1. Politics of Education
1.1. Neo-Liberal Perspective
1.1.1. Capitalism is economically productive
1.1.2. Individuals should earn their place
1.1.3. Unregulated free market leads to abuse
1.1.4. Balanced social and economic needs of citizens
1.2. Progressive Vision
1.2.1. Schooling IS related to the larger society
1.2.2. Schools should contribute to a better society
2. History of U.S. Education
2.1. Common School Era
2.1.1. High School no longer voluntary
2.1.2. Public school enrollment grew from 25,000 in 1875 to 2.382,542 in 1920 (pg. 72, Exploring Education: An Introduction to the Foundations of Education).
2.1.3. NEA committee created a standard liberal arts curriculum that included English, math, history and science.
2.1.4. Carnegie units introduced throughout the country: same core courses adopted.
2.1.5. Development of Cardinal Principles: goals of secondary ed were health, fundamental processes, home-membership, vocation, citizenship, worthy use of leisure and ethical character.
2.1.6. Influences of this reform era include G. Stanley Hall (child-centered pedagogy) and Edward F. Thorndike (human nature influenced by environment/education, "neutral measurement").
2.2. Democratic-Liberal Perspective
2.2.1. Flawed, but progressive effort of providing an equal opportunity to education for all.
2.2.2. Attempts to provide education to larger segments of the population, not just the elite.
2.2.3. Goals of education have become more diverse as the population of students has grown larger and more diverse (social issues as important as intellectual ones).
2.2.4. U.S. school system is flawed. Still seeking balance between equality and excellence.
2.2.5. Ellwood Clubberly, Merle Curti and Lawrence A. Cremin represent the Democratic-Liberal school of thought. Equity and excellence IS a possibility.
3. Sociological Perspectives
3.1. Interactional Theory Perspective
3.1.1. George Herbert Mead and Herbert Blumer are some of the contributers to this type of perspective.
3.1.2. Interactional theories are considered supplemental to functional and conflict theories.
3.1.3. Interactional theories look at how the details of school life influences teachers and students.
3.1.4. Details are questioned and examined. How is a student determined to be gifted? How is student labeled with a learning disability?
3.1.5. Studying issues at this microsociological level lessens the chance of policies or theories being developed without substance or meaning.
3.1.6. Functional and conflict theories (macrosociological views) should be combined with interactional theories (microsociological views) to get a complete picture.
3.1.7. Basil Bernstein attempted to fuse the different perspectives to analyze how speech patterns, class and academic success affected one another.
3.2. 3 Effects of Schooling
3.2.1. Knowledge & Attitude
3.2.1.1. Academic-focused school produce higher rates of learning.
3.2.1.2. Discipline and enrollment in academic subjects increase student achievement.
3.2.1.3. Students attending summer programs, using the library and reading in the summer have great gains during the school year (Heyns, 1978).
3.2.1.4. Time in school directly correlates to how much a student learns.
3.2.2. Employment
3.2.2.1. Graduating from college leads to more employment opportunities.
3.2.2.2. Employers require an ever-increasing amount of formal education despite studies showing that the amount of education is only weakly related to job performance.
3.2.2.3. Study by Berg studied factory workers, store clerks, engineers, civil servants, etc. Found that education had no bearing on job performance.
3.2.2.4. College education acts as a sorter for employers, but employees learn to do their jobs while working their jobs (not at college).
3.2.2.5. College graduates make more than their non-educated counterparts (with women making less than their respective counterparts, despite education level).
3.2.3. Education and Mobility
3.2.3.1. "Civil Religion" - belief that education will act as a great equalizer.
3.2.3.2. MacLoed (1995) - Working class boys reject the civil religion.
3.2.3.3. "Contest Mobilitiy" - rising and falling based on your own abilities
3.2.3.4. "Sponsored Mobility" - social class determines academic and vocational future.
3.2.3.5. Education route vs Educational amount - When amount is the same, the more prestigious route (private school) is seen as favorable.
4. Philosophy of Education
4.1. Dewey's Pragmatism (Progressive)
4.1.1. School of thought founded by John Dewey, William James and George Sanders Pierce.
4.1.2. Generic Notions - Attainment of a better society is possible though education. Educators should start with the needs/interests of the child and allow child to assist with curriculum planning. Collaborative group work is used. Pragmatism depends heavily on experiential learning. Curriculum should reflect the child's stages of development.
4.1.3. Goal of Education - School is a place where ideas can be implemented/tested, with the goal of providing students with the knowledge needed to improve society. The social role of school should be balanced with an individual's social, intellectual and personal development. The primary role of education is growth.
4.1.4. Role of the Teacher - Progressive/pragmatic teachers are not expected to be all-knowing. Instead, they function as gentle leaders that offer suggestions, questions, encourages and helps plan curriculum.
