1. History of U.S. Education
1.1. Since the beginning of education in America schools have been charged with assuming roles that once were the province of family, church, and community.
1.2. In the 17th century the Boston Latin Grammar School was established in1635
1.3. Benjamin Franklin called for an education for youth based on secular/utilitarian studies rather than traditional studies of religion and classics.
1.4. Thomas Jefferson strongly believed the best safeguard for democracy is literacy . He also proposed a bill in 1779 called for the "bill for the More General Diffusion of knowledge" which would provide free education to all children for the first three years of elementary school.
1.5. In 1783 Noah Webster's American spelling book was published.
1.6. In 1855, the first kindergarten was started in the U.S.
1.7. The first public high school was created in 1821 in Boston.
1.8. In Columbus, OH the first Junior High School was open in 1909.
1.9. Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896) was a landmark about the "separate but equal"
1.10. Radical-revisionist educators assert that educational expansion has benefitted the elite few rather than the general population, and has not produced equality of opportunity or effective result.
2. Sociological Perspectives
2.1. Functional Theories: functional sociologist assess the interdependence of the social system, viewing society as a machine where one part works with another to make society work.
2.2. Interactional theories: Interactional sociologists take a up close view of the interactions between students/students and teacher/teachers.
2.3. Conflict Theories: conflict sociologist assert that society is not held together by shared values alone, but on the ability of dominant groups to impose their will on subordinate groups.
2.4. Functionalist Theory interprets each part of society in terms of how it contributes to the stability of the whole society.
2.5. Society is more than the sum of its parts; rather, each part of society is functional for the stability of the whole society.
2.6. Social conflict theory is a Marxist-based social theory which argues that social classes within society ave differing amounts of material and non-material resources.
2.7. According to conflict theory, inequality exist because those in control of a disproportionate shared of society's resources actively defend their advantages.
2.8. Interaction theory is an approach to questions about social cognition, or how one understand other people, that focuses on behaviors and environmental contexts rather than on mental processes or academic achievement.
2.9. In a tracking system, the entire school population is assigned to classes according to whether the students' overall achievement is above avarage, normal, or below average.
2.10. De Facto segregation is racial segregation that happens by fact rather than by legal requirement.
2.11. Inadequate schools usually share these three items in common: overcrowding, poor physical condition of the buildings, and lack of supplies/materials for the teachers and students.
3. Politics of Eductions
3.1. Conservative
3.1.1. Origins in the 1800s and is based on the ideas of social Darwinism.
3.1.2. Individuals must compete in the social environment to survive; human progress is dependent on individual initiative and hard work.
3.1.3. The free market economy of capitalism is viewed as the most productive economic system.
3.2. Liberal
3.2.1. Origins in the 1900s and is based on the works of John Dewey and progressivism.
3.2.2. This perspective is concerned with equality and balancing the economic productivity of capitalism with the social economic needs of the people.
3.2.3. Government involvement in economic, political and social arenas is necessary for fair treatment of all citizens.
3.3. radical
3.3.1. it is based on the writing of an German economist and philosopher Karl Marx.
3.3.2. It is an capitalist system, produces fundamental contradictions that will lead to a transformation into socialism.
3.4. neo-liberal
3.4.1. Focus on the five areas of educational policy: austerity, the market model, individualism, state intervention, economic prosperity, race and class.
3.4.2. A combination of both conservative and liberal perspectives.
3.4.3. Critique failing traditional schools and attribute school failures to teachers unions, teachers tenure, layoffs based on seniority, and the absence of school, teachers, and student accountability.
3.5. Traditional
3.5.1. View school assert that schools are necessary for the transmission of traditional U.S. values in society such as hard work, individual, initiative, and family unity.
3.6. Progresivism
3.6.1. views assert that schools are central to solving social problems, essential to the development of individuals, and an integral part of democratic society.
4. Curriculum and pedagogy
4.1. Terms
4.1.1. Romantic progressivism occurred, placing its philosophical allegiance squarely within this form of curriculum and pedagogy.
4.1.2. developmentalist curriculum is related to the needs and interest of the students rather than the needs of society
4.1.3. social meliorist curriculum, which was philosophically social reconstructionist.
5. Equality of Opportunity
5.1. Class Stratification- occurs in industrial societies that define social level in terms of hierarchy of differential achievement by individuals, especially in economic pursuits
5.2. Caste Stratification- occurs in agrarian societies where social level is defined in terms of some strict criteria such as race or religion.
5.3. Estate Stratification- occurs agrarian in societies where social level is defined in terms of the hierarchy of family worth
5.4. The Coleman Report
5.4.1. based on an extensive survey of educationa opportunity, was mandated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and directed by the sociologist James Coleman.
