School choice is a hot topic in the United States. Private school vouchers, public charter schools, open enrollment, and homeschooling all regularly appear on the policy agenda as ways to improve the educational experience and outcomes for students, parents, and the broader society. Pundits often make claims about the various ways in which parents select schools and thus customize their child's education. What claims about school choice are grounded in actual evidence? This book presents systematic reviews of the social science research regarding critical aspects of parental school choice. How do parents choose schools and what do they seek? What effects do their choices have on the racial integration of schools and the performance of the schools that serve non-choosing students? What features of public charter schools are related to higher student test scores? What effects does school choice have on important non-cognitive outcomes including parent satisfaction, student character traits, and how far students go in school? What do we know about homeschooling as a school choice? This book, originally published as a special issue of the Journal of School Choice, provides evidence-based answers to those vital questions.

Anyone who wants to know what is really happening in schools - behind all the hype and political rhetoric about the privatizing reforms in education - should read this book. It clarifies how private interests are influencing the public education process, and investigates Labour's successes and failures. These are critical moves for parents, teachers, school principals, head teachers and governors, student teachers, teaching assistants, researchers, administrators, government officials, politicians, taxpayers and in fact anyone interested in the future of education. In plain English, it shows how schools are set up, run and held to account through testing and inspection and how they make judgements about the relative merits of different schools' performances. It also indicates ways in which ordinary people can participate in shaping the future of education in order to achieve progress and better standards of achievement from schools and the education service generally. This is essential reading for all those concerned about the new future of our education system and of our children.

Overcoming barriers to learning and raising standards of achievement are central efforts in education. In the UK the government has made education its leading domestic priority and it has made education the center of its drive to improve public services by using the private sector to bring about improvements in performance and to break the status quo. Likewise, throughout the world private interests are now impinging heavily upon how state education is perceived; the 'educational apartheid' between state and private is diminishing across schools and local authorities. This book provides an incisive commentary on this rapidly changing phenomenon through clarification, analysis and evaluation of a variety of policy initiatives and implementation issues in the UK and by assessing parallel developments elsewhere in the world.
The ways in which change is being forced along in a range of guises from public partnerships to private company deals are illustrated with many real and contentious examples. Partnership arrangements, sponsorships, new categories of state independent schools and private sector take-overs of schools and education authorities form the patchwork of how state education is becoming privatized. Will these changes bring more choice and improved standards? How valuable to parents is the information presented in league tables and inspection reports? How will this impact on the future of education? This provocative and critical book moves forward this highly topical debate by providing a direct, in-depth and jargon free commentary on what is happening under the banner of privatization.

Many school buildings across America are falling apart due to age or lack of maintenance. Others are outmoded and do not meet the needs of modern educational programs and curricula. Unfortunately, school administrators and boards of education have found it increasingly difficult to obtain the funding necessary to correct facility problems in their districts. However help is at hand in the fourth edition of a popular title originally published in 1999. Holt updates the status of school facilities in the U.S. and provides new information on the gap between federal, state, and local funding. New to this edition is a discussion of the importance of senior voter contributions for the success of election campaigns. The nuts and bolts of securing the funding for facility construction, a component of the building process usually overlooked in training administrators, are clearly outlined in chapters that begin with a look at the problem of aging schools and follow through the planning and project development phases to the bond campaign and election-day. Filled with tips, checklists, and insights on the details from experienced school leaders, this is the perfect guide to consult every step on the way to victory.

Education is a values-based experience. Consciously or not, we are highly attuned to one another's values. We see, time and again, that the 'best' schools are compelled and propelled by strong values which inspire and guide the creation of a meaningful context for learning and an aspirational ethos. However, values can often be submerged, overlooked, or ignored. By infusing our teaching with values, both explicit and implicit, learning can serve a greater purpose, nourishing us as humans and deepening our experience. Drawing on the views and inspired teaching practice of a range of contributors, this book offers both the theoretical underpinning and practical examples to bring values to life in the classroom. It shows how each subject has a unique and valuable role, and how a values-based culture generates a powerful climate for successful learning in every subject discipline. It is a 'bedside book' that will bring joy and practical support to the many professionals who work from the heart and wish to touch the future. It offers validation to those teachers who deeply care about the subject disciplines they teach, ultimately making a difference to children, their lives, and their world. In our current educational context, this work is unashamedly people-orientated, futures-thinking, and forward-facing.

