School Reform, Constructed Learning, and Educational Technology

2000 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 289-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Wilburn Clouse ◽  
Henry Ed Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
School Reform ◽  
Learning Environment ◽  
Education Reform ◽  
Public Support ◽  
First Century ◽  
Just In Time ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Reform Movements ◽  
Public Education Reform

School reform symbolizes an opportunity for significantly improving public education. Reform movements occur every few years. A cry goes out for public support to implement another new improvement plan and to secure more money for the children. A review of the school reform movement finds very little change in the learning environment although technology has changed the world at large during the past century. This research suggests that reform movements and technology must work together to bring about major changes in the learning environment if public schools are to remain a viable institution in the twenty-first century. Creative teaching using technology must reach the learning and interest levels of all students. “Just-in-time” teaching techniques must be connected with the interest and ability of the student.

No Child Left Behind: The Ongoing Movement for Public Education Reform

2006 ◽  
Vol 76 (4) ◽  
pp. 461-473 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROD PAIGE
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
No Child Left Behind ◽  
Public Education ◽  
Education Reform ◽  
Education System ◽  
Academic Skills ◽  
Public Education System ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Public Education Reform ◽  
Original Goal

In this essay, former secretary of education Rod Paige depicts the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) as the culmination of more than half a century of urgent but largely unheeded calls for reform of the nation's public education system. He explains the rationale for the design of NCLB and responds to several criticisms of the legislation, including the notion that it is a one-size-fits-all mandate and that its improvement targets are unrealistic. He further argues that the nation's public schools must become more responsive to the needs of students and their families in order to remain viable. Finally, he contends that subsequent reauthorizations should stay true to NCLB's original goal of holding school systems accountable for equipping all students with the academic skills on which America's future depends.

Beyond Dualism, Splits, and Schisms: Social Justice for a Renewal of Vocational–Academic Education

2002 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 640-662 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol A. Mullen ◽  
Alan R. Kohan
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
School Reform ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Academic Education ◽  
Whole School Reform ◽  
Integrated Education ◽  
Whole School ◽  
Vocational Schooling

To fulfill the democratic dream for American schooling, educators and policymakers need to work together for the same common cause: reforming the academic-vocational dichotomy of schooling that has persisted over the past century. Academic subjects continue to be separated from vocational schooling with the effect of diluting each domain's effectiveness. The Deweyian vision of social justice provides a solution for healing this fundamental dualism that characterizes schooling. Even where integration has been attempted using academic-vocational models, tracking continues in public schools without commitment to whole-school reform design. This article discusses these issues in the context of the history of vocational education and Dewey's perspective of integrated education through the occupations. The authors also illustrate the concepts presented through promising whole-school reform designs for democratizing the public education system. Policy implications are addressed for moving toward a socially just system of schooling.

scholarly journals Canadian Schools in Transition: Moving From Dual Education Systems to Inclusive Schools

2012 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Judy Lupart ◽  
Charles Webber
Keyword(s):  
School Reform ◽  
Education Reform ◽  
School Restructuring ◽  
School Transformation ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Dual Systems ◽  
Inclusive Schools ◽  
Progressive Inclusion ◽  
The Many ◽  
Successful Change

This paper provides a synthesis of educational reforms in Canadian schools over the past century to present times. The unique emphasis is to document the broad movements of change in both special and regular education. We begin our analy-sis with a detailed discussion on the many meanings of school restructuring and highlight the ongoing nature of school reform. Following a selective chronology of general and special education reform, we attempt to capture what appear to be the key features of school reform and progressive inclusion. The numerous obsta-cles to school reform are outlined and the evolving roles of those most centrally connected with the school culture—teachers, students, and parents—are re-viewed. Several conditions for successful change are presented and the adoption of a balance of interests, policies, principles, and practices is recommended along with a transformation from dual systems to a unified system of education for all students. Regular and special educators are the professionals who must make school transformation reflect excellence and equity in our Canadian schools, and all available resources and support need to be deployed to this end.

scholarly journals Critical Evaluation for Education Reform

1998 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gisele A. Waters
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
School Reform ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Education Reform ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Critical Evaluation ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Accurate Analysis ◽  
Political Values

