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City Schools and City Politics: Institutions and Leadership in Pittsburgh, Boston, and St. Louis by John Portz, Educational reform is one of the most critical issues facing our cities, but some cities are better at it than others. To explain why, this book relates education to politics, showing how the "whole village" can be mobilized to better educate tomorrow's citizens. City Schools boston public schools calendar and City Politics is based on an eleven-city NSF study of civic capacity boston public schools calendar and urban education. As participants in that study, the authors conducted research in three rustbelt cities that have lost much of their tax base boston public schools calendar and have legacies of machine politics. They analyzed the ways in which government, business, boston public schools calendar and community leaders create, or fail to create, civic support for public education, focusing on why certain cities show greater initiative than others in addressing these problems. The authors reveal that, of the cities examined. Pittsburgh has made the most strides in educational reform, followed by Boston. while St. Louis has consistently lagged behind Their observations show that cross-sectorial coalitions are essential for bringing about change; that organizational arrangements in the business community boston public schools calendar and their relationship to local government affect whether there is the capacity to address school reform; that leadership is critical in bringing about change: boston public schools calendar and that municipal institutions boston public schools calendar and culture influence a city's ability to take action. Packed with empirical data boston public schools calendar and analysis. City Schools boston public schools calendar and City Politics demonstrates the citywide boston public schools calendar and long-term character of successful efforts to reform public schools, relating education to the priorities of municipal governments boston public schools calendar and describing the conditions under which reform becomes possible. It extends regime theory to public education boston public schools calendar and shows thateducation policy is inextricably linked with urban political life boston public schools calendar and is an issue of real concern to political science.
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In Schools We Trust: Creating Communities of Learning in an Era of Testing and Standardization by Deborah Meier, We are in an era of radical distrust of public education. Increasingly, we turn to standardized tests boston public schools calendar and standardized curricula--now adopted by all fifty states--as our national surrogates for trust. Legendary school founder boston public schools calendar 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 boston public schools calendar and schools, Meier critiques the ideology of testing boston public schools calendar and puts forward a different vision, forged in the success stories of small public schools she boston public schools calendar and her colleagues have created in Boston boston public schools calendar and New York. These nationally acclaimed schools are built, famously, around trusting teachers--and students boston public schools calendar and parents--to use their own judgment. Meier traces the enormous educational value of trust; the crucial boston public schools calendar and complicated trust between parents boston public schools calendar and teachers; how teachers need to become better judges of each others' work; how race boston public schools calendar and class complicate trust at all levels; boston public schools calendar and how we can begin to "scale up" from the kinds of successes she has created.
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