Education as a concept has long been taken for granted. Most people immediately think of schools and colleges, of classes and exams. This volume aims to highlight non-formal education (NFE) in its various forms across different historical and cultural contexts. Contributors draw upon their experience as educators and researchers in comparative education and sociology to elucidate, compare, and critique NFE in Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the USA. By mapping out NFE's forms, functions, and dynamics, this volume gives us the opportunity to reflect on the myriad iterations of education to challenge preconceived limitations in the field of education research. Only by expanding the focus beyond that of traditional schooling arrangements can we work towards a more sustainable future and improved lifelong learning. This book will appeal to researchers interested in non-formal education and comparative education.

Originally published in 1990. The rapid decline in the birth rate in the 1970s and the resulting fall in school rolls had a dramatic effect on the curriculum, staffing, organization and management of schools. This book focuses on the national and local politics surrounding school closures, amalgamations and the replacement of sixth forms with tertiary colleges. The author illuminates the changing politics of education through an analysis based on research in LEAs including Birmingham and Manchester. He explores the roles of central government, local education authorities and the politics of increased parental choice. The book shows how spare capacity in schools captures the political struggle between those concerned to protect the post-war tradition of educational opportunity for all and the New Right who want to seize the chance to place schools in the market place, expanding consumer choice and public accountability.

In this book, Bergeron demonstrates the negative emotional and pedagogical repercussions that result from American educators' embrace of self-esteem and the dogma surrounding its acceptance. Critically interpreting the meaning of self-esteem in education, he challenges "common sense" assumptions surrounding this notion and questions the historical, political, philosophical, and pedagogical forces that have shaped this psychological construct in education. Interrogating the pedagogical practices linked to student empowerment, self-determination, and social agency in the classroom, Bergeron discusses the ways in which the promise of self-esteem has backfired, particularly for marginalized and impoverished students.

Kids who understand how to manage conflict successfully can transform their schools into safer and kinder places to learn. Kids Working It Out offers educators and parents a guide to the most current and effective school-based conflict resolution programs and shows how these programs can make a positive difference in our schools. Throughout the book, students and teachers share their stories of what it's really like in today's schools and reveal how Conflict Resolution Education, has shaped their experiences. Kids Working It Out covers a wide range of topics— curriculum integration, peer mediation, restorative justice, and others— and shows what it takes to implement an effective program in any school, and any community.

Could your kids be learning a fourth ""R"" at school: reading, writing, rithmatic, and race? Race in the Schoolyard takes us to a place most of us seldom get to see in action-our children's classrooms-and reveals the lessons about race that are communicated there, both implicitly and explicitly. The book examines how ideas about race and racial inequality take shape and are passed along from teacher to student and from student to student in the classroom and schoolyard. Amanda E. Lewis spent a year observing classes at three elementary schools-two multiracial urban and one white suburban-where she spent time with school personnel, teachers, parents, and students. While race of course, is not officially taught like multiplication and punctuation, she finds that it nonetheless insinuates itself into everyday life in schools. Lewis explains how the curriculum, both expressed and hidden, conveys many racial lessons, and the ways schools and school personnel serve as a location and means for interracial interaction, as well as a means of both affirming and challenging previous racial attitudes and understanding. While teachers and other school community members verbally deny the salience of race, she illustrates how it does influence the way they understand the world, interact with each other, and teach children.

Experiences of violence in schools are encountered much more frequently than they used to be. The shocking repercussions of these acts are felt nation-wide and particularly impact school populations, families and communities. This book undertakes to illuminate factors pertaining to the phenomenon of school violence. It is intended for professionals

Contents:
1. Introduction 2. Chicago School Reform and Its Political, Economic, and Cultural Context 3. Accountability, Social Differentiation, and Racialized Social Control 4. "Like a Hammer Just Knocking Them Down" - Regulation African American Schools 5. The Policies and Politics of Cultural Assimilation 6. It's Us Verus the Board - The Enemy - Race, Class and the Power to Oppose 7. Conclusion

This book analyses the ways in which schools in urban areas are shaped and influenced by social, economic and political forces within the social environment. Utilizing research from schools in Chicago, the book shows how schools attempt to respond to external factors that are typically seen as being beyond the control of schools. These external factors include demographic change (i.e. immigration), poverty, drug trafficking, violence and social inequality: issues that confront urban schools throughout the United States. The central argument of the book is that unless strategies are devised to address these external forces, it is unlikely that schools will succeed in serving the academic needs of students.
Increasingly, the term urban is a social and cultural construct, used to describe economically depressed inner-city neighborhoods and the people who live there, rather than a geographic concept. Schools in such communities are typically regarded as some of the worst in the nation, and many have been written off as hopeless academic wastelands. Yet, for poor children and their families, such schools constitute the last remnant of the social safety net; the only public institution that is required by law to serve their needs. The basic contention of this book is that though the obstacles faced by urban schools are formidable, action for improvement is possible when strategies are devised that deliberately seek to address external constraints.
The book consists of six chapters. The first two situate the study within the national debate over school reform and urban poverty. Chapters three through five provide case studies in which efforts undertaken by schools to address larger social and economic issues are explored. The final chapter analyzes the policy implications of the research and the cases that are presented.

