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| CURRENT EDUCATION READINGS |
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PAUL KIMMELMAN AND DAVID KROEZE. ACHIEVING WORLD CLASS SCHOOLS: MASTERING SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT USING A GENETIC MODEL (2002).
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Given the recent press on genetic mapping and education reform, I feared this book was tail-gating in the parking lot of the National Media Bowl. That’s what happens when you live in DC too long, you get politically cynical. I was wrong.
The reader will quickly realize that the authors bring useful and significant scientific background and education experience to the difficult subject of education reform. There are many models for school improvement, but the authors make a compelling case that few are as comprehensive and flexible as the genetic model (although it does help to take pleasure in genetics).
Kimmelman and Kreoze suggest that school reform can learn from the scientific approach of the genetic model. DNA-gene strands, chromosomes, and organisms can be used to think about the fundamental principles, research based practices, and other core areas that form successful schools. It is a way to organize the thinking of local school leaders and to make it clear that all efforts are tied into each other, in the same way that all genes are tied into an organism.
Genetically there are two chromosomes, the X and Y. Accordingly, the authors conceptualize two fundamental categories, the capacity building chromosomes and the teaching and learning chromosomes. From here Kimmelman and Kreoze develop the analogy in rich detail and provide worksheets that help school leaders put a standards based program into practice.
Due to the detail and complexity of the work, some of the reading gets pretty heavy, but if education improvement was easy, everyone would do it. This recommended book makes an incredibly difficult process more manageable and understandable.
For more on the authors please visit:
David A DeSchryver
07/10/2002
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Allen, Jeanne and Angela Dale. The School Reform Handbook: How to Improve Your Schools (Washington D.C.: Center for Education Reform, 1995).
| Allen, Jeanne et al. Charter Schools Today: Changing the Face of American Education (Washington, DC: Center for Education Reform, 2000). |
| Barzun, Jacques. From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Triumph and Defeat (New York: HarperCollins, 2000). |
| Benjamin, Gail R. Japanese Lessons (New York: New York University Press, 1997). |
| Bennett, William J., Chester E. Finn, Jr. and John T. E. Cribb, Jr. The Educated Child: A Parent's Guide from Preschool Through Eighth Grade (New York: Free Press, 1999). |
| Bernstein, Richard. Dictatorship of Virtue: Multiculturalism and the Battle for America's Future (New York: Knopf, 1994). |
| Boyd, William Lowe and Herbert J. Walberg, eds. Choice in Education: Potential and Problems (Berkeley, Calif.: McCutchan Publishing, 1990). |
| Bruer, James T. The Myth of the First Three Years(New York: Free Press, 1999). |
| William Bennett, et al. The Educated Child (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999). |
| Doyle, Denis P. and Susan Pimentel. Raising the Standard: An Eight-Step Action Guide for Schools and Communities (Sherman Oaks, Calif.: Corwin Press, 1997). |
| D'Souza, Dinesh. Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus (New York: Free Press, 1991). |
| Evers, Williamson M. What's Gone Wrong in America's Classrooms (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1998). |
| Finn, Jr., Chester E., Bruno V. Manno and Gregg Vanourek. Charter Schools in Action: Renewing Public Education (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). |
| Finn, Jr., Chester E. and Herbert Walberg, eds. Radical Education Reforms (Berkeley, Calif.: McCutchan, 1994). |
| Finn, Jr., Chester E. We Must Take Charge: Our Schools and Our Future (New York: Free Press, 1991). |
| Gatto, John Taylor. Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (New York: New Society Publishers, 1991). |
| Gerstner, Louis V., Roger Semerad, Denis P. Doyle, and William Johnston. Reinventing Education (New York: EP Dutton, 1994). |
| Goldberg, Bruce. Why Schools Fail (Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 1996). |
| Hanushek, Eric and Dale W. Jorgenson, eds. Improving America's Schools: The Role of Incentives (Washington, DC: National Academy Press,1996). |
| Hanushek, Eric. Making Schools Work: Improving Performance and Controlling Costs. (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1994). |