5.4.2. Work was often misinterpreted as an argument that schools don't matter, only the families.
5.4.3. Was done again and it came back that the charactristics of schools which did matter so that the impact of school relative to that of families could be increased
5.5. Females achieve at higher levels in reading at ages 9, 13, and 17 but achieve at lower level in science at ages 9, 13, and 17.
5.6. Achievement gap refers to the observed, persistent disparity of educational measures between the performance of groups of students (especially groups defined by socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity or gender).
5.7. in 1975, Congress passed the Education of All Handicapped Children Law (EHA)
5.8. The EHA provided significant increases in the quality of services for children with disabilities.
5.9. In the late 1980s critics of special education pushed for the regular education initiative (REI), which called for mainstreaming children with disabilities into regular classes.
5.10. Conservatives argue that the decline in male achievement and attainment is a result of the "feminizing" of the classroom.
6. Educational Inequality
6.1. cultural difference theories
6.1.1. 1st asserts that African American children do less well in school because they adapt to their oppressed position in the class structure.
6.1.2. 2nd views working class and non-white students a resisting the dominant culture of schools.
6.1.3. 3rd asserts that Asian Americans possess family values that places great emphasis on educational achievement along with high expectation for children.
6.2. Cultural Deprivation Theories
6.2.1. suggests that working-class and nonwhite families often lack the cultural resource, such a books and other educational stimuli, and thus arrive at school at a significant disadvantage
6.3. Genetic or Biological Differences Theory
6.3.1. Biological explanation of human behavior are viewed as limited because social scientists believe that environmental and social factors are largely responsible for human behavior.
6.4. Student centered or extra-school explanations of inequalities focus on factors outside of the school such as family, the community, culture, peer group and the individual student.
6.5. School centered or within-school explanation of inequalities focus on factors within the school such as the teachers, teaching methods, curriculum, ability grouping, school climate and teacher expectations.
6.6. School Centered Explanations of Educational Inequality
6.6.1. School Financing
6.6.2. School Climate
6.6.3. Effective verse ineffective schools
6.6.4. pedagogic practices
6.7. Characteristics of Effective Schools
6.7.1. High Expectation for student by teacher and administrators
6.7.2. Strong, effective leadership by school administration
6.7.3. accountability processes for both students and teachers
6.7.4. Close monitoring of student learning
6.7.5. A high degree of instructional time on task
6.7.6. Flexibility for teachers to adapt to new situations and solve problems
6.8. Interactionist theory suggests that we must understand how people within institutions such as families or schools interact on a daily basis in order to comprehend the fctors explaining academic success or failure
6.9. Confict theorist and funtionalist are two major sociological theories of education.
6.10. Interactionist is a third sociological approach
7. Schools as Organizations
7.1. State Senators
7.2. House of Representative
7.3. state Superintndent
7.4. Representative on stat school board
7.5. local superintendent
7.6. local school board
8. Educational Reform and School Improvement
8.1. School-based reforms
8.1.1. intersectional choice plans include public and private school.
8.1.2. Intrasectional school choice policies include only public schools.
8.1.3. Intradistrict choice plans refers to any option available to students within a given public school district
8.2. School-business partnership
8.2.1. business leaders became increasingly concerned that the nation's school were not producing the kinds of graduates necessary for a revitalization of the U.S. economy.
8.2.2. Includes scholarships for poor students to attend college and programs where businesses "adopt"a school.
8.3. School-to-work programs
8.3.1. Every state and locally created school-to-work system had to contain three core elements
8.3.1.1. School-based learning
8.3.1.2. work-based learning
8.3.1.3. connecting activities
8.4. teacher education
8.4.1. Emergence and development of teacher education as an educational problem was a response to the initial debates concerning the failure of the school.
8.5. teacher quality
8.5.1. NCLB's requirement that all schools have highly qualified teachers in every classroom highlighted the problem of unqualified teachers in urban schools.
8.6. Rodriguez V. San Antonio
8.6.1. 1973, Which declared there is no constitutional right to an equal education, school finance equity and adequacy advocates litigated at the state level.
8.7. Robinson V. Cahill
8.7.1. 1970 , filed because citing discrimination in funding for some school districts, which prosecutors believe 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.
8.8. Integrative realm
8.8.1. schools do need to improve their effectiveness in teaching basic skills and knowledge
8.9. developmental realm
8.9.1. schools need to become more humane institutions where students develop as complete human beings.
