School Reform

A deep district-wide commitment to racial equity for African American male students, based on the framework of targeted universalism, has laid the foundation for expanding the focus to include African American girls, Latino/a students, and Asian and Pacific Islander students.

Herbart's work informs scholars of education history and historiography that seek to understand the foundations of modern German-speaking Education. Scholars interested in education reform find guidance and clarity in Herbart's uncompromising commitment to pedagogy for and with the enlightened human being. This is of particular relevance in view of the current policy developments in the German-speaking world that move away from the roots of Didaktik and toward systems of accountability reminiscent of the past 40 years of U.S. education policy.

The theory and tools of “improvement science” have produced performance improvements in many organizational
sectors. This essay describes improvement science and explores its potential and challenges within education. Potential
contributions include attention to the knowledge-building and motivational systems within schools, strategies for learning
from variations in practice, and focus on improvement (rather than on program adoption). Two examples of improvement
science in education are examined: the Community College Pathways Networked Improvement Community and lesson
study in Japan. To support improvement science use, we need to recognize the different affordances of experimental and
improvement science, the varied types of knowledge that can be generalized, the value of practical measurement, and the
feasibility of learning across boundaries.

Public schools in the US have long operated as sorting machines channeling students to serve the needs of capital and so-called national interests. Ginsberg deconstructs the rhetoric of contemporary test-driven school reform, with a specific emphasis on the concept of "at risk." The premise is statistics that identify entire cultures as "at risk" are powerful stories not simply of low expectations, cultural deprivations, and individual laziness, but of political capital, misused power, and unjustly distributed resources. Ginsberg provides a powerful analysis of how the policies that supposedly promote meritocracy, personal responsibility, and individual achievement also contain strong components of separating, sorting, marginalizing, and punishing students, particularly those from communities considered "at risk" and who refuse to conform to the status quo. Unlike many ideologically similar critics of public schools, Ginsberg presents a hopeful message through case studies of four urban schools that illustrate more meaningful and sustainable ways for students to learn. These schools embrace risk in that they are unafraid of challenging the status quo of teaching and learning by cultivating spaces where students can question how and why certain knowledge is validated, marginalized, or dismissed. Summing Up: Essential. All readership levels.-E. W. Ross, University of British Columbia

This paper uses critical race theory to analyze several case studies focused on the experiences of two restorative justice coordinators (RJCs), both Black women and how they understood and responded to perceived racial injustices in urban schools with white leadership. These schools were attempting to address unequal disciplinary practices toward students of color through restorative justice and the RJCs adapted their approaches to addressing racialized dynamics while also developing school-wide networks to foster broader critical reflection on race. They navigated the risks of challenging white privilege and systemic racism both of which at times limited their attempts at influencing change.

School reform must begin with a clear and coherent focus on inquiry into student outcomes and links to school practices. Moreover, collaborative professional cultures must be based on evidence, open to new ideas, and committed to collective responsibility for the success of all students. Those are the principles behind the Bay Area School Reform Collaborative (BASRC), formed in 1995 to “reculture public education in the Bay Area.” Phase One of BASRC’s work, continuing through 2001, extended grants to 86 Leadership Schools and featured a “Cycle of Inquiry” as the driving force of reform. Through the Cycle of Inquiry, Leadership Schools acquired the data and analysis to shape teachers’ ongoing learning and create an agenda for the continuous improvement of practice.
BASRC’s emphasis on the role of inquiry and collaborative teacher communities in school reform finds much support in the education literature and in the general literature on organizational learning. However, the research reported here differs in two significant ways: it addresses the role of inquiry in the context of a large, multi-site initiative and as the driver for change throughout the school.
This monograph draws upon five years of evaluation research to examine the role and consequences of inquiry in BASRC Leadership Schools (Center for Research on the Context of Teaching, 2002) . We incorporate: 1) data from longitudinal case studies of 10 diverse BASRC schools; 2) less intensive field-based research in satellite samples of 21 schools; and 3) surveys of principals, teachers, and reform coordinators that analyze experiences with inquiry across the initiative; these surveys examine the consequences for teachers and students and describe what inquiry-based reform looks like in practice. Case study data highlight the institutional and organizational factors associated with Leadership Schools’ different trajectories of inquiry and how teachers’ inquiry “habits” changed over time. We conclude by discussing the promise and challenges of inquiry as a culture-changing strategy and how school contexts affect its operation and consequence.