An exploration of the variables that contribute to the improvement of literacy instruction in large urban school districts. The text grew out of a five-year initiative known as The Dallas Reading Plan - a 50 million dollar collaborative effort between area business and corporate interests, philanthropy, and the Dallas Independent School District. Features include: an analysis of systemic reform factors from the varied viewpoints of key stakeholders (such as change management experts, university scholars, school leaders, teachers, and educational researchers) involved in the improvement of urban literacy education in a major school district; concise reporting on the effects of long-term teacher development programmes built upon scientific research; quantitative and qualitative research data on the improvement of teacher performance in literacy instruction gathered over a five-year period. systemic reform efforts in urban settings; insights into the benefits of principal training as part of creating effective school-wide literacy programmes; and data showing that previously ineffective teachers can become effective literacy educators through deep and sustained professional development.

Education and Conflict is a critical review of education in an international context. Based on the author's extensive research and experience of education in several areas afflicted by conflict, the book explores the relationship between schooling and social conflict and looks at conflict internal to schools. It posits a direct link between the ethos of a school and the attitudes of future citizens towards 'others'. It also looks at the nature and purpose of peace education and war education, and addresses the role of gender and masculinity.
In five lucid, vigorously argued sections, the author brings this thought-provoking and original piece of work to life by:
* Setting out the terms of the debate, defining conflict and peace and outlining the relevant aspects of complexity theory for education
* Exploring the sources of conflict and their relations to schooling in terms of gender/masculinity, pluralism, nationalism and identity
* Focusing on the direct education/war interface
* Examining educational responses to conflict
* Highlighting conflict resolution within the school itself.
This is the first time that so many aspects of conflict and education have been brought together in one sustained argument. With its crucial exposure of the currently culpable role of formal schooling in maintaining conflict, this book will be a powerful and essential read for educational policy makers, managers, teachers and researchers dealing with conflict in their own contexts.

'It's stimulating stuff: more of a guide to reflection, perhaps, than to action, but encouraging none the less as a counterblast to the control-and-command mentality that characterises mosr education policy and practice today.' - Michael Duffy, TES

Originally published in 1978, Schools in an Urban Community is an ethnography of the Carbrook and Hill Top area of the Attercliffe district of Sheffield before it was cleared for redevelopment. The book provides an in depth look at the community and schools of the area and provides a valued contribution to the field of social history. Using interviews with former pupils, log books and questionnaires from the local community, the book provides a valuable resource for educationists and urban historians, as well as providing a detailed examination of the relations between school and community.

Addressing leadership issues in American schools, this volume examines various strategies for creating inclusive schools, including zero tolerance policies, teachers' perceptions of African American principals' leadership in urban schools, and perceptions of intergroup conflict.

Providing a practical guide to strategic management in the field of special educational needs, this text gives the reader a framework for raising achievement throughout the school.

By focusing on how to manage SEN strategically, rather than on planning for individual children, it shows how you can make it part of the overall school improvement process.

The text also provides tools that SENCOs, headteachers and governors can use to analyze data, set objectives, measure and evaluate outcomes for SEN just as they do for other areas of the curriculum. Included are sections on: school self-evaluation; school development plans; the evidence base for different forms of provision; developing staff; and how to minimize bureaucracy.

Helpful for OFSTED planning and securing best value, "Special Educational Needs and School Improvement" also enables schools to target limited resources where they should have most impact on promoting inclusion and raising attainment for all.

This book investigates the anti-semitic foundations of Nazi curricula for elementary schools, with a focus on the subjects of biology, history, geography, race hygiene and literature. The author argues that any study of Nazi society and its values must probe the education provided by the regime in order to understand how the official knowledge of the state was circulated and legitimized.
Anti-Semitism and Schooling under the Third Reich chronicles an extreme case of what happens when schools are put in the service of a political and racial agenda. Schools, according to Wegner, play a major role in advancing ideological justifications for mass murder, and in legitimising a culture of ethnic and racial hatred. Using a variety of primary sources, Wegner provides a vivid account of the development of Nazi education.