| Hassel, Bryan C. The Charter School Challenge: Avoiding the Pitfalls, Fulfilling the Promise (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1999). |
| Hess, Frederick M. Spinning Wheels: The Politics of Urban School Reform (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1999). |
| Hill, Paul T., Christine Campbell and James Harvey. It Takes a City: Getting Serious About Urban School Reform (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2000). |
| Hill, Paul T. and Mary Beth Celio. Fixing Urban Schools (Washington DC, Brookings Institution Press, 1998). |
| Hirsch, Jr., E.D. The Schools We Need & Why We Don't Have Them (New York: Doubleday, 1996). |
| Hirschman, Albert O. Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970). [Excellent commentaries on education.] |
| Holmes, Mark. Educational Policy for the Pluralist Democracy: The Common School, Choice and Diversity (Washington, DC: Falmer Press, 1992). |
| Honig, Bill. Teaching Our Children to Read: The Role of Skills in a Comprehensive Reading Program (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Corwin Press, 1996). |
| Kearns, David T. and James Harvey. A Legacy of Learning: Your Stake in Standards and New Kinds of Public Schools (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2000). |
| Kimball, Roger. Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Our Higher Education (New York: Harper & Row, 1990). |
| Kramer, Rita. Ed School Follies: The Miseducation of America's Teachers (New York: Free Press, 1991). |
| Lefkowitz, Mary. Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History (New York: Basic Books, 1996). |
| Lieberman, Myron. Public Education: An Autopsy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993). |
| Maranto, Robert, ed. School Choice in the Real World: Lessons from Arizona Charter Schools (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1999). |
| Matthews, David. Is There a Public for Public Schools? (Dayton, Ohio: Kettering Foundation Press, 1996). |
| McGroarty, Daniel. Break These Chains: The Battle for School Choice (Rocklin, Calif.: Prima Publishing, 1996). |
| Nathan, Joe. Charter Schools: Creating Hope and Opportunity for American Education (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1996). |
| Peterson, Paul E. and Bryan C. Hassel, eds. Learning From School Choice (Washington, DC:Brookings Institution Press, 1998). |
| Porter, Rosalie Pedalino. Forked Tongue: The Politics of Bilingual Education (New York: Basic Books, 1990). |
| Roy Pea, introduction. The Jossey-Bass Reader on Technology and Education (San Fransico: Joey Bass, 2000). |
FRITZ STEIGER, JOHN GOODMAN, EDS., AN EDUCATION AGENDA: LET PARENTS CHOOSE THEIR CHILDREN'S SCHOOL (2001).
 This book examines where the school choice movement has been, the current state of public and private education, and some of the choice ideas being proposed and implemented at the state and federal level, by both government officials and business leaders. In additional to the theoretical arguments, the book contains stories of people who's lives are being changed by the policies in place in places like Milwaukee, Cleveland, Florida, San Antonio, and Arizona. The book is a good source of statistics and supporting anecdotes. |
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| Rauch, Jonathan. Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). |
| Ravitch, Diane, ed. Brookings Papers on Education Policy 2000 (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2000). |
| Ravitch, Diane, ed. Debating the Future of American Education: Do We Need National Assessments and Standards? (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1995). |
| Ravitch, Diane and Maris A. Vinovskis, eds. Learning from the Past: What History Teaches Us About School Reform (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995). |
| Ravitch, Diane. Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000). |
| Ravitch, Diane. National Standards in American Education: A Citizen's Guide (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1995). |
| Ravitch, Diane and Joseph P. Viteritti, eds. New Schools for a New Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997). |
| Rohlen, Thomas and Gerald LeTendre, eds. Teaching and Learning in Japan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). |
| Rossell, Christine and Keith Baker. Bilingual Education in Massachusetts: The Emperor Has No Clothes (Boston: Pioneer Institute, 1996). |
| Shokraii-Rees, Nina. School Choice: What's Happening in the States 2000 (Washington, DC: Heritage Foundation, 2000). |
