Charting Chicago School Reform

In 1989, Chicago began an experiment with radical decentralization of power and authority. Intertwining extensive narratives and rigorous quantitative analyses, this book tells the story of what happened to Chicagos elementary schools in the first four years of this reform. }In 1989, Chicago began an experiment with radical decentralization of power and authority. This book tells the story of what happened to Chicagos elementary schools in the first four years of this reform. Implicit in this reform is the theory that expanded local democratic participation would stimulate organizational change within schools, which in turn would foster improved teaching and learning. Using this theory as a framework, the authors marshal massive quantitative and qualitative data to examine how the reform actually unfolded at the school level.With longitudinal case study data on 22 schools, survey responses from principals and teachers in 269 schools, and supplementary system-wide administrative data, the authors identify four types of school politics: strong democracy, consolidated principal power, maintenance, and adversarial. In addition, they classify school change efforts as either systemic or unfocused. Bringing these strands together, the authors determine that, in about a third of the schools, expanded local democratic participation served as a strong lever for introducing systemic change focused on improved instruction. Finally, case studies of six actively restructuring schools illustrate how under decentralization the principals role is recast, social support for change can grow, and ideas and information from external sources are brought to bear on school change initiatives. Few studies intertwine so completely extensive narratives and rigorous quantitative analyses. The result is a complex picture of the Chicago reform that joins the politics of local control to school change.This volume is intended for scholars in the fields of urban education, public policy, sociology of education, anthropology of education, and politics of education. Comprehensive and descriptive, it is an engaging text for graduate students and upper-level undergraduates. Local, state, and federal policymakers who are concerned with urban education will find new and insightful material. The book should be on reading lists and in professional development seminars for school principals who want to garner community support for change and for school community leaders who want more responsive local institutions. Finally, educators, administrators, and activists in Chicago will appreciate this detailed analysis of the early years of reform.

This second annual issue of the series focuses on the state of urban education in America. It provides in-depth, jargon-free analysis of the most important issues in education today—from some of the country's leading experts. Edited by Diane Ravitch, one of the nation's foremost education authorities, Brookings Papers on Education Policy is an indispensable guide to understanding education trends and emerging issues. Contents include: "History of Urban Education in this Century" by Jeffrey Mirel, Emory University "School Reform in Chicago" by Anthony Bryk, University of Chicago "Lessons from Houston" by Donald McAdams, Houston Independent School Board "Problems of Managing a Big-City School System" by Stanley Litow, IBM Corporation "Single-Sex Schooling: Law, Policy, and Research" by Rosemary C. Salomone, St. John's University School of Law "How Litigation Has Undermined Schools" by Abigail Thernstrom, Manhattan Institute/Massachusetts Board of Education "Creating Successful Urban Schools" by James Comer, Yale Child Study Center "Voucher Experiments" by Paul Peterson, Harvard University "Proposed Reforms of Governance" by Paul Hill, University of Washington

Have urban schools failed, or has reform failed urban schools? This book examines existing urban school programs, ranging from desegregation to reading improvement, in light of available historical, empirical, and case study evidence. Miron and St. John and their contributors probe the underlying theoretical, normative, and political assumptions embedded in specific reform initiatives. They explore how reforms might be reconstructed to better address the underlying challenges and they demonstrate that reforms can be constructively critiqued throughout the stages of implementation, arguing that greater attention should be paid to ethnic and cultural traditions within urban educational settings. Contributors include Leetta Allen-Haynes; Joseph Cadray; Choong-Geun Chung; Richard Fossey; Barry M. Franklin; David Gordon; Carol Anne Hossler; Siri Loescher; Kim Manoil; Genevieve Manset; Louis F. Mirón; Glenda Droogsma Musoba; Kathryn Nakagawa; Carolyn S. Ridenour; Ada B. Simmons; Edward P. St. John; Neil Theobald; Sandra Washburn; Kenneth K. Wong; and Kim Worthington.

