Are We Still A Nation At Risk Two Decades Later

Written as a study of the 1983 A Nation at Risk report and its impact on public education, this book analyzes this reform and suggests future priorities for public education in the United States.

Find case stories from up-to-date research, reflection activities, structured research and interview activities for developing collaboration skills.

The future of public education and democracy is at risk. Powerful forces are eroding commitment to public schools and weakening democratic resolve. Yet even in deeply troubling times, it is possible to broaden social imagination and empower effective advocacy for systemic progressive reform. Re-envisioning Education and Democracy explores challenges and opportunities for restructuring public education to establish and sustain more broadly inclusive, deeply democratic, and effectively transforming approaches to social inquiry and civic participation. Re-envisioning Education and Democracy adopts a non-traditional format to extend social awareness and imagination. Within each chapter, one episode of an evolving strategic narrative traces the life cycle of a systemic reform initiative. This is followed by an exploratory essay that draws from theory, research, criticism, and practice to prompt consideration of focal issues. Woven through each chapter is a poetically framed meditative stream informed by varied historical and cultural conceptions of oracles. A developmental sequence of social learning strategies (exploratory democratic practices), accompanied by thematic bibliographic references, are included to model democratic teaching and learning applicable in classroom and community settings.

Schooling Corporate Citizens examines the full history of accountability reform in the United States from its origins in the 1970s and 1980s to the development of the Common Core in recent years. Based in extensive archival research, it traces the origins and development of accountability reform as marked by key government- and business-led reports—from A Nation at Risk to No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top. By using the lens of social studies and civic education as a means to understand the concrete impacts of accountability reforms on schools, Evans shows how reformers have applied principles of business management to schools in extreme ways, damaging civic education and undermining democratic learning. The first full-length narrative account of accountability reform and its impact on social studies and civic education, Schooling Corporate Citizens offers crucial insights to the ongoing process of American school reform, shedding light on its dilemmas and possibilities, and allowing for thoughtful consideration of future reform efforts.

What's Ahead in Education?: An Analysis of the Policies of the Obama Administration illuminates the educational views of President Barack Obama. This is done by studying his life to date, his writings and speeches, as well as his initiatives thus far, in the field of education. His unique educational background and public service prior to assuming the presidency offers a number of clues as to how he will perform as President. Attention is also paid to those individuals such as his father, mother, his wife, Michelle, and his Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan. By studying his early steps in developing the stimulus package, the Race to the Top, and a blue print for reauthorizing No Child Left Behind, readers can better understand the likely future of the President's education initiatives.

The Heart and Mind in Teaching: Pedagogical Styles Through the Ages provides an important historical context for an issue confronting every American teacher, administrator, student, parent, and citizen. As the art of teaching is rapidly replaced by formulas, clinical studies, and one-size-fits-all scientific pedagogy, it is important to ask the question, “How did we get here?” Authors Alyssa Magee Lowery and William Hayes trace the history of teaching from Greek philosophy to twenty-first century educational issues in an effort to provide some perspective in the long art versus science debate, ultimately finding that the two components may be able to coexist peacefully.

It is the purpose of this book to examine the ever-changing meaning of the term “liberal arts” and to trace its development from antiquity to the present. In doing so, the text will compare and contrast the values of such an education with the other important objective of schools and colleges, which is to prepare students with appropriate occupational training. The book will highlight the arguments of both points of view. In doing so, attention will be paid to the contributions to society of those who have been exposed to a variety of educational curricula. As part of the study, the impact of the community college will be considered, along with the impact of recent initiatives such as the Nation at Risk Report, No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and the Common Core. Finally, the text will conclude with an attempt to suggest the direction that will determine the fate of liberal arts in schools and colleges.

The purpose of this book is to help the reader understand our differences and to suggest a way that we can reach a consensus on education reform.