Education and the Commercial Mindset

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Author :
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 067454580X
Total Pages : 428 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (745 download)

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Book Synopsis Education and the Commercial Mindset by : Samuel E. Abrams

Download or read book Education and the Commercial Mindset written by Samuel E. Abrams and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-25 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America’s commitment to public schooling once seemed unshakable. But today the movement to privatize K–12 education is stronger than ever. Samuel E. Abrams examines the rise of market forces in public education and reveals how a commercial mindset has taken over. “[An] outstanding book.” —Carol Burris, Washington Post “Given the near-complete absence of public information and debate about the stealth effort to privatize public schools, this is the right time for the appearance of [this book]. Samuel E. Abrams, a veteran teacher and administrator, has written an elegant analysis of the workings of market forces in education.” —Diane Ravitch, New York Review of Books “Education and the Commercial Mindset provides the most detailed and comprehensive analysis of the school privatization movement to date. Students of American education will learn a great deal from it.” —Leo Casey, Dissent

The Public School Advantage

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Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022608907X
Total Pages : 299 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (26 download)

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Book Synopsis The Public School Advantage by : Christopher A. Lubienski

Download or read book The Public School Advantage written by Christopher A. Lubienski and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-11-07 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nearly the whole of America’s partisan politics centers on a single question: Can markets solve our social problems? And for years this question has played out ferociously in the debates about how we should educate our children. From the growth of vouchers and charter schools to the implementation of No Child Left Behind, policy makers have increasingly turned to market-based models to help improve our schools, believing that private institutions—because they are competitively driven—are better than public ones. With The Public School Advantage, Christopher A. and Sarah Theule Lubienski offer powerful evidence to undercut this belief, showing that public schools in fact outperform private ones. For decades research showing that students at private schools perform better than students at public ones has been used to promote the benefits of the private sector in education, including vouchers and charter schools—but much of these data are now nearly half a century old. Drawing on two recent, large-scale, and nationally representative databases, the Lubienskis show that any benefit seen in private school performance now is more than explained by demographics. Private schools have higher scores not because they are better institutions but because their students largely come from more privileged backgrounds that offer greater educational support. After correcting for demographics, the Lubienskis go on to show that gains in student achievement at public schools are at least as great and often greater than those at private ones. Even more surprising, they show that the very mechanism that market-based reformers champion—autonomy—may be the crucial factor that prevents private schools from performing better. Alternatively, those practices that these reformers castigate, such as teacher certification and professional reforms of curriculum and instruction, turn out to have a significant effect on school improvement. Despite our politics, we all agree on the fundamental fact: education deserves our utmost care. The Public School Advantage offers exactly that. By examining schools within the diversity of populations in which they actually operate, it provides not ideologies but facts. And the facts say it clearly: education is better off when provided for the public by the public.

Charter Schools and Their Enemies

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Publisher : Basic Books
ISBN 13 : 9781541675131
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (751 download)

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Book Synopsis Charter Schools and Their Enemies by : Thomas Sowell

Download or read book Charter Schools and Their Enemies written by Thomas Sowell and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In dozens of places in New York City where a charter school and a traditional public school hold classes in the same building, charter school students in those buildings have achieved "proficiency" on statewide tests several times more often than traditional public school students taking the same tests. In 2013, a fifth-grade class in a Harlem charter school scored higher on a mathematics test than any other fifth-grade class in the entire state of New York. That included, as the New York Times put it, "even their counterparts in the whitest and richest suburbs, Scarsdale and Briarcliff Manor." Nationwide, charter schools have only a fraction of the number of students who attend traditional public schools. But charter schools enrollment is growing faster, especially in low-income minority communities. From 2001 to 2016, enrollment in traditional public schools rose 1 percent, while charter school enrollment rose 571 percent. In cities across the country, with many students on waiting lists to transfer into charter schools, public school officials are blocking charter schools from using school buildings that have been vacant for years, in order to prevent those transfers from taking place. Even in states where blocking charter schools from using vacant school buildings is illegal, the laws have been evaded. In some places, vacant school buildings have been demolished, making sure no charter schools can use them. Book jacket.

