The Comprehensive Public High School

This book traces the decline of the public comprehensive high school. New educational markets emphasized school diversity and parental choice rather than social equity through common schooling, and they were criticized for declining standards. The book also considers government education policies and their regional manifestations.

Drawing on the great wealth of knowledge and experience of educational practitioners and theorists, the volumes in The Sociology of Education set of the International Library of Sociology explore the very important relationship between education and society. These books became standard texts for actual and intending teachers. Drawing upon comparative material from Israel, France and Germany, titles in this set also discuss the key questions of girls' and special needs education, and the psychology of education.

This volume examines issues of social mobility and cohesion, curriculum, the balance between academic and vocational education, the place of exams in the educational system and the influence of independent schools. The author asks whether a more decentralised system of self-governing schools improve the education service.

Nearly the whole of America’s partisan politics centers on a single question: Can markets solve our social problems? And for years this question has played out ferociously in the debates about how we should educate our children. From the growth of vouchers and charter schools to the implementation of No Child Left Behind, policy makers have increasingly turned to market-based models to help improve our schools, believing that private institutions—because they are competitively driven—are better than public ones. With The Public School Advantage, Christopher A. and Sarah Theule Lubienski offer powerful evidence to undercut this belief, showing that public schools in fact outperform private ones. For decades research showing that students at private schools perform better than students at public ones has been used to promote the benefits of the private sector in education, including vouchers and charter schools—but much of these data are now nearly half a century old. Drawing on two recent, large-scale, and nationally representative databases, the Lubienskis show that any benefit seen in private school performance now is more than explained by demographics. Private schools have higher scores not because they are better institutions but because their students largely come from more privileged backgrounds that offer greater educational support. After correcting for demographics, the Lubienskis go on to show that gains in student achievement at public schools are at least as great and often greater than those at private ones. Even more surprising, they show that the very mechanism that market-based reformers champion—autonomy—may be the crucial factor that prevents private schools from performing better. Alternatively, those practices that these reformers castigate, such as teacher certification and professional reforms of curriculum and instruction, turn out to have a significant effect on school improvement. Despite our politics, we all agree on the fundamental fact: education deserves our utmost care. The Public School Advantage offers exactly that. By examining schools within the diversity of populations in which they actually operate, it provides not ideologies but facts. And the facts say it clearly: education is better off when provided for the public by the public.

The authors provide an instructional guide to evaluating public high schools utilizing school effectiveness research and statistical educational data. The historical background of public high schools in the United States includes the fundamental purposes of a public high school education and a discussion of the current educational trends at the high school level. A comprehensive synthesis of the effective schools literature is summarized with recommended categories to consider when assessing the effectiveness of a school. The work includes a guide to the identification and effective use of sources for educational data. An extensive, practical guide to on-site school assessment includes suggested questions and observations to make during an assessment process. Three case studies further demonstrate the assessment process. The reference work is intended for parents seeking a good high school for their children, educators (including teacher educators, principals, teachers, and others wishing to improve their schools), and citizens who are interested in promoting education's position within our society.

The Schenley Experiment is the story of Pittsburgh’s first public high school, a social incubator in a largely segregated city that was highly—even improbably—successful throughout its 156-year existence. Established in 1855 as Central High School and reorganized in 1916, Schenley High School was a model of innovative public education and an ongoing experiment in diversity. Its graduates include Andy Warhol, actor Bill Nunn, and jazz virtuoso Earl Hines, and its prestigious academic program (and pensions) lured such teachers as future Pulitzer Prize winner Willa Cather. The subject of investment as well as destructive neglect, the school reflects the history of the city of Pittsburgh and provides a study in both the best and worst of urban public education practices there and across the Rust Belt. Integrated decades before Brown v. Board of Education, Schenley succumbed to default segregation during the “white flight” of the 1970s; it rose again to prominence in the late 1980s, when parents camped out in six-day-long lines to enroll their children in visionary superintendent Richard C. Wallace’s reinvigorated school. Although the historic triangular building was a cornerstone of its North Oakland neighborhood and a showpiece for the city of Pittsburgh, officials closed the school in 2008, citing over $50 million in necessary renovations—a controversial event that captured national attention. Schenley alumnus Jake Oresick tells this story through interviews, historical documents, and hundreds of first-person accounts drawn from a community indelibly tied to the school. A memorable, important work of local and educational history, his book is a case study of desegregation, magnet education, and the changing nature and legacies of America’s oldest public schools.