Interprutation of Education
4.2.1. “Democratic-liberals believe that the history of U.S education involves the progressive evaluation, albeit flawed, of a school system committed to providing equality of opportunity for all. Democratic-liberal historians suggest that each period of educational expansion involved the attempts of liberal reformers to expand educational opportunities to larger segments of the population..”(83)
5. Philosophy of Education
5.1. Student-centered Philosophy of Education
5.1.1. “Pragmatism is a philosophy that encourages people to find processes that work in order to achieve their desired ends.”(186)
5.1.1.1. Generic Notions
5.1.1.1.1. “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.. He believed that it could be more perfectly realized through education that would continually reconstruct and reorganize society.”(188)
5.1.1.2. Role of the Teacher
5.1.1.2.1. “In a progressive setting, the teacher is no longer the authoritarian figure from which all knowledge flows; rather, the teacher assumes the peripheral position of facilitator. The teacher encourages, offers suggestions, questions, and helps plan and implement courses of study.”(189)
5.1.1.3. Key Researchers
5.1.1.3.1. John Locke, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and John Dewey are key researchers in the pragmatic tradition.
5.1.1.4. Goal of Education
5.1.1.4.1. “The role of school was to be “a lever of social reform”-that is, to be the center alone institution for societal and personal improvement, and to do so by balancing a complex set of processes.”(189)
5.1.1.5. Method of Instruction
5.1.1.5.1. “Dewey propsed that children learn both individually and in groups..Today, we refer to this method of instruction as the problem-solving or inquiry method. Books, often written by teachers and students together, were used; field trips and projects that were reconstructed some aspect of the child’s course of study were also an integral part of learning...”(189)
5.1.1.6. Curriculum
5.1.1.6.1. “Progressive educators are not wedded to a fixed curriculum;rather, curriculum changes as the social order changes and as children’s interests and needs change.”(190)
6. Curriculum, Pedagogy, and the Transmission of Knowledge
6.1. “Developmentalist Curriculum is related to the needs and interests of the student rather than the needs of society Curriculum emanated from the aspects of Dewey’s writings related to the relationship between the child and the curriculum, as well as develomentalist physiologists such as Piaget, and it emphasized e process of teaching as well as its content”(284)
6.2. The transformative tradition rests on a different set of assumptions about the teaching and learning process. This tradition believes that the purpose of education is to change the student in some meaningful way, including intellectually, creatively, spiritually, and emotionally. This tradition rejects the authoritarian relationship.
6.2.1. Another theory sees working class and nonwhite students as resisting dominant culture of schools. From this point of view, these students reject the white middle class culture of academic success and embrace a different, often anti school culture. 436
7. Explanations of Educational Inequality
7.1. Cultural differences Theories
7.1.1. John Ogbu argues that African American children do less well in school ecause they adapt to their oppressed position in the class and caste structure. There is a job ceiling for African Americans in America, as there is for similar caste like minorities in other countries, this explains their significantly lower educational successes. 434
7.1.2. Mimetic tradition is based on the viewpoint that the purpose of education is to be transmit specific knowledge to students. This tradition relies on lecture and presentation.
7.2. School centered explanations of school inequality
7.2.1. School Financing an explanation of inequality. Lower income school districts spend less money on school and in return have less successful students. Richer communities have richer schools which produce more success.
7.2.2. Curriculum is another explanation. Effective curriculum is a need, but in some instances curriculum is based off of unrealistic expectations that only a percentage of students can obtain. Resulting in low success rates
7.2.3. Ability Grouping can explain inequality. Grouping classes based off of ability may not help students. Lower achieving students grouped with other low abilities may not have the Opprotunity to thrive and move forward. Resulting in students stuck in a state of low productivity and low success rates.
7.2.4. Gender inequality may add to the overal school inequality. If a school has a higher percentage of females, but does not expect a high rate of success, then they are not aiming to adapt to the certain aspects that are needed for the students to achieve success. Resulting in inequality. ;