In most countries across the globe, Governments’ commitments toward ensuring quality education and lifelong learning are markedly becoming vibrant, given the pervasive role education plays in stimulating highly skilled, well-informed and morally sound citizens. Ghana is not an exception. Since political independence, there have been considerable policy reforms, interventions, and directions as well as structural changes to our education system with the view to meeting contemporary educational standards (e.g. Kwapong Educational Review Committee in 1966; Dzobo Educational Review Committee in 1974; Amanuah-Mensah Educational Review Committee in 2002). To save time and space, this paper considers the major changes that have occurred since the late 1980's with emphasis on the pre-tertiary level of education. The paper argues that the current education system in Ghana has been characterized by three fundamental challenges, namely fragmented and over loaded curriculum, unequal access to education, and weak and incoherent administrative control. The paper concludes by offering a vision for a structural reform, capable of delivering quality lifelong learning to all young people.

Research suggests effective professional learning communities (PLCs) enhance teacher collaboration and student achievement. Some studies indicate that these communities also predict greater collective efficacy, while others suggest teacher efficacy is predictive of teachers working together. Although studies have identified effective, research-based PLC practices, how these specific practices effect collective efficacy has not been thoroughly studied. This study, using structural equation modeling (SEM), investigated the relationship between PLCs and teachers’ collective efficacy drawing on 310 surveys from 16 schools in 1 district that had systematically implemented PLCs. Our findings showed that higher functioning PLCs predict higher levels of teacher collective efficacy (TCE). This suggests that engaging and supporting teachers in PLC work, as this district did, can lead to enhanced collective efficacy, which in turn can contribute to improved student achievement.

This action-research case study examines the potential benefits of explicit formfocused instruction (FFI) on the English learning of Mexican-origin adolescent students attending a middle school designated as low-performing. During the first year of the study I taught two sections of English as a second language to students beginning their second or third year in U.S. schools. At the beginning of the year I administered a pretest to 20 students, and throughout the year I documented and reflected on my teaching and my students’ learning through written and recorded notes. At the end of the year I administered a posttest to my students. During the second year of the study, I collected tests results using the same grammar test from students whom I had not taught and who had attended U.S. schools from two to eight years. I reported the results and analysis of the study through a retrospective narrative format. The findings suggest that grammar—as the abstract system it is—is difficult to teach and challenging to learn for adolescent immigrant students with varying degrees of prior knowledge. The findings also suggest that immigrant youngsters appear to benefit in diverse ways from being taught through a grammar-based approach. The retrospective narrative provides a description of research process, the contexts of the study, the students, the teaching and learning that went on in viii my classroom, and the results of the grammar test. Although the results of the grammar test favored the students exposed to FFI, these findings cannot be generalized to other students in other FFI classrooms. Limitations of the study are provided along with suggestion for future research and implications for teachers.

Students’ voices in schools have been historically associated with the chaos of the irrational, immature and irresponsible: to be quietened, curtailed and disciplined. This chaos has been “hidden” through the reinforcement of discursive habits and models of recognition (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994/2009, p. 216) that block, prohibit and invalidate students’ speech and affects.

“‘New wave’ student voice” (Fielding, 2004a) has emerged in the past twenty years, framed by its proponents as a “radical collegiality” (Fielding, 1999) that might provide the conditions for “radical interruption[s] to the normal asymmetries inherent in school relations” (Mockler & Groundwater-Smith, 2015, p. 54). In student voice work, students are re-positioned to research issues surrounding teaching and learning. ‘Student voice’ encounters where students, as those “directly concerned” with the practices of schooling, “speak on their own behalf” (Deleuze, in Deleuze & Foucault, 1977, p. 209) in “collective elaborations” (Guattari, in Rolnik, 2004/ 2008, p. 9) might manifest new subjectivities, social relations and environment-worlds in the striated spaces of schooling.

At the same time, ‘student voice’ is concept that “zigzags” and passes “through other problems or onto different planes” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994/2009, p. 18). ‘Student voice’ has proliferated in recent years in school improvement literature as a mechanism by which to increase engagement and school ‘effectiveness.’ In the movement of the concept of ‘student voice’ through the terrains of education, ‘student voice’ has been de- and re-territorialised by capital, sedimented into formations that encourage students to self-style their speech to become diplomatic and their subjectivities to become enterprising (Bragg, 2007; Foucault, 1991, 2007; Rose, 1999). However, these discursive critiques of student voice marginalise the affective, sensory and material movements of student voice work that exceed and escape molar relations of power. 