Charter School Outcomes

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351572202
Total Pages : 324 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (515 download)

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Book Synopsis Charter School Outcomes by : Mark Berends

Download or read book Charter School Outcomes written by Mark Berends and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-25 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sponsored by the National Center on School Choice, a research consortium headed by Vanderbilt University, this volume examines the growth and outcomes of the charter school movement. Starting in 1992-93 when the nation’s first charter school was opened in Minneapolis, the movement has now spread to 40 states and the District of Columbia and by 2005-06 enrolled 1,040,536 students in 3,613 charter schools. The purpose of this volume is to help monitor this fast-growing movement by compiling, organizing and making available some of the most rigorous and policy-relevant research on K-12 charter schools. Key features of this important new book include: Expertise – The National Center on School Choice includes internationally known scholars from the following institutions: Harvard University, Brown University, Stanford University, Brookings Institution, National Bureau of Economic Research and Northwest Evaluation Association. Cross-Disciplinary – The volume brings together material from related disciplines and methodologies that are associated with the individual and systemic effects of charter schools. Coherent Structure – Each section begins with a lengthy introduction that summarizes the themes and major findings of that section. A summarizing chapter by Mark Schneider, the Commissioner of the National Center on Educational Statistics, concludes the book. This volume is appropriate for researchers, instructors and graduate students in education policy programs and in political science and economics, as well as in-service administrators, policy makers, and providers.

Charter School Operations and Performance

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Author :
Publisher : Rand Corporation
ISBN 13 : 0833034146
Total Pages : 313 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (33 download)

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Book Synopsis Charter School Operations and Performance by : Ron Zimmer

Download or read book Charter School Operations and Performance written by Ron Zimmer and published by Rand Corporation. This book was released on 1999-06-30 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analyzes an array of issues pertaining to accessibility, student achievement, governance, and operation of charter schools in California. Four specific research questions were investigated: (1) What population of students attends charter schools? (2) Is student achievement higher in charter schools than in conventional public schools? (3) What oversight and support do the chartering authorities provide? (4) How do charter schools differ from their conventional public school counterparts in terms of their operation, including finances, academic achievement, and staffing?

Charter School City

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Author :
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022669478X
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (266 download)

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Book Synopsis Charter School City by : Douglas N. Harris

Download or read book Charter School City written by Douglas N. Harris and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2020-07-15 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the wake of the tragedy and destruction that came with Hurricane Katrina in 2005, public schools in New Orleans became part of an almost unthinkable experiment—eliminating the traditional public education system and completely replacing it with charter schools and school choice. Fifteen years later, the results have been remarkable, and the complex lessons learned should alter the way we think about American education. New Orleans became the first US city ever to adopt a school system based on the principles of markets and economics. When the state took over all of the city’s public schools, it turned them over to non-profit charter school managers accountable under performance-based contracts. Students were no longer obligated to attend a specific school based upon their address, allowing families to act like consumers and choose schools in any neighborhood. The teacher union contract, tenure, and certification rules were eliminated, giving schools autonomy and control to hire and fire as they pleased. In Charter School City, Douglas N. Harris provides an inside look at how and why these reform decisions were made and offers many surprising findings from one of the most extensive and rigorous evaluations of a district school reform ever conducted. Through close examination of the results, Harris finds that this unprecedented experiment was a noteworthy success on almost every measurable student outcome. But, as Harris shows, New Orleans was uniquely situated for these reforms to work well and that this market-based reform still required some specific and active roles for government. Letting free markets rule on their own without government involvement will not generate the kinds of changes their advocates suggest. Combining the evidence from New Orleans with that from other cities, Harris draws out the broader lessons of this unprecedented reform effort. At a time when charter school debates are more based on ideology than data, this book is a powerful, evidence-based, and in-depth look at how we can rethink the roles for governments, markets, and nonprofit organizations in education to ensure that America’s schools fulfill their potential for all students.