New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt/M., Oxford, Wien. Following an outline of the origins of the concept of ethos as it is found in the writings of Aristotle and Plato, James Norman examines the Catholic Church's understanding of ethos in post-Vatican II educational documents and compares this understanding with the Irish Catholic Church's approach to school ethos. Based on his own experience and research, Norman suggests new possibilities for the development of ethos in Catholic schools.

First published in 1997, this study examines the trend towards markets in UK schools, with a particular focus on fee-paying schools in South Wales, by outlining the varied economic and political arguments both for and against increased parental choice and exploring parents' real reasons for using fee-paying schools. Stephen Gorard destroys the cosy myth that fee-paying schools are large, successful, charitable institutions catering chiefly for a select group of privileged families. Instead, he reveals them as typically privately owned, coeducational and with fewer than a hundred pupils, based in a poorly-converted residential site with few facilities. It is the first book which allows children's voices to be heard fully in the context of debates on the choice of a new school. Gorard has gathered the voices of parents and children via observation, interview and survey, comparing them directly and revealing stark differences in the perception of each generation.

'It's stimulating stuff: more of a guide to reflection, perhaps, than to action, but encouraging none the less as a counterblast to the control-and-command mentality that characterises mosr education policy and practice today.' - Michael Duffy, TES

Americans worry continually about their schools with frequent discussions of the "crisis" in American education, of the "failures" of the public school systems, and of the inability of schools to meet the current challenges of contemporary life. Such concerns date back at least to the nineteenth century. A thread that weaves its way through the critiques of American elementary and secondary schools is that the educational system is not serving its children well, that more should be done to enhance achievement and higher performance. These critiques first began when the United States was industrializing and were later amplified when the Soviets and Japan were thought to be grinding down the competitive position of America. At the start of the twenty-first century, as we discuss globalization and maintaining our leadership position in the world economy, they are being heard again.
"The Urban School: A Factory for Failure" challenges these assumptions about American education. Indeed, a basic premise of the book is that the American school system is working quite well-doing exactly what is expected of it. To wit, that the schools in the United States affirm, reflect, and reinforce the social inequalities that exist in the social structures of the society. Stated differently, the schools are not great engines for equalizing the existing social inequalities. Rather, they work to reinforce the social class differences that we have had in the past and continue to have in more pronounced ways at present.
Rist uses both sociological and anthropological methods to examine life in one segregated African-American school in the mid-western United States. A classroom of some thirty children were followed from their first day of kindergarten through the second grade. Detailed accounts of the day-by-day process of sorting, stratifying, and separating the children by social class backgrounds demonstrates the means of ensuring that both the poor and middle-class students soon learned their appropriate place in the social hierarchy of the school. Instructional time, discipline, and teacher attention all varied by social class of the students, with those at the bottom of the ladder consistently receiving few positive rewards and many negative sanctions.
When "The Urban School" was first published in 1973, the National School Boards Association called it one of the ten most influential books on American education for the year. It remains essential reading for educators, sociologists, and economists.
Ray C. Rist is a senior evaluation officer with the Operations Evaluation Department of the World Bank. He has held senior positions in both the legislative and executive branches of the United States government as well as teaching positions at Cornell University, Johns Hopkins University, and George Washington University.
""The Urban School" is a timely and much needed wake-up call to a educational policy and contemporary social problem that urgently needs to be addressed across the country and in every urban school district."--"The Bookwatch"

"Ensuring Safe School Environments: Exploring Issues--Seeking Solutions" presents research findings and information about school violence, with a focus on strategies for increasing school safety. Based on a special topical issue of "Rural Special Education Quarterly," the original journal articles have been rewritten to address safe schools from the perspective of suburban and urban, as well as rural environments. Topics include the frequency of violence in these different settings; violence as it directly impacts school administrators; strategies for preventing and addressing violence at both the school and individual levels; and ways to work with the community both in and out of schools. Part I focuses on issues. In Part II, solutions that have been used to deal with youth violence are offered for readers to consider, including chapters on effective conflict management practices, behavioral support plans, school-community relations, the development of a caring school community as a way to decrease tendencies toward violence, and a model which demonstrates an in-practice, state-wide program designed to assist in the development of a community-focused school. Each chapter concludes with discussion questions and a case study to enhance understanding of and reflection on the issues surrounding school violence.
The text is intended as supplementary material for any course preparing school administrators. Presenting both research and practice, the text can be a guide for practicing school administrators in their search for ways to insure the safety and well being of the students whom they serve, as well as a resource for individuals in other community-based human service agencies who deal with school violence.