School Reform In An Era Of Standardization

School Reform in an Era of Standardization explores how teachers and school-based administrators navigate the processes of accountability and standardization in schooling systems and settings. It provides clear insights into how the work and learning of teachers and students in schools have been dramatically reconstituted by increased pressures of external, political scrutiny and accountability. The book reveals in detail the nature and effects of standardization processes upon schools and schooling systems. Specifically, it shows how curriculum development, teaching and assessment practices have all been recalibrated under conditions of increased external scrutiny of teacher and student work and learning, and how such processes are manifest in curriculum dominated by attention to literacy and numeracy, more 'scripted' pedagogies and standardized testing. However, the research not only elaborates the detrimental effects of such processes, but also how those responsible for educating in schools – teachers, heads of curriculum, deputy-principals and principals – have responded proactively by interpreting, interrogating and challenging these conditions. In this way, it provides resources for hope – evidence of what are described as more ‘authentic accountabilities’ – and at the same time it provides a clear portrait of the difficulty of fostering substantive curriculum, teaching and assessment reform during an era of increasingly reductive accountability processes. It will be an invaluable resource for understanding and enhancing practices in schools and school systems in the decades to come, and for giving hope to educators in the ongoing work of rebuilding trust in public education.

We are in an era of radical distrust of public education. Increasingly, we turn to standardized tests and standardized curricula-now adopted by all fifty states-as our national surrogates for trust. Legendary school founder and reformer Deborah Meier believes fiercely that schools have to win our faith by showing they can do their job. But she argues just as fiercely that standardized testing is precisely the wrong way to that end. The tests themselves, she argues, cannot give the results they claim. And in the meantime, they undermine the kind of education we actually want. In this multilayered exploration of trust and schools, Meier critiques the ideology of testing and puts forward a different vision, forged in the success stories of small public schools she and her colleagues have created in Boston and New York. These nationally acclaimed schools are built, famously, around trusting teachers-and students and parents-to use their own judgment. Meier traces the enormous educational value of trust; the crucial and complicated trust between parents and teachers; how teachers need to become better judges of each others' work; how race and class complicate trust at all levels; and how we can begin to 'scale up' from the kinds of successes she has created.

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

We are in an era of radical distrust of public education. Increasingly, we turn to standardized tests and standardized curricula-now adopted by all fifty states-as our national surrogates for trust. Legendary school founder and reformer Deborah Meier believes fiercely that schools have to win our faith by showing they can do their job. But she argues just as fiercely that standardized testing is precisely the wrong way to that end. The tests themselves, she argues, cannot give the results they claim. And in the meantime, they undermine the kind of education we actually want. In this multilayered exploration of trust and schools, Meier critiques the ideology of testing and puts forward a different vision, forged in the success stories of small public schools she and her colleagues have created in Boston and New York. These nationally acclaimed schools are built, famously, around trusting teachers-and students and parents-to use their own judgment. Meier traces the enormous educational value of trust; the crucial and complicated trust between parents and teachers; how teachers need to become better judges of each others' work; how race and class complicate trust at all levels; and how we can begin to 'scale up' from the kinds of successes she has created.

The success of school reform measures greatly depends on thesupport and commitment of teachers. This book examines therealities of educational change from the frontline perspective ofreform-minded teachers. It charts the perceptions and experiencesof twenty-nine teachers in grades 7 and 8 from four schooldistricts--showing how they grappled with such initiatives asintegrated curriculum, common learning standards, and alternativemodes of assessment. This book moves beyond the bandwagons of rhetorical change andexamines how these changes work in practice for better and forworse. Authors Andy Hargreaves and Lorna Earl focus on how reformproposals have brought new complexities to teaching practice andwhy major investments of time and support are required if teachinginnovations are to become lasting and effective. Most importantly,they highlight the intense emotional demands that school changeimposes on teachers, and they outline practical strategies forhelping teachers through the difficult transition process--thusensuring that worthwhile reforms flourish and endure.

Praise for the previous edition: "...excellent...provide[s] timeless foundational information for those interested in the area of educational reform. Every academic library should have this volume."—American Reference Books Annual The effort to improve the quality, methods, and purpose of elementary and secondary schooling in the United States is known as education reform. This movement traces its origins to the inception of public schools—almost 150 years before the founding of the nation—and has both reflected and led social change in the United States. Americans widely agree that schools play an essential role in shaping the nation's future but disagree about education-related issues ranging from assimilation of immigrants and opportunity for the poor to the role of the federal government and the constitutional rights of parents and children. Today the debates on education reform center on teacher preparation and incentives, standardized testing, charter schools, homeschooling, school choice, class size, and discipline. As the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 reaches its 10-year anniversary, Americans are evaluating its nationwide impact on standards, accountability, curriculum, and failing schools. Education Reform, Revised Edition examines these and other complex issues surrounding this timely issue. Clear and logically organized, this revised volume helps students and researchers define, understand, and research this important topic. Coverage includes: Current developments regarding teacher incentives, curriculum standards, standardized tests, and homeschooling The goals and requirements of "Race to the Top," a $5 billion education grant program rolled out as part of the Obama administration's Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 Extracts from documents such as The Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education (1918), A Nation at Risk (1983), the 2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, and the U.S. Secretary of Education's overview of key policy provisions in the No Child Left Behind Act (2002) A concise survey of the events and major debates surrounding education reform in the United States, from earliest influences through the present Up-to-date statistics on charter school enrollment and operations.

This book offers a sophisticated overview of President Obama’s education agenda, exploring how and why education policy became national and ultimately presidential over the past seven decades. The authors argue that the Obama education agenda, though more ambitious, is broadly in line with those of recent presidencies, reflecting elite views that since substantial increases in spending have failed to improve equity and achievement, public schools require reforms promoting transparency such as the Common Core national standards, as well as market based reforms such as charter schools. While sympathetic to President Obama’s goals, the authors argue that the processes used to implement those goals, particularly national standards, have been hurried and lacked public input. The Obama administration’s overreach on school reform has sparked a bipartisan backlash. Even so, Maranto, McShane, and Rhinesmith suspect that the next president will be an education reformer, reflecting an enduring elite consensus behind school reform.

In Confessions of a School Reformer, eminent historian of education Larry Cuban reflects on nearly a century of education reforms and his experiences with them as a student, educator, and administrator. Cuban begins his own story in the 1930s, when he entered first grade at a Pittsburgh public school, the youngest son of Russian immigrants who placed great stock in the promises of education. With a keen historian's eye, Cuban expands his personal narrative to analyze the overlapping social, political, and economic movements that have attempted to influence public schooling in the United States since the beginning of the twentieth century. He documents how education both has and has not been altered by the efforts of the Progressive Era of the first half of the twentieth century, the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s through the 1970s, and the standards-based school reform movement of the 1980s through today. Cuban points out how these dissimilar movements nevertheless shared a belief that school change could promote student success and also forge a path toward a stronger economy and a more equitable society. He relates the triumphs of these school reform efforts as well as more modest successes and unintended outcomes. Interwoven with Cuban's evaluations and remembrances are his "confessions," in which he accounts for the beliefs he held and later rejected, as well as mistakes and areas of weakness that he has found in his own ideology. Ultimately, Cuban remarks with a tempered optimism on what schools can and cannot do in American democracy.