What Governors Need To Know about Education Reform

What Governors Need To Know about Education Reform PDF

Author: National Governors' Association, Washington, DC. Center for Policy Research

Publisher:

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 124

ISBN-13: 9781558772472

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book offers 24 perspectives from educators, students, advocates, journalists, policymakers, and citizens on education reform and the importance of improving America's schools and school systems. Articles include the following: (1) "What Only a Governor Can Do" (Lamar Alexander); (2) "Governors and the National Education Goals" (Carroll A. Campbell, Jr.); (3) "The Touch of a Teacher" (Sharon M. Draper); (4) "We All Pay the Price of Children's Poverty" (Marian Wright Edelman); (5) "It Won't Fix Itself" (Chester E. Finn, Jr.); (6) "Getting Down in the Trenches" (Keith Geiger); (7) "Reforms That Failed and Reforms That Worked" (Ira Glass); (8) "Partners for Progress--Advocates for Change" (Joseph T. Gorman); (9) "Language Minority Students: Challenges and Promises" (Kenju Hakuta); (10) "Help Us Help Ourselves" (Darlene Hidalgo); (11) "A Demographer's View" (Harold L. Hodgkinson); (12) "Remembering 'The Forgotten Half'" (Harold Howe, II); (13) "Education Reform: Impertinent Issues and Pertinent Questions" (Sharon Lynn Kagan); (14) "Accepting Teachers as Experts" (Megan C. Lawson); (15) "Improving the Scientific Literacy of Teachers and Students" (Leon M. Lederman); (16) "Change in Public Schools" (Bertha O. Pendleton); (17) "Improving Education Performance" (Hilary Pennington); (18) "Making High School Count" (Lauren B. Resnick); (19) "The Challenge for New Governors: Leading Education Reform in the Late 1990s" (Richard W. Riley); (20) "Making Quality Count" (Roy Romer); (21) "The Public Looks at School Reform" (Albert Shanker); (22) "Up the Down Staircase" (Leila Sinclaire); (23) "Listening as a School Reform Strategy" (Deborah Wadsworth); and (24) "In Our Nation's Best Interest: Achieving Educational Excellence for Latinos" (Raul Yzaguirre). (LMI)

U.S. Education Reform and National Security

U.S. Education Reform and National Security PDF

Author: Joel I. Klein

Publisher: Council on Foreign Relations

Published: 2014-05-14

Total Pages: 120

ISBN-13: 087609521X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The United States' failure to educate its students leaves them unprepared to compete and threatens the country's ability to thrive in a global economy and maintain its leadership role. This report notes that while the United States invests more in K-12 public education than many other developed countries, its students are ill prepared to compete with their global peers. According to the results of the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), an international assessment that measures the performance of 15-year-olds in reading, mathematics, and science every three years, U.S. students rank fourteenth in reading, twenty-fifth in math, and seventeenth in science compared to students in other industrialized countries. The lack of preparedness poses threats on five national security fronts: economic growth and competitiveness, physical safety, intellectual property, U.S. global awareness, and U.S. unity and cohesion, says the report. Too many young people are not employable in an increasingly high-skilled and global economy, and too many are not qualified to join the military because they are physically unfit, have criminal records, or have an inadequate level of education. The report proposes three overarching policy recommendations: implement educational expectations and assessments in subjects vital to protecting national security; make structural changes to provide students with good choices; and, launch a "national security readiness audit" to hold schools and policymakers accountable for results and to raise public awareness.

