1. EDTHP 115 4/14/03 Announcement from Dr. Gerald LeTendre
This week: Equality, Equity, and Excellence
Today: The Educational System of the U.S.: Promises, Purposes, Opportunities, and Practices
Dana Mitra – Youth Voice in Educational Policy & Reform – read her piece in CR
Next week: Desegregation
Sean Reardon on Monday – read Orfield in CR
Eyes on the Prize on Wednesday – Education as part of the Civil Rights Movement
Final week:
Instruction and Instructional Leadership:
the role of the teacher
How do we improve the Curriculum and Instructional Practices?
How do we provide and “Equal Educational Opportunity”?
Are there good examples anywhere?

2. The Educational System of the U. S
The Educational System of the U.S.: Promises, Purposes, Opportunities, and Practices
Adair, Deil-Amen, Pong, Kornhaber
The Educational System of the U.S.
Challenges and Concerns
Strategies for changing/improving education (and addressing concerns)
Other important aspects of the system: courts, congress, etc.

3. Adair, Deil-Amen, Pong, Kornhaber
What were some common elements among these talks?
Why thinking about equity and democracy and schooling is importantz; and how we might be failing at it.
Reminder about American education, the other, mainstream, nostalgia, etc.
That’s why read Dewey, Giroux, Hannity—we’ve become too used to thinking of education as a private good. What does it mean to think of it as a common good? What if we had to create a system for all children, our own included? What’s the fairest way to educate children, to fund education?
Why have we studied all this other stuff?

4. The School System of the U.S.
Remember plans of Jefferson, Webster, & Rush
Consider the successes of the Common School Reform Era …
and the promise of a common education for all children
Reflect on the structures and practices that reformers in the Progressive Era put in place
led to near universal education …
but also deeply flawed
What are some of the common traits of Americans in regard to education
We want a “democratic” education (but the definitions vary)
We want a quality education
We tend to place a great many (too many?) responsibilities on schools
We like innovation
We all have thoughts on what American schools should provide

5. School System of the U.S.
What problems might this list of responsibilities lead to?
How does the system cope with demands?
What does the system look like now?

7. Challenges and Concerns
What is the purpose of this structure?
What have been some of the barriers and obstacles to educational improvement, at the individual or group level?
The problems of politics and bureaucracy
What are those forces?
Is our system “a mess”?

8. Challenges and Concerns
How social scientists have explained?
Teacher problem? Student behavior problem? Student ability problem? Social problem? Systemic problem?
Reasons for low achievement among low income students (Chap. 11, pp )
Obstacles in the classroom (Chap. 11, p )
Resistance by students
Low expectations by teachers and others
The lack of linkages, proper preparation, and information (Regina Deil-Amen)

9. Challenges and Concerns (con’t.)
But … what have been some ways to address faults, problems, inequities?
We’ve talked about some school reforms, some ways that educators in the past and present have attempted to improve education: student learning, efficiency, courses
What have been some of the basic strategies?

10. Strategies for Improvement & Change
Change or expand the opportunities for access
Common Schools
Progressive Era
Civil Rights Era
Improve or change the curriculum
Common Curriculum
Differentiated Curriculum
Standards
Develop new instructional practices

11. Strategies (con’t.) State Government Federal Government
4. Bring new actors/agencies into the system – either directly or indirectly
State Government
Federal Government
The federal courts
Executive Branch (President, Department of Education)
Congress

12. 6. Finance – attempts to equalize funding, new forms of taxation, etc.
5. Accountability
Testing
Threats
closure, reconstitution, firing
For students: you won’t graduate (is this fair without opportunity to learn standards?
6. Finance – attempts to equalize funding, new forms of taxation, etc.

13. 7. Alter or reform society – attack other related problems
Strategies (con’t.)
7. Alter or reform society – attack other related problems
universal health care, universal child care, increase minimum wage, etc.
8. Change incentives or rewards (for teachers, students, schools)
What IS motivation behind doing well?

14. 10. Fundamentally restructure and reorganize the school or the system
9. Tinker with the system
Add new responsibilities, mandates, courses or coursework
10. Fundamentally restructure and reorganize the school or the system
Vouchers
Charter Schools
Split schools: manual training vs. general for all
Schools within schools