Reinventing America's Schools

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Author :
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1632869918
Total Pages : 433 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (328 download)

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Book Synopsis Reinventing America's Schools by : David Osborne

Download or read book Reinventing America's Schools written by David Osborne and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From David Osborne, the author of Reinventing Government--a biting analysis of the failure of America's public schools and a comprehensive plan for revitalizing American education. In Reinventing America's Schools, David Osborne, one of the world's foremost experts on public sector reform, offers a comprehensive analysis of the charter school movements and presents a theory that will do for American schools what his New York Times bestseller Reinventing Government did for public governance in 1992. In 2005, when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, the city got an unexpected opportunity to recreate their school system from scratch. The state's Recovery School District (RSD), created to turn around failing schools, gradually transformed all of its New Orleans schools into charter schools, and the results are shaking the very foundations of American education. Test scores, school performance scores, graduation and dropout rates, ACT scores, college-going rates, and independent studies all tell the same story: the city's RSD schools have tripled their effectiveness in eight years. Now other cities are following suit, with state governments reinventing failing schools in Newark, Camden, Memphis, Denver, Indianapolis, Cleveland, and Oakland. In this book, Osborne uses compelling stories from cities like New Orleans and lays out the history and possible future of public education. Ultimately, he uses his extensive research to argue that in today's world, we should treat every public school like a charter school and grant them autonomy, accountability, diversity of school designs, and parental choice.

A Smarter Charter

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Publisher : Teachers College Press
ISBN 13 : 0807755796
Total Pages : 241 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (77 download)

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Book Synopsis A Smarter Charter by : Richard D. Kahlenberg

Download or read book A Smarter Charter written by Richard D. Kahlenberg and published by Teachers College Press. This book was released on 2014-09-19 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moving beyond the debate over whether or not charter schools should exist, A Smarter Charter wrestles with the question of what kind of charter schools we should encourage. The authors begin by tracing the evolution of charter schools from Albert Shanker's original vision of giving teachers room to innovate while educating a diverse population of students, to today's charter schools where student segregation levels are even higher than in traditional public schools. In the second half of the book, the authors examine two key reforms currently seen in a small but growing number of charter schools, socioeconomic integration and teacher voice, that have the potential to improve performance and reshape the stereotypical image of what it means to be a charter school.

Unexplored Conditions of Charter School Principals

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Author :
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1475838697
Total Pages : 153 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (758 download)

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Book Synopsis Unexplored Conditions of Charter School Principals by : Marytza A. Gawlik

Download or read book Unexplored Conditions of Charter School Principals written by Marytza A. Gawlik and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2017-08-03 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unexplored Conditions of Charter School Principals: An Examination of the Issues and Challenges for Leaders, explores contemporary policy issues confronting charter school principals. The purpose of this book is to explore the issues and challenges confronted by charter school principals across an array of goals and expectations set forth by the policy and local context. By drawing on leadership and policy experts and researchers, we offer an in-depth examination of what current issues charter school principals face. Starting with autonomy, we work our way through teacher evaluation and succession and socialization and then conclude with an opportunity to reflect on what we know and how to look forward. By drawing on autonomy, sensemaking, teacher evaluations, and succession and socialization, this book traces the development of the charter principal within these policy contexts. Collectively, these topics form the beginnings of what we hope will be an informative and useful conversation of where the charter school principal has been and where they are headed.