Like other big city school systems, Chicago's has been repeatedly "reformed" over the last century. Yet its schools have fallen far short of citizens' expectations and left a gap between the performances of white and minority students. Many blame the educational establishment for resisting change. Other critics argue that reform occurs too often; still others claim it comes not often enough. Dorothy Shipps reappraises the tumultuous history of educational progress in Chicago, revealing that the persistent lack of improvement is due not to the extent but rather the type of reform. Throughout the twentieth century, managerial reorganizations initiated by the business community repeatedly altered the governance structure of schools—as well as the relationships of teachers to children and parents—but brought little improvement, while other more promising reform models were either resisted or crowded out. Shipps chronicles how Chicago's corporate actors led, abetted, or restrained nearly every attempt to transform the city's school system, then asks whether schools might be better reformed by others. To show why city schools have failed urban children so badly, she traces Chicago's reform history over four political eras, revealing how corporate power was instrumental in designing and revamping the system. Her narrative encompasses the formative era of 1880-1930, when teachers' unions moderated business plans; previously unexplored business activism from 1930 to 1980, when civil rights dominated school reform, and the decentralization of the 1980s. She also covers the uneasy cooperation among business associations in the 1990s to install the mayor as head of the school system, a governing regime now challenged by privatization advocates. Business people may be too wedded to a stunted view of educators to forge a productive partnership for change. Unionized teachers bridle at the second-class status accorded them by managers. If reform is to reach deeply into classrooms, Shipps concludes, it might well require a new coalition of teachers' unions and parents to create a fresh agenda that supersedes corporate interests. This study clearly shows that, in Chicago as elsewhere, urban schooling is intertwined with politics and power. By reviewing more than a century of corporate efforts to make education work, Shipps makes a strong case that it's high time to look elsewhere—perhaps to educators themselves—for new leadership.

The process of understanding a text from the narrator s point of view is crucial for the tasks of interpreting and translating the Bible. If the translator s understanding of a narrative from the narrator s point of view is erroneous, then the whole process of translating the message into another language may also fall into error. This poses Bible translators a difficult challenge: How can we understand the narrator s point of view of the biblical stories which are culturally, geographically, and historically remote from our own? Understanding a text from the narrator s point of view must precede the translation process. In this work Hankore presents an argument for the intended utterance of Genesis 28:10 35:15 before proposing in brief how to translate it. By following this process, Hankore shows that a correct understanding of the concept of the ancient Israelite vow in the framework of a social institution is fundamental to reading and translating Genesis 28:10 35:15, and goes on to show how this same votive framework assist an explanation of the relevance of Genesis 34 to the Jacob story.

Based on a three-year study of the National Science Foundation's Urban Systemic Initiative, Meaningful Urban Education Reform is an overview of recent attempts to change teaching in mathematics and science in urban environments. The book evaluates the impact of educational reform on urban schools, determines how schools with the highest levels of poverty in the United States can make successful changes, and investigates how communities and policy makers contribute to student achievement. Contributors provide compelling portraits of classrooms, teachers, and students in elementary, middle, and high schools through case studies and examples from intensive research in four locations: Chicago, El Paso, Memphis, and Miami. They interviewed, observed, and gathered information from district administrators, school principals, teachers, students and their parents, and community members. The book provides valuable insight into how systemic reform works, offers suggestions regarding assessment of successful learning environments, and addresses the need for intensive, long-term professional development for the purpose of engaging teachers with their colleagues in communities of practice supported by a strong school culture.

About a decade ago, New American Schools (NAS) set out to address theperceived lagging performance of American students and the lacklusterresults of school reform efforts. As a private nonprofit organization,NAS's mission was-and is-to help schools and districts raise studentachievement levels by using whole-school designs and design team assistanceduring implementation. Since its inception, NAS has engaged in adevelopment phase (1992-1993), a demonstration phase (1993-1995), and ascale-up phase (1995-present). Over the last ten years, RAND has been monitoring the progress of the NASinitiative. This book is a retrospective on NAS and draws together thefindings from RAND research. The book underscores the significantcontributions made by NAS to comprehensive school reform but also highlightsthe challenges of trying to reform schools through whole-school designs.Divided into sections on each research phase, the book concludes with anafterword by NAS updating its own strategy for the future. This book willinterest those who want to better understand comprehensive school reform andits effects on teaching and learning within high-stakes accountabilityenvironments.

Mayoral takeovers of big city public education systems are desperation measures. After decades of decline in school quality, something must be done to make sure city children learn enough to function as adults in American society. But how can city leaders make a real difference? This book, a sequel to Fixing Urban Schools (Brookings, 1998), is a practical guide for mayors, civic leaders, school board members, and involved citizens. Based on case studies of city reform initiatives in Boston, Memphis, New York City District #2, San Antonio, San Francisco, and Seattle, the book provides practical guidance on how to formulate a plan bold enough to work and how to deal with political opposition to change. It concludes that mayors and private sector leaders must stay engaged in education reform by creating new public-private institutions to support high quality schools.