4.1.5. Method of Instruction - Students learn individually and by working in groups. Teaching utilizes problem-solving or inquiry methods of teaching. Rote memorization not used.
4.1.6. Curriculum - Pragmatic schools use a core curriculum (or an integrated curriculum) that could include math, science, history, reading, writing, music or art. Curriculum isn't fixed. Instead, it changes with the current social climate or when the student's interests or needs change.
5. Schools as Organizations
5.1. Government of My District
5.1.1. State Government
5.1.1.1. Phillip C. Cleveland, Interim State Superintendent
5.1.1.2. Micky Hammon - House of Representatives (District 4)
5.1.1.3. Arthur Orr - State Senator (District 3)
5.1.1.4. Mary Scott Hunter - Representative on State School Board (District 8)
5.1.2. Local Government
5.1.2.1. Dr. Tom Sisk - Local Superintendent
5.1.2.2. Local School Board: Mr. Charles Shoulders, Mr. Marty Adams, Mr. Bradley Young, Mr. Earl Glaze, Mr. Bret McGill, Mr. Edward Winter & Mr. Anthony Hilliard.
5.2. International Comparison
5.2.1. Great Britain - Like our early days, poor children in 19th century received no education while the rich hired tutors for their children. In 1944, reform brought free education to all children. Today, classrooms are mulitcultural with many of the same problems present in the US.
5.2.2. France - Educational system is much more centralized than the US and British school systems.Has had a dual system: one for the elite and one for everyone else. The French system is still competitive, stratified and non-democratic.
5.2.3. The Former Soviet Union - The end of the Soviet Union in 1991 effected the education of the school children there. Social change happened faster than educational reform. Traditionally ideological in nature, education did not keep pace with technological changes. Today, education has dramatically changed but still needs reform concerning curriculum, privatization, school choice and educational philosophies.
6. Curriculum and Pedagogy
6.1. Developmentalist Curriculum
6.1.1. Progressive curriculum focused on the needs of the student instead of the needs of society
6.1.2. Integrated philosophies belonging to Dewey and Piaget.
6.1.3. Student-centered. Emphasized relating curriculum to the needs/interest of the student at their particular developmental stage.
6.1.4. Stressed teaching practices, content, flexibility and the individual student's personal developmental level.
6.2. Modern Functionalist Theory
6.2.1. Developed in U.S. and based off the works of Talcott Parsons and Robert Dreeben.
6.2.2. Stressed preparing students to function in a increasingly complex society
6.2.3. Modern functionalist consider society to be democratic and meritocratic.
6.2.4. Specific content less important than teaching students how to learn the content. Critical thinking is a necessary life skill in an increasingly modern society.
7. Equality of Opportunity
7.1. African-American Achievement & Attainment
7.1.1. Achievement
7.1.1.1. Achievement gaps among minorities and whites have decreased overall since the 1970's, but progress has been stagnant since 1988.
7.1.1.2. From 1973 to 1986, reading and math achievement gaps between 13-year-old blacks and whites narrowed (from 17-year-olds the gap narrowed until 1988 and increased afterwards until 1999). However, from 1986 to 1999 the gap increased. The gaps remained costant through 2008.
7.1.1.3. At the start of kindergarten, blacks rate in the 34th percentile in reading while whites rank in the 50th percentile. Lower socioeconomic ranking seems also to be detrimental to the black student.
7.1.1.4. It is thought that achievement gaps begin before kindergarten. Many theories have been presented for explanation: crack cocaine epidemic, Head Start programs in urban areas, etc.
7.1.2. Attainment
7.1.2.1. Gaps in achievement creates a ripple effect that contributes to negative African-American attainment.
7.1.2.2. 2012 Census: While 92.1% of whites graduated from high school and 33.3% earned a 4-year college degree, only 84% of African-Americans graduated high school and 19.9% went on to receive their Bachelor's degree (pg. 357).
7.1.2.3. African-Americans still fall behind whites in SAT scores.
7.1.2.4. In 2011, African-American's made up about 14.6% of the student body, with only 8.6% of African-Americans taking AP exams.
7.1.2.5. HIgh-poverty schools were over twice as likely to have teachers that were not certified or educated in their content area (2007-2008).
7.1.2.6. Minority students are often in lower track classes than white, affluent students. They have less challenging curriculum, less AP classes, more underqualified teachers and larger class sizes. They are also more likely to change schools and to have parents that do not participate in school activities.
7.2. The Coleman Study (1966)
7.2.1. Overview
7.2.1.1. Large-scale survey headed up by sociologist James Coleman.
7.2.1.2. Study's goal was to prove that the education of white and black students were different in hopes that lawmakers would provide federal funding to schools attended by minority students.