Reign of Error

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Author :
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0385350899
Total Pages : 417 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (853 download)

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Book Synopsis Reign of Error by : Diane Ravitch

Download or read book Reign of Error written by Diane Ravitch and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-09-17 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

School Choice at the Crossroads

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 135121330X
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (512 download)

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Book Synopsis School Choice at the Crossroads by : Mark Berends

Download or read book School Choice at the Crossroads written by Mark Berends and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-04 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: School Choice at the Crossroads compiles exemplary, policy-relevant research on school choice options—voucher, private, charter, and traditional public schools—as they have been implemented across the nation. Renowned contributors highlight the latest rigorous research findings and implications on school vouchers, tuition tax credits, and charter schools in states and local areas at the forefront of school choice policy. Examining national and state-level perspectives, each chapter discusses the effects of choice and vouchers on student outcomes, the processes of choice, supportive conditions of school choice programs, comparative features of school choice, and future research. This timely volume addresses whether school choice works, under what conditions, and for whom—further informing educational research, policy, and practice.

Space, Place and Educational Settings

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Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3030785971
Total Pages : 234 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (37 download)

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Book Synopsis Space, Place and Educational Settings by : Tim Freytag

Download or read book Space, Place and Educational Settings written by Tim Freytag and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-12-02 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book explores the nexus between knowledge and space with a particular emphasis on the role of educational settings that are, both, shaping and being reshaped by socio-economic and political processes. It gives insight into the complex interplay of educational inequalities and practices of educational governance in the neighborhood and at larger geographical scales. The book adopts quantitative and qualitative methodologies and explores a wide range of theoretical perspectives by drawing upon empirical cases and examples from France, Germany, Italy, the UK and North America, and presents and reflects ongoing research of international scholars from various disciplinary backgrounds such as education, human geography, public policy, sociology, and urban and regional planning. As such, it provides an interesting read for scholars, students and professionals in the broader field of social, cultural and educational studies, as well as policy makers and practitioners in the fields of education, pedagogy, social work, and urban and regional planning.

Charter Schools

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Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400831857
Total Pages : 358 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

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Book Synopsis Charter Schools by : Jack Buckley

Download or read book Charter Schools written by Jack Buckley and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-13 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past several years, privately run, publicly funded charter schools have been sold to the American public as an education alternative promising better student achievement, greater parent satisfaction, and more vibrant school communities. But are charter schools delivering on their promise? Or are they just hype as critics contend, a costly experiment that is bleeding tax dollars from public schools? In this book, Jack Buckley and Mark Schneider tackle these questions about one of the thorniest policy reforms in the nation today. Using an exceptionally rigorous research approach, the authors investigate charter schools in Washington, D.C., carefully examining school data going back more than a decade, interpreting scores of interviews with parents, students, and teachers, and meticulously measuring how charter schools perform compared to traditional public schools. Their conclusions are sobering. Buckley and Schneider show that charter-school students are not outperforming students in traditional public schools, that the quality of charter-school education varies widely from school to school, and that parent enthusiasm for charter schools starts out strong but fades over time. And they argue that while charter schools may meet the most basic test of sound public policy--they do no harm--the evidence suggests they all too often fall short of advocates' claims. With the future of charter schools--and perhaps public education as a whole--hanging in the balance, this book supports the case for holding charter schools more accountable and brings us considerably nearer to resolving this contentious debate.

Schoolhouse Burning

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Publisher : PublicAffairs
ISBN 13 : 1541774388
Total Pages : 294 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (417 download)

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Book Synopsis Schoolhouse Burning by : Derek W. Black

Download or read book Schoolhouse Burning written by Derek W. Black and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2020-09-22 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The full-scale assault on public education threatens not just public education but American democracy itself. Public education as we know it is in trouble. Derek W. Black, a legal scholar and tenacious advocate, shows how major democratic and constitutional developments are intimately linked to the expansion of public education throughout American history. Schoolhouse Burningis grounded in pathbreaking, original research into how the nation, in its infancy, built itself around public education and, following the Civil War, enshrined education as a constitutional right that forever changed the trajectory of our democracy. Public education, alongside the right to vote, was the cornerstone of the recovery of the war-torn nation. Today's current schooling trends -- the declining commitment to properly fund public education and the well-financed political agenda to expand vouchers and charter schools -- present a major assault on the democratic norms that public education represents and risk undermining one of the unique accomplishments of American society.