Common Core Meets Education Reform

Common Core Meets Education Reform PDF

Author: Frederick M. Hess

Publisher: Teachers College Press

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0807772844

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

How can the Common Core complement and not conflict with school improvement efforts already at work across the United States? How can it be seamlessly integrated into accountability systems, teacher preparation and development, charter schools, and educational technology? This timely volume brings together prominent scholars and policy analysts to examine the pressing issues that will mark Common Core implementation. Whether or not you agree with the standards, the Common Core is coming, and this book will help policymakers, practitioners, and other stakeholders anticipate the challenges and take steps to address them. “Common Core Meets Education Reform raises the hard questions about implementing and sustaining the Common Core State Standards so they don’t end up in the dustbin of abandoned public education reforms. These new standards can help students enormously in becoming problem solvers and critical thinkers—which is essential in the 21st century—but only if teachers become engaged in the rollout, get the support they need, and the fixation on high-stakes testing gives way to a fixation on learning.” —Randi Weingarten, president, American Federation of Teachers “Adopting the Common Core in a mad dash for federal gold, policymakers across the country blew right past critical questions about how they’d implement the thing. This volume, in stark contrast, meticulously studies the road ahead, seeking out tripwires, pitfalls, and boulders, making it a must-read for anyone who hopes to avoid total Common Core disaster.” —Neal McCluskey, associate director, Center for Educational Freedom, Cato Institute, Washington, DC “This balanced, wide-ranging, and deeply informed book is certain to guide educators and reformers through a complex time of transition for U.S. education. But it also turns out to be timely and clarifying as politicians battle over ambitious new academic standards with plenty of heat and smoke but appallingly little illumination. Thanks to the authors for turning on some lights!” —Chester E. Finn, Jr., senior fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University and president, Thomas B. Fordham Institute Frederick M. Hess is director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and serves as executive editor of Education Next. Michael Q. McShane is a research fellow in education policy studies at AEI.

Education Governance for the Twenty-first Century

Education Governance for the Twenty-first Century PDF

Author: Paul Manna

Publisher: Brookings Institution Press

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 434

ISBN-13: 0815723946

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

"A Brookings Institution Press with the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the Center for American Progress publication America's fragmented, decentralized, politicized, and bureaucratic system of education governance is a major impediment to school reform. In this important new book, a number of leading education scholars, analysts, and practitioners show that understanding the impact of specific policy changes in areas such as standards, testing, teachers, or school choice requires careful analysis of the broader governing arrangements that influence their content, implementation, and impact. Education Governance for the Twenty-First Century comprehensively assesses the strengths and weaknesses of what remains of the old in education governance, scrutinizes how traditional governance forms are changing, and suggests how governing arrangements might be further altered to produce better educational outcomes for children. Paul Manna, Patrick McGuinn, and their colleagues provide the analysis and alternatives that will inform attempts to adapt nineteenth and twentieth century governance structures to the new demands and opportunities of today. Contents: Education Governance in America: Who Leads When Everyone Is in Charge?, Patrick McGuinn and Paul Manna The Failures of U.S. Education Governance Today, Chester E. Finn Jr. and Michael J. Petrilli How Current Education Governance Distorts Financial Decisionmaking, Marguerite Roza Governance Challenges to Innovators within the System, Michelle R. Davis Governance Challenges to Innovators outside the System, Steven F. Wilson Rethinking District Governance, Frederick M. Hess and Olivia M. Meeks Interstate Governance of Standards and Testing, Kathryn A. McDermott Education Governance in Performance-Based Federalism, Kenneth K. Wong The Rise of Education Executives in the White House, State House, and Mayor's Office, Jeffrey R. Henig English Perspectives on Education Governance and Delivery, Michael Barber Education Governance in Canada and the United States, Sandra Vergari Education Governance in Comparative Perspective, Michael Mintrom and Richard Walley Governance Lessons from the Health Care and Environment Sectors, Barry G. Rabe Toward a Coherent and Fair Funding System, Cynthia G. Brown Picturing a Different Governance Structure for Public Education, Paul T. Hill From Theory to Results in Governance Reform, Kenneth J. Meier The Tall Task of Education Governance Reform, Paul Manna and Patrick McGuinn"

Education Reform in the American States

Education Reform in the American States PDF

Author: Jerry McBeath

Publisher: IAP

Published: 2008-04-01

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 1607527421

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Education Reform in the American States is a timely evaluation of the accountability movement in American public education, culminating in the No Child Left Behind Act, federal legislation of 2002. The authors treat the current accountability movement, placing it in historical context and addressing the evolution in public education policymaking from the overwhelming emphasis on state and local discretion to increasing federal oversight and mandates related to federal funding. They provide case studies of the educational accountability movements in nine states and analyze the factors and forces which explain progress in achievement levels as measured on standardized tests and the states' prospects for meeting their NCLB targets. The book and the individual case studies acknowledge the merits of NCLB while exposing several significant flaws and unintended harmful consequences of the act, particularly its incentives for states to lower their standards in order to meet annual yearly progress targets and its threat to withdraw federal funds from districts with the highest percentage of disadvantaged students. The audience for this study includes local, state and federal education policy makers; administrators and instructors in schools of education and other teaching programs, educators; and the general public.