This paper maps discursive, affective and material currents as the concept of ‘student voice’ was animated in a low socioeconomic high school during a four-year period where ‘student voice’ was employed as a reform strategy. In processes of participatory schizoanalysis in the final year of the reform, the students and I formed and re-formed collective assemblages of enunciations to create concepts, produce art and analyse the (scientific) variables that constitute and re-constitute the “micropolitical vitalit[ies]” (Rolnik, 2004/ 2008, p. 9) of student voice work. The students’ and my collective theorisations are schizo-analytically intersected with flows of signs and machinic flows in social, political and economic machines beyond the school that shape how ‘voice’ is perceived, interpreted and evaluated. Artistic and philosophical collective assemblages of enunciation about ‘voice’ are juxtaposed with the school’s documented evaluation of the ‘effectiveness’ of the student voice work. It is argued that the molar lines that construct social faces and project specific forms of subjectivities of ‘student’ and ‘teacher’ might be (momentarily) suspended and redirected, even while smooth spaces will not suffice to save us (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980/ 1987).

While ‘student voice’ is advocated as a means for school reform, studies of its enactment have noted how student voice can become a technology of governance. This article works with the perplexities of a four-year funded period of reform at one secondary school, where a ‘student voice’ initiative and a Positive Behaviour Interventions and Supports programme gradually
entwined. Complementing and extending a Foucauldian account of power as productive, Deleuze and Guattari’s desiring-analysis generates simultaneous accounts of governance, resistance and affirmation. Mapping what behaviour tokens did, and what was done with these tokens, does not undermine the importance of ‘listening’ to students’ (and teachers’) voices, nor the incisive potential of critique, but rather considers latent pathways out of present repetitious patterns of school governance. It is argued that working with these simultaneous movements of voice may foster more productive conversations about perplexing school reform processes.

Participatory research with young people might be re-conceptualised as ethico-aesthetic experimentation (Guattari, 1995). Such an approach unthreads the discursive and affective constraints, contradictions and pressures of voice (cf. Jackson, 2003; MacLure, 2009), as well as the creation of new collective subjectivities in participatory research. This presentation will briefly review poststructural critiques of voice, power/ knowledge and subjectivication in participatory research, before considering how the concepts of Deleuze and Guattari might shift the questions asked by participatory researchers about particular methodological impasses. Examining particular participatory research encounters when there were blockages, leaks and tears in co-theorising ‘student voice’ in a low socioeconomic school reform process, connections are made to other economic, historical, political and social forces and struggles (Albrecht-Crane & Slack, 2007; Mulcahy, 2012). This process of transversal connection is a “political and social psychoanalysis” that explores “unconscious libidinal investment[s] of sociohistorical production” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1983, p. 98).

Since the idea of charter schools took hold in the 1990s, the school reform movement in the United States has expanded rapidly. Ideologically defending itself in the name of school choice and accountability, in reality the movement focuses on dismantling school boards in favor of direct mayoral control and allowing private companies to supply school services. Recently a spate of documentary films - most notably Waiting for Superman - have carried the ideological message to greater swathes of the American public. This paper argues that the US school reform movement is radically regressive, led by an economic elite, and essentially at odds with the democratic civic and political role of a public school system.

The Ministry of Education has set the target of 100% of New Zealand schools to be ‘mostly’ inclusive by 2014. But what are the essential elements of inclusion? This paper explores essential core elements that allow inclusion to flourish. Based on an extensive time in the field as part of a year-long doctoral research project, these elements are: relationships, shared experiences, advocacy, and a sense of identity. Strengthened and welded together through transparency, inclusive cultures and more inclusive practices have been seen to develop and grow.

Addressing the needs of underperforming central city schools is one of the most perplexing questions in contemporary educational research.  At least two approaches have emerged as paradigms shaping the nature of reform efforts: (1) building-based approaches such as comprehensive school reform, and (2) place-based approaches that include interventions at the community and neighborhood-level.  To this end, the proposed chapter will examine the tensions and contradictions that exist between place-based and building-based approaches in the context of a school choice environment.  I explore the nexus between federal and local levers for reform, school choice, neighborhood effects, and place-based approaches to school reform. Three gaps in the literature are exposed: (1) gaps about implementation of place-based comprehensive community initiatives (PBCCI) efforts like Promise and Choice Neighborhoods, (2) gaps about the school system’s and individual school’s role in PBCCI efforts, and (3) gaps resulting from potentially conflicting policy demands.