Selling School

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Publisher : Teachers College Press
ISBN 13 : 0807776785
Total Pages : 209 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (77 download)

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Book Synopsis Selling School by : Catherine DiMartino

Download or read book Selling School written by Catherine DiMartino and published by Teachers College Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This timely book outlines the growth and development of marketing and branding practices in public education. The authors highlight why these practices have become important across key fields within public education, including leadership and governance, budgeting and finance, strategic initiatives, use of new technology, the role of teachers in marketing, and messaging. From an organizational perspective, they explore the implications of edvertising on the democratic mission of public education, especially as related to issues of equity and access for students who have been historically underserved. The authors argue that expansive marketing campaigns, unequal funding sources, and lack of regulation are quickly and profoundly reshaping public education without the benefit of robust research or public debate. Selling School is important reading for principals navigating increasingly marketized school systems, for policymakers constructing legislation, and for parents negotiating school choice. “DiMartino and Jessen are right in their prescient discussion of the muddling of public and private models in public education through marketing.” —From the Foreword by Christopher Lubienski, Indiana University, Bloomington “This book pioneers new ground as the authors move the literature on the marketization of education into a more nuanced analysis of how branding discourses and practices have entered the logic of public schooling.” —Gary L. Anderson, New York University “Essential for readers interested in learning about how private sector practices affect the functions of public schools.” —Janelle Scott, University of California, Berkeley

Lost Classroom, Lost Community

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Author :
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022612214X
Total Pages : 215 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (261 download)

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Book Synopsis Lost Classroom, Lost Community by : Margaret F. Brinig

Download or read book Lost Classroom, Lost Community written by Margaret F. Brinig and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-04-11 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the past two decades in the United States, more than 1,600 Catholic elementary and secondary schools have closed, and more than 4,500 charter schools—public schools that are often privately operated and freed from certain regulations—have opened, many in urban areas. With a particular emphasis on Catholic school closures, Lost Classroom, Lost Community examines the implications of these dramatic shifts in the urban educational landscape. More than just educational institutions, Catholic schools promote the development of social capital—the social networks and mutual trust that form the foundation of safe and cohesive communities. Drawing on data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods and crime reports collected at the police beat or census tract level in Chicago, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles, Margaret F. Brinig and Nicole Stelle Garnett demonstrate that the loss of Catholic schools triggers disorder, crime, and an overall decline in community cohesiveness, and suggest that new charter schools fail to fill the gaps left behind. This book shows that the closing of Catholic schools harms the very communities they were created to bring together and serve, and it will have vital implications for both education and policing policy debates.

Are Charters Different?

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781682530702
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (37 download)

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Book Synopsis Are Charters Different? by : Zachary W. Oberfield

Download or read book Are Charters Different? written by Zachary W. Oberfield and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Award-winning author Zachary Oberfield examines public schools and charters schools through a political science lens, asking whether there are organizational variances between the schools that foster dissimilar teaching climates. Are Charters Different? presents a fascinating example of how privatization affects the delivery of public services and provides valuable insights that can inform public policy in education. Drawing on the literature in public policy and organizational theory, Oberfield notes that one of the key rationales for the charter movement was the belief that public and private organizations have distinct characteristics. The book finds that while charters have made strides toward their initial goals (more autonomy for teachers, opportunities for innovation and leadership, and less red tape) there are also real costs (lower credentials, longer hours and more students per teacher). In addition, Oberfield compares the teachers' experiences in traditional public and charter schools based on a series of large-scale, longitudinal surveys. He draws a nuanced portrait of the distinctions that emerge and discusses patterns of change over time. Oberfield looks closely at variations in the survey findings within the charter sector to investigate whether changes in the organizational status or contexts of charter schools influence school culture. Are Charters Different? provides a unique analysis on the much debated charter school movement. Oberfield recognizes that there are different models of schooling, each of which has its own strengths and weaknesses, and that we have to weigh the tradeoffs involved in choosing one over the other--Provided by publisher.