8.10. the most overlooked aspect of schooling during the past decades of conservative and neo-liberal ascendancy has been the egalitarian realm of schooling.
9. Philosophy of Education
9.1. Idealism
9.1.1. Generic notions
9.1.1.1. Education was important as a means of moving individuals collectively toward achieving the good. States should play an active role in education and it should encourage the brighter students to follow a curriculum that was more abstract and more concerned with ideas rather than with concrete matter.
9.1.2. key researchers
9.1.2.1. George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Rene Descartes, Immanuel Kant,
9.1.3. goal of education
9.1.3.1. interested in the search for truth through ideas rather than through the examination of the false shadowy world of matter; search for truth as individuals
9.1.4. role of teacher
9.1.4.1. responsibility to analyze and discuss ideas with students in order for students to move to new levels of awareness. Sees herself or himself as a role model in the classroom to be emulated by students.
9.1.5. method of instruction
9.1.5.1. Students are encouraged to work in groups or individually on research projects, both oral and written; teachers take and active part in their students' learning.
9.1.6. curriculum
9.1.6.1. Emphasizes the three R's, place great importance on the study of classics.
9.2. Realism
9.2.1. generic notions
9.2.1.1. believed that only through studying the material work was it possible for an individual to clarify or develop ideas.
9.2.2. key researchers
9.2.2.1. Thomas Aquinas, Francis Bacon, John Locke, Alfred North Whitehead, Bertrand Russell
9.2.3. method of instruction
9.2.3.1. believes that the material world holds the key to the ideal world. Support a number of methods-in particular, lecture, and question and answer.
9.2.4. goal of education
9.2.4.1. is to help individuals understand and then apply the principles of science to help the problems plaguing the modern world.
9.2.5. curriculum
9.2.5.1. Consist of the basics: science and math, reading and writing, and humanities. There is a body of knowledge that is essential for the student body to master in order to be part of society.
9.2.6. Role of the teacher
9.2.6.1. to enable students to learn objective methods of evaluating such works. Also, must present ideas in a clar and consistent manner, and demonstrate that there definitive ways to judge works of art, music, poetry, and literature.
9.3. Pragmatism
9.3.1. Generic notions
9.3.1.1. School became an "embryonic community" where children could learn skills both experientially as well as from books.
9.3.2. key researchers
9.3.2.1. John Dewey, William James, George Sanders Peirce
9.3.3. goal of education
9.3.3.1. believed that school should provide "conjoint communicated experience" that it should function as preparation for life in a democratic society
9.3.4. role of teacher
9.3.4.1. assumes the peripheral position of facilitator, teacher is no longer the authoritarian figure.
9.3.5. method of instruction
9.3.5.1. Formal instruction was abandoned, traditional blocks of time from specific discipline instruction were eliminated.
9.3.6. curriculum
9.3.6.1. Curriculum changes as the social order changes and as children interest and needs change.
9.4. Existentialism
9.4.1. Generic notions
9.4.1.1. believe that individuals are placed on this earth alone and must make some sense out of the chaos they encounter. Individuals are in a state of constantly becoming, creating chaos and order, creating good and evil, the choice is up to the individual.
9.4.2. key researchers
9.4.2.1. Martin Buber, Karl Jaspers, Jean Paul Sartre, Marxine Greene & Soren Kierkegaard.
9.4.3. goal of education
9.4.3.1. focus on the needs of individual, both cognitively and affectively.
9.4.4. method of instruction
9.4.4.1. View learning as intensely personal. student and teacher learn cooperatively from each other in a nontraditional, nonthreatening.
9.4.5. curriculum
9.4.5.1. heavily biased toward the humanities. Believe in exposing students at early age to problems as well as possibilities, and to the horrors as well as accomplishments humankind is capable of producing.
9.4.6. role of teacher
9.4.6.1. help students understand the world through posing questions, generating activities, and working together.
9.5. Neo-marixism
9.5.1. generic notions
9.5.1.1. believed that the history of civilization was defined by class struggle- the struggle between the dominant economic group and subordinate economic group.
9.5.2. key researcher
9.5.2.1. Karl Marx,
9.5.3. goal of education
9.5.3.1. is to reproduce the economic, social, and political status quo.
9.5.4. role of teacher
9.5.4.1. Concentrates on the teacher and student as part of a critical pedagogical process.
9.5.5. method of instruction
9.5.5.1. there method is a favor a dialectical approach to instruction, with the question and answer method designed to move the student to new levels of awareness and ultimately to change.
9.5.6. Curriculum
9.5.6.1. Is organized and codified representation of what those with the power to shape it want the children to know; it is also socially constructed.