The school reform movement has done little to provide an accurate analysis of the production of inequality or the reproduction of social injustice in the public schools or the larger social order. The ideology that influences this movement has often prevented the realization of any notion of an egalitarian ideal, the elimination of inequality, or the improvement of those who are least well-off. I ask educators and evaluators of education reform efforts to reconsider critically their roles in social science research, to reclaim the battleground of public school reform by focusing on the democratic purpose of public schooling, and the institutional problems in educational programs and practice that often inhibit action toward this ideal. The first part of this article includes an extensive argument explaining the "why" of critical evaluation. The theoretical literature on inquiry in science and social science, the ideology of critical theory, critical social psychology, and Freirean pedagogy are consulted as additional tools for augmenting the practice, policies, and responsibilities of evaluators in education. I review three contemporary perspectives of evaluation in order to begin rethinking the purposes and functions that evaluation serves in education. It also demonstrates how mainstream and contemporary evaluations can be used to serve a particular set of social and political values. The second part of this article begins a preliminary journey toward describing the "how" of critical evaluation. Critical evaluators can fight for social justice by combining the merit criteria of state and federal public education law, and the methods of an adversary oriented evaluation in order to transform educational environments that serve the future potentials of all children. Therefore education involves the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world (Freire, 1985).

The Impact on Student Achievement of Replacing Principals in District of Columbia Public Schools

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 518-542 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elias Walsh ◽  
Dallas Dotter
Keyword(s):  
Student Achievement ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
Public Education ◽  
Education Reform ◽  
District Of Columbia ◽  
School Year ◽  
Public Education Reform ◽  
Standard Deviations ◽  
The Impact

The 2007 Public Education Reform Amendment Act led to 39 percent of the principals in District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) being dismissed before the start of the 2008–09 school year, and additional principal exits over the next few years. We measure the impact of replacing these principals on schoolwide student achievement by measuring the changes in achievement that occurred when principals were replaced, and comparing these changes to achievement in comparison schools within DCPS that kept the same principal. We find that after a new principal's third year in a school, average schoolwide achievement increased by 4 percentile points (0.09 standard deviations) compared with how students in the school would have achieved had DCPS not replaced the previous principal. For students in grades 6 to 8, the gains were larger and statistically significant in both math and reading.

scholarly journals Contending with school reform

Focaal ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 (82) ◽  
pp. 94-108
Author(s):  
Mathilde Lind Gustavussen
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Charter Schools ◽  
School Reform ◽  
Education Reform ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
School System ◽  
Racial Politics ◽  
The Social ◽  
Neoliberal Policies ◽  
Us Cities

This article presents a study of state-imposed neoliberal education reform and resistance in post-Katrina New Orleans. In Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath, the city’s school system was dramatically reformed with most of its public schools replaced by privately administered “charter schools.” The article examines the social contradictions created by this reform and characterizes how the city’s education activists articulate their resistance to education privatization. Situating the reform within New Orleans’s post-Katrina neoliberal reconfiguration, it analyzes how simultaneous processes of education privatization and racial dispossession have made the reform lack popular legitimacy. The article concludes by considering how the neoliberal policies implemented after the storm were conditioned by race, arguing that racial politics should be considered fundamental, rather than adjacent, to the study of neoliberalization in US cities.

Black Power and Battles over Education

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Adam Davies
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
Public Education ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Education Reform ◽  
Black Power ◽  
School Desegregation ◽  
Community Control ◽  
Reform Movements ◽  
Black Principals

This chapter examines what were often multiracial battles over public education. In New York and Los Angeles, education reform movements evolved from existing school desegregation protest and antipoverty organizing and were shaped by the emergence of Black Power. Demanding “community control” of public schools, movement participants insisted upon the transfer of decision-making power away from white city officials to locally elected community school boards, as well as the need for black principals, teachers, and more culturally relevant curricula. In Atlanta, grassroots organizers focused on the need for busing to integrate the city's schools. Tracing the trajectory of education reform in each city from the mid-1950s forward, this chapter explores the different ways white politicians, institutions, and organizations supported, facilitated, absorbed, subverted, and defeated grassroots-led challenges to established white educational authority.

