The Dark Side of School Reform directly engages some of the more difficult aspects of working as an educator in a public school. This book investigates what it means to teach, lead, and live during times of ongoing and intense change and offers insights which might help committed professionals better serve the needs of students as they seek to implement their own reforms in the ever-shifting organizations public schools have become. Features: -A qualitative case study that used a sociological conceptual framework to explore teachers' professional and personal lives as they implemented reform initiatives in a single public school over a two-year period -Important and specific problems associated with school reform efforts and offers practitioner-oriented solutions that may aid educators in their efforts to facilitate meaningful educational change. For teachers, school administrators, staff members, professors of education, graduate students, sociologists, and policymakers.

The Dark Side of School Reform directly engages some of the more difficult aspects of working as an educator in a public school. This book investigates what it means to teach, lead, and live during times of ongoing and intense change and offers insights which might help committed professionals better serve the needs of students as they seek to implement their own reforms in the ever-shifting organizations public schools have become. Features: _

The Dark Side of Reform: Exploring the Impact of Public Policy on Racial Equity contains nine chapters on the development of social policies with the potential to advance racial equity. In addition to studying these policies and their implications, the chapters in this volume demonstrate how lessons from the past can be used to inform the direction of current discussions. At the heart of these conversations are concerns about whether Black people, in particular, will receive the full benefit of transformative laws that may emerge in the coming years. The volume also offers recommendations on implementing policies that address the unique concerns of structurally disadvantaged communities with particular emphasis on Black and Latinx people.

It's one thing we all have in common. We've all been to school. But as Zander Sherman shows in this fascinating, often shocking account of institutionalized education, sending your kids off to school was not always normal. In fact, school is a very recent invention. Taking the reader back to 19th-century Prussia, where generals, worried about soldiers' troubling individuality, sought a way to standardize every young man of military age, through to the most controversial debates that swirl around the world about the topic of education today, Sherman tells the often astonishing stories of the men and women-and corporations-that have defined what we have come to think of as both the privilege and the responsibility of being educated. Along the way, we discover that the SAT was invented as an intelligence test designed to allow the state to sterilize "imbeciles," that suicide in the wake of disappointing results in the state university placement exams is the fifth leading cause of death in China, and that commercialized higher education seduces students into debt as cynically as credit card companies do. Provocative, entertaining-and even educational-The Curiosity of School lays bare the forces that shape the institution that shapes all of us.

This volume explores the dark side of leadership – the unethical, unlawful, and unconscionable practice in which some leaders engage. The book includes contributions from scholars from the worlds of education, business, nursing, and other relational-oriented fields of inquiry and practice.

Drawing inspiration from Dr. Willi Schohaus’s classic text The Dark Places of Education, this book contributes to the discussion by defining suffering in schools and providing a survey of the American school system’s inadequacies in the early twenty-first century. Through testimonies from former students on the ways they experienced suffering in school, this volume demonstrates how suffering can profoundly affect one’s academic growth and development—or worse. By analyzing the findings within a multidisciplinary ethical and educational framework, this volume presents a moral vision for understanding the role that suffering plays in school. Drawing on research in medicine, psychology, social sciences, religion, and education, this text weaves together many strands of thinking about suffering. This book is essential reading for academics, researchers, and postgraduate students in the fields of educational leadership, foundations of education, and those interested in both the history of education and critical contemporary accounts of schooling.

In 2012, Chicago's school year began with the city's first teachers' strike in a quarter century and ended with the largest mass closure of public schools in U.S. history. On one side, a union leader and veteran black woman educator drew upon organizing strategies from black and Latinx communities to demand increased school resources. On the other side, the mayor, backed by the Obama administration, argued that only corporate-style education reform could set the struggling school system aright. The stark differences in positions resonated nationally, challenging the long-standing alliance between teachers' unions and the Democratic Party. Elizabeth Todd-Breland recovers the hidden history underlying this battle. She tells the story of black education reformers' community-based strategies to improve education beginning during the 1960s, as support for desegregation transformed into community control, experimental schooling models that pre-dated charter schools, and black teachers' challenges to a newly assertive teachers' union. This book reveals how these strategies collided with the burgeoning neoliberal educational apparatus during the late twentieth century, laying bare ruptures and enduring tensions between the politics of black achievement, urban inequality, and U.S. democracy.

Discusses how school choice, misapplied standards of accountability, the No Child Left Behind mandate, and the use of a corporate model have all led to a decline in public education and presents arguments for a return to strong neighborhood schools and quality teaching.

Integrating Schools in a Changing Society: New Policies and Legal Options for a Multiracial Generation

From one of the foremost authorities on education in the United States, former U.S. assistant secretary of education, “whistle-blower extraordinaire” (The Wall Street Journal), author of the best-selling The Death and Life of the Great American School System (“Important and riveting”—Library Journal), The Language Police (“Impassioned . . . Fiercely argued . . . Every bit as alarming as it is illuminating”—The New York Times), and other notable books on education history and policy—an incisive, comprehensive look at today’s American school system that argues against those who claim it is broken and beyond repair; an impassioned but reasoned call to stop the privatization movement that is draining students and funding from our public schools. ​In Reign of Error, Diane Ravitch argues that the crisis in American education is not a crisis of academic achievement but a concerted effort to destroy public schools in this country. She makes clear that, contrary to the claims being made, public school test scores and graduation rates are the highest they’ve ever been, and dropout rates are at their lowest point. ​She argues that federal programs such as George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind and Barack Obama’s Race to the Top set unreasonable targets for American students, punish schools, and result in teachers being fired if their students underperform, unfairly branding those educators as failures. She warns that major foundations, individual billionaires, and Wall Street hedge fund managers are encouraging the privatization of public education, some for idealistic reasons, others for profit. Many who work with equity funds are eyeing public education as an emerging market for investors. ​Reign of Error begins where The Death and Life of the Great American School System left off, providing a deeper argument against privatization and for public education, and in a chapter-by-chapter breakdown, putting forth a plan for what can be done to preserve and improve it. She makes clear what is right about U.S. education, how policy makers are failing to address the root causes of educational failure, and how we can fix it. ​For Ravitch, public school education is about knowledge, about learning, about developing character, and about creating citizens for our society. It’s about helping to inspire independent thinkers, not just honing job skills or preparing people for college. Public school education is essential to our democracy, and its aim, since the founding of this country, has been to educate citizens who will help carry democracy into the future.