7.2.1.3. Basically, the first round of the study showed that it didn't matter where a child went to school as much as student-body composition. This laid the foundation for busing children from one school district to another.
7.2.1.4. In 1982, Coleman's second study showed that there was not one subject where public school students scored higher than private school students. Private school students outperformed public school students by wide margins in math, science, civics and writing tests.
7.2.2. Response to Coleman: Round 3
7.2.2.1. Forty years after Coleman's initial study, reeaserchers Geoffrey Borman and Maritza Dowling used modern statistical tools to process educational data in a similar fashion to Coleman's study. Their results partially confirmed Coleman's original findings.
7.2.2.2. Borman and Dowling found that the school a student goes to is often the result of their race and socioeconomic background. They found that the racial and socioeconomic composition of a school has a greater effect on achievement than an individual's race or class.
7.2.2.3. Race and class are predictors of academic success.
7.2.2.4. Schools DO matter: Segregation based on race and socioeconomic status and within school interactions play a large part in achievement gaps. Education reform should focus on eliminating the high level of de facto segregation that exists in the U.S.
8. Educational Inequality
8.1. Cultural Difference Theories
8.1.1. Cultural/family dffierences exist between working class , non-white students and middle-class, white students.
8.1.2. Working-class, non-white students have different cultural dispositions and may begin school without skills required by the school. NOT because of home life, but because they are members of an oppressed minority.
8.1.3. Anthropologist John Ogbu argues that African-American children do less well in school because they accepted their oppressed position in society. There is a "job ceiling" that prevents African-Americans from believing that they can have better opportunities.
8.1.4. Bowles and Gintis (1976) - Correspondence theory that suggests working-class students adapt to unequal aspects of society's class structure.
8.1.5. Bordieu - Upper-class families give their children access to "cultural capital" (museums, travel, etc) and "social capital" (networking, college admission, parental involvement, etc). In addtion to economic capital, affluent parents'ability to provide social and cultural capital further contribute to educational inequality.
8.2. School-Centered Theory
8.2.1. There are many school-centered explanations for educational inequality: financing, curriculum, pedagogic practices and ability grouping.
8.2.2. School Financing
8.2.2.1. Schools attended by affluent students are better funded than those from low-income, urban areas.
8.2.2.2. School funding is primarily financed by local property taxes. Since property values in affluent or surburban areas are much higher than property values in low-income areas, affluent schools often have more money to spend per student.
8.2.2.3. Using property tax as the primary avenue to financing school districts has been challenged by opponents that believe the practice to be discriminatory, unconstitutional or inherently damaging.
8.2.2.4. Federal aid can be used to equalize funding and guarantee equality of education, regardless of a student's address. Proponets believe that federal income tax could fund schools. Critics believe that the 10th Amendment lists schools as a local matter.
8.2.2.5. There is a clear difference in equality of opportunity resulting from the property tax funding system.. In terms of funding, children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds do not receive the same opportunities.
8.2.2.6. School funding is an economic, social, political and moral issue.
9. Educational Reform
9.1. School-Based Reform: Teacher Quality
9.1.1. No Child Left Behind (NCLB) requires that all teachers must by "highly qualified". While most teachers meet the criteria, many inner city teachers are not highly qualified in the subject that they are actually teaching ("out-of-field" teaching).
9.1.2. When a highly qualified teacher is assigned to a subject that they are not trained in, they may become "highly unqualified".
9.1.3. Urban, low-income and/or highly minority schools often have a large number of inexperienced or "out-of-field" teachers. This is detrimental to the education of the student.
9.1.4. Staffing urban schools has more to do with organizational problems (easier to hire unqualified teachers, poor working conditions, etc).
9.1.5. Reformers stress that teacher tenure, seniority-based transfers, and layoff provisions are barriers to the improvement of teacher quality. Provisions to Race to the Top funding have addressed some of these issues.
9.2. Political Reform: State Intervention
9.2.1. As of 2000, 38 states had some form of reward/sanction system in place to reward or punish schools.
9.2.2. School or district takeover is an accountability measure being implemented by some school systems.
9.2.3. 23 states, including Alabama, have statutes that allow state education agencies to take over school districts from local authorities.
9.2.4. Underperforming school districts are increasingly sanctioned with a takeover as a last resort.
9.2.5. Takeovers can be an advantage for the following reasons: puts school boards throughout the state on notice, creates radical change in low-performing schools and the local community can address a school district's problems.
9.2.6. Critics of state intervention see it as an attempt to exert state authority over schools while reducing local control. Takeovers may place unqualified individuals in the school, many times does not get to the root problem of weak education (instead cleans up corruption, nepotism, etc), relies too heavily on test scores to measure a school's performance and undermines the local staff's self-worth and reputation.