Beyond Opt Out: A Broader Challenge to Corporate School Reform

2016 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 35
Author(s):  
Howard Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
School Reform ◽  
Education Reform ◽  
The United States ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Opting Out ◽  
Monthly Review ◽  
Opt Out ◽  
The Subject

As the corporate takeover of public schools proceeds apace on a global scale, so too does the grassroots resistance. In the United States…. [o]ver 600,000 parents opted their children out of the tests in spring 2015; students have launched walkouts and boycotts; school boards are passing resolutions against overtesting; and teachers at a Seattle high school collectively refused to administer a test they deemed harmful to instruction. These actions and more demonstrate the hope and promise of public schools as sites for resilience and democratic resistance, even as corporate interests tighten their grip on schools under cover of "education reform." This article reflects strategically on the fight for public education, with a special focus on the Opt Out movement, which was recently the subject of a special issue of Monthly Review. My treatment applauds opting out as a tactic in an organizing toolkit, but rejects it as a strategy, and takes issue with the analysis of corporate school reform proffered by the leading advocates of Opt Out.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

scholarly journals Strategic Pause on the National Libyan Education Reform Plan: Insights & Enhanced Tactics

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 29
Author(s):  
Ageila Ali Elabbar
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Public Education ◽  
Education Reform ◽  
Education System ◽  
Field Work ◽  
Research Technology ◽  
Reform Strategy ◽  
Reform Plan ◽  
Public Education Reform ◽  
Education Administrators

Primarily based on the strategic pillars presented in the essential plan titled: "National Libyan Public Education Reform: Entire Transformative Strategies 2020–2026" (Published: November 2017), which proposed comprehensive bases for reforming Libyan public education as a reflection on the problems that the whole Libyan public/private education system have faced due to still-existing circumstances. It divided the entire reform strategy into six years of definite procedures designed to solve the revealed problems through gradual, ongoing actions. This essential plan was followed by a detailed executive paper on the same reverence plan titled "Contextualizing the First Two Years of the Libyan Education Reform Proposed Strategies (2020–2026): Targeted Candidates and Reflective Activities" (Published: May 2018), which explained in detail the projected (Phase I) actions of the first two years of the plan. (Phase II) of applying such a plan was explained in a paper titled "Employing the Subsequent Four Years of the Libyan Education Reform Strategy: Administrations and Contributors" (Published: January 2019), which extensively described the four executive years of the reform strategy with considerations to the constitutional laws or the existing educational regulations in the country.This associated project aimed to obtain a deeper understanding and awareness of the consequences and variables resulting from the remaining state instability for over (10) years (2011-2021) in general, and from (2017-2021) in particular, along with an assessment of the impacts of the coronavirus (COVID-19) on the whole educational system in Libya. This comprehensive work is a result of (16) months of field qualitative study (&), which predominantly depended on the pillars of the suggested plan to professionally determine whether the projected National Reform Plan for the entire Libyan education system is still valuable to apply, or if it needs to be modified, developed, or even changed in some of its aspects or in one/all its phases. The significance of obtaining this field work emerged after the increase of great challenges that revealed problems faced by/facing the entire State of Libya: for instance, the effects of civil wars, a prolonged time of sharp institutional division (East and West), and a tremendous deficit (damage) in most education infrastructures and interferences, in addition to the almost non-existence of QAs, CPD, research, technology, and teaching facilities inside public schools, universities, and even in the vocational sector. This is in addition to the deep effects of the continued lack of a clear policy of education and the approximate non-existence of a clear and authentic Vision, Mission, and Goals (VMG) or sequenced tactics of leadership and lifelong learning for educators, inspectors, social workers, education administrators, TAs, and university lecturers, etc.This field study uncovered profound problems in the entire Libyan education system, which might lead to a complete collapse or major failures if it remains as it is now. It also re-verified the still-valued proposed National Libyan Public Education Reform (NLPER) strategy in combination with contemporary innovative concepts, added stakeholders, and developed tactical leadership philosophies and active crisis management techniques, all to be contained in a developed (7) years of reform strategy and tactics instead of the (6) suggested years, which will immediately take place (the updated Reform Plan) as a response to the findings of this study.

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