| Sommers, Christina Hoff. The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism is Harming Our Young Men (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000). |
| Sowell, Thomas. Inside American Education: The Decline, the Deception, the Dogmas (New York: Free Press, 1993). |
| Steinberg, Laurence. Beyond the Classroom: Why School Reform Has Failed and What Parents Need to Do (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996). |
| Stigler, James W. and James Hiebert. The Teaching Gap (New York: Free Press, 1999). |
| Stotsky, Sandra. Losing Our Language: How Multicultural Classroom Instruction is Undermining Our Children's Ability to Read, Write, and Reason (New York: Free Press, 1999). |
| Stotsky, Sandra, ed. What's at Stake in the K-12 Standards Wars: A Primer for Educational Policy Makers (New York: Peter Lang, 2000). |
| Sykes, Charles. Dumbing Down Our Kids (New York: St. Martins Press, 1995). |
| Vitteriti, Joseph P. Choosing Equality: School Choice, the Constitution and Civil Society (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1999). |
| Wang, Margaret C., Maynard C. Reynolds and Herbert J. Walberg. Handbook of Special and Remedial Education: Research and Practice (Oxford, OX, UK: 1995). |
| Wirt, Frederick M. and Michael W. Kirst. The Political Dynamics of American Education (Berkeley: McCutchan Publishing Co., 1997). |
| Carter, Samuel Casey. No Excuses, Lessons from 21 High-performing, High-poverty Schools (Washington, DC: The Heritage Foundation. April, 2000). |
| Coons, John E. and Stephen D. Sugarman. Education by Choice: The Case for Family Control(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). |
| Coulson, Andrew J. Market Education: The Unknown History (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1999). |
Families, Freedom and Education: Why School Choice Makes Sense by Jennifer Buckingham. St Leonards, New South Wales: Centre for Independent Studies Policy Monograph 52, 2001.
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School choice is not the exclusive province of the United States, as Jennifer Buckingham so skillfully reveals in Families, Freedom and Education: Why School Choice Makes Sense, published by the Centre for Independent Studies, an Australian think tank. Early on in this slim but comprehensive volume, Ms. Buckingham quickly establishes clear distinctions between the way Australia and America fund education. Perhaps because of Australia’s smaller population (one-fourteenth of the USA’s), relative cultural homogeneity, and less contentious legal and social history, its politics has not been obsessed to the same extent as the USA’s over matters such as public funding of private schooling and separation of church and state. (Australia does provide substantial, albeit limited, funds to private schools, and the proportion of children in Australian non-government schools is nearly three times greater than in American schools-31% to 12%.) Despite their differences, what the countries have in common is their unqualified support of public schools. Withdrawing funding from floundering public school is unthinkable, while private schools that fail to educate their students will soon go out of business. This fact, among others, serves as a springboard for Buckingham’s argument that “school choice offers a way … to enhance the education opportunities and quality available to children.”
For more visit: http://www.educationnews.org/book_review.htm , visited October 28, 2001.
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DALE BALLOU, MICHAEL PODGURSKY, TEACHER PAY AND TEACHER QUALITY (1997).
| "This monograph is an attempt to clarify the facts as well as the underlying issues in this debate. We ask a simple question: have higher salaries improved the quality of newly recruited teachers? Since we find little evidence to support an affirmative response, we ask two more questions. First, what went wrong? Second, Which reforms are likely to meet with more success? To answer these questions, we review data on the characteristics of newly recruited teachers. We also show how important features of the labor market for teachers systematically undermine efforts to improve teacher quality. Finally, we undertake a comparison of personnel policies and staffing patterns in public and private schools, an exercise that sheds light on what can be accomplished by lifting some of the regulatory (and other) constraints now imposed on public school administrators." Id. at 4. For more information visit: http://www.upjohninst.org/publications/titles/tptq.html, visited october 12, 2001. |
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