Education

"[Winner of the 2010 “Critics Choice Award” from the American Educational Studies Association]

"No topic sparks an argument faster among the American public, even with relatively apolitical people, than how their children are taught. In schools across the country, school boards, parents, teachers, and students themselves debate issues ranging from charter schools, to the first amendment rights of students, to the efficacy of the No Child Left Behind Act. School districts in Georgia and Pennsylvania have seen battles over the teaching of evolution; places as diverse as Colorado, Washington, and Kentucky have had debates over how best to protect children while at school. Battleground: Schools provides an in-depth, balanced overview of these controversial topics and enables teachers, students, and their parents to better understand the foundations of these conflicts. Battleground: Schools cover the 100 most relevant conflicts involving education issues today. A sample of the debates analyzed:

* Charter schools
* Distance education
* Home schooling
* Students' Rights
* Military in Schools
* Religion and public schools
* Single-sex schooling"""

Defending Public Schools addresses the historical, current, and future context of public education in the United States. While the essays provide an overview of education and schooling issues, the overarching concern is that public schools are under attack and deserve to be defended. Since 80% of America's student-aged population attend public schools, a fair and balanced look at a school system that has educated and continues to educate a population that is diverse in every way possible, is sorely needed. It can be said that a national school system has never had to educate so many young people through secondary school with mastery of so much information. While no one rejects the necessity of school reform to meet contemporary needs, the question of how to achieve the greatest good for the greatest numbers remains for thousand of schools across the nation. Defending Public Schools is a practical, necessary addition to the work of administrators, teachers, policy makers, and parents as they negotiate the difficult path of how to best teach and educate today's children and youth.

Accountability of schools is a relatively contemporary concern, dating probably to James Coleman's 1966 report Equality of Educational Opportunity. This report examined achievement of children of different races and shifted the attention toward outcomes and away from resources and inputs. That this report was followed closely by the development of the National Assessment of Educational Progress in 1970 meant that there were student test results available to indicate the outcomes of schooling. Since then demands for schools to be accountable have been accentuated by the often-conflicting demands of policymakers and politicians who control the educational purse strings and professional educators with the knowledge and skills to educate children within a democracy.

Assessment-driven accountability has altered the way schools deliver their services to children, and their relations with parents. Listening to how parents talk about their experiences with testing fosters an understanding of the discursive power found in the state's accountability rhetoric about learning, achievement, and assessment and how this discourse is accepted or rejected by parents. Focus groups with parents were conducted as part of a naturalistic study examining state-mandated testing and teaching and learning in two New York State school districts: one suburban and one urban. In four dialogic acts, we bring to life the questions, concerns, and understandings parents have of the impact state testing has on their children's educational experience. These acts represent areas of struggle for parents as they make sense of the new accountability discourse. They can be thought of as a performed critique of this discourse and its exemplification.

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: t/k ISBN: 0-275-98295-5 (set) 0-275-98296-3 (vol. I) 0-275-98297-1 (vol. II) 0-275-98298-X (vol. III) 0-275-98299-8 (vol. IV)

Social studies have a contentious history as a school subject and this article begins with an overview of the historically competing viewpoints on the nature and purposes of social studies education in the North American context. Next, we provide a critical examination of recent educational reforms in the USA (No Child Left Behind and Common Core State Standards), which use high-stakes testing as a tool for standardizing the social studies curriculum and teaching methods. The final section of the article examines both the significant levels of resistance to high-stakes testing and curriculum standardization by students, teachers, and the public and the question of whether social studies education will promote citizenship that is adaptive to the status quo or the reconstruction society in more equitable and socially just ways.

Los estudios sociales tienen una historia contenciosa como asignatura escolar y este artículo comienza con una visión general de los puntos de vista que históricamente compiten sobre la naturaleza y fines de la educación de estudios sociales en el contexto de América del Norte. A continuación, se ofrece un examen crítico de las reformas educativas recientes en los EE.UU. (Ningún Niño se Queda Atrás y los Estándares Estatales Comunes), que utilizan las pruebas de alta exigencia como una herramienta para estandarizar el currículo de estudios sociales y los métodos de enseñanza. La sección final del artículo examimna tanto los niveles significativos de resistencia de los estudiantes, profesores y el público a las pruebas de alta exigencia y a la estandarización del currículo y la pregunta de si la educación en estudios sociales promoverá ciudadanía adaptable al status quo o a la reconstrucción de la sociedad en formas mas equitativas y socialmente más justas.

What is the current crossroad for critical university studies? First, we need to act on the economic imperative of faculty alliances with a radically charged student movement in response to a decimated job market, incapacitating debt burdens, and contraction of the professoriate. Second, we need to act on the ethical imperative of alliances with class and race based grassroots social movements including Occupy and Idle No More (INM). Third, we need to act on the legal imperative of alliances across the left and right in the throes of aggressive suppression of academic freedom downplayed by administrators exaggerating a civility crisis and exercising investigative powers through new respectful workplace policies. Fourth, we need to act on the political imperative of making critical university studies by remaking the critical and the university.

"Defending Public Schools addresses the historical, current, and future context of public schools in the United States. While the essays provide an overview of education and schooling issues, the overarching concern is that public schools are under attack and deserve to be defended.

Since 80 percent of America's student-aged population attend public schools, a fair and balanced look at a school system that has educated and continues to educate a population that is diverse in every way possible, is sorely needed. It can be said that a national school system has never had to educate so many young people through secondary school with mastery of so much information. While no one rejects the necessity of school reform to meet contemporary needs, the question of how to achieve the greatest good for the greatest numbers remains for thousand of schools across the nation. Defending Public Schools is a practical, necessary addition to the work of administrators, teachers, policy makers, and parents as they negotiate the difficult path of how to best teach and educate today's children and youth."