Few studies provide an overview of citizenship education from the primary to secondary grade levels in American schools. Citizenship education consists of specific teaching practices designed to encourage students to become more involved in their communities. This review critically evaluates three kinds of
programmes related to citizenship education: (1) character education programmes, (2) political simulations and, (3) service-learning programmes. Students in the primary grades are mainly exposed to character education programmes, which emphasise the importance of developing ethical values. Political simulations are more common in high school civic courses, where students learn the importance of community-level civic engagement (e.g. volunteering). Service-learning programmes can help students in the secondary grades develop a broader range of civic engagement outcomes that pertain to the school and community-level context. This study reaffirms the importance of increasing
students’ exposure to citizenship education, while emphasising that certain instructional practices can be more effective in helping students develop civic engagement

The publication was prepared by representatives of three universities – from Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. The changing social situation and the changes resulting from scientific advancement have caused a growing difference between the preparation for and actual performing of particular professions. In the case of teachers’ work, this becomes especially noticeable as social expectations are aimed not so much at the success of educators but mostly at their appropriate preparation of the young generation. Thus, a teacher is to prepare the young for what they will face in a few years, not for the present situation. School should equip youth with the knowledge and skills which will enable them to solve problems associated with e.g. choosing a career. This brings about different views on the ways of teachers’ education and training. The problem has become of special significance in the period of rapid social, scientific and technical transformations taking place over the last decades. New problems also result from the accession to the European Union. School should be a place where a young person is prepared for making use of what other cultures offer, for fast development of technology and science, with simultaneous appreciation of the native tradition. Therefore, teachers are burdened with many new duties which reach beyond the information and skills they have had so far. The changes introduced by new competences determine the broadening of the scope of teachers’ professional functions.
What seems to be the essence of each school reform are the changes taking place in teachers’ activities. All other changes – in legal regulations, in the organization of school work, or in curricula, are of secondary significance. This takes place because the school reality changes according to the reformers’ assumptions only if teachers have necessary qualifications and willingness to implement the assumed transformations. The change should affect the system of teachers’ professional education and training, which ought to alter not only the content-based method of professional work but also teachers’ attitude to their qualifications. In the process of their education, teachers should be equipped with expert knowledge of the subject and practical experience. The discussion on educational models often concerns the proportions in which these elements should appear. The teacher’s profession has always raised emotions due to the possibility of shaping and modelling the young generation. There has been a lot of debates on the personality, authority or power of teachers, various phenomena associated with their didactic work (e.g. “work burnout”), as well as the change in the relation between the teacher and the learner. Another phenomenon concerning the reflections upon the teacher is the “myth of a teacher” – in the past, someone who loves a child’s soul, a social activist rooted in the local environment and acting for others and currently – a specialist and expert in a particular subject. 
School is not the only and basic source of knowledge for children any longer. Contemporary learners know more and more, but this does not mean that they understand more. Therefore, what seems a chance and a duty of teachers is using children’s resources of information and experience to teach them to think and organize their own experience. At the same time, a crisis of school knowledge co-occurs with the problem of a teacher’s authority – in the past, a teacher was a mentor and a master, who was widely respected due to the acquired knowledge and a high-rank social position.

Казармено-приютното начало на училищната институция се харктеризира с комбинация от (относително) заплашителна и бедна на стимули среда. Такава тя е биологически токсична за развитието на мозъка. Избягването на училище може да е една стратегия за стратегия за справяне с това предизвикателство.

The  article  focuses  on  the  democratisation  in  Polish  schools  27  years  after  the  fall of  communism in Poland.  It discusses  the  context  and  barriers  of  school  democratisation  in  Poland.  Appearances  deceive  observers  from other  countries  and  legitimise  policymakers’  unsuccessful  enforcement of democratic practices in schools that were supposed to lead  to empowerment of school communities, in particular teachers and head- masters. Recent reports and assessments of innovative programs to support  schools  show that  the  expected  readiness of  teachers  and headmasters  to  practice democratic education was an illusion.  e failure and weakness of  democracy  in schools  is caused by  rapid changes, continuing reforms and  the problem of  enforcement  of democracy  by  top-down  reforms  through  unacceptable shortcuts, thus creating pseudo-democracy.

Dr. Warren J. Blumenfeld argues that advancing a positive social and academic climate in schools for students, faculty, staff, and administrators of all social identities, including sexual and gender identities and expressions, should be major priorities (“agenda” items) for all (including people as individuals and at politically and religiously conservative organizations like Focus on the Family) if they are truly concerned and interested in ensuring safer and more welcoming school environments.

In this article, I critique the labels and terms used to frame practices
aimed at closing the achievement gap. I examine how an unacknowledged achievement gap Discourse has emerged from the language that informs practices and policies of contemporary school reform. I use Gee’s uppercase “Discourse” and a cultural analytic framework to critique what I refer to as the achievement gap “Discourse.” I challenge educational stakeholders to rethink (a) student comparisons, (b) teacher and student assessments, (c) labels, (d) community input and involvement, and (e) the collective commitment to public schooling as an institution.

Background/Context: Schools have attempted to address stratification in black and Latino students’ access to higher education through extensive reform initiatives, including those focused on social supports. A crucial focus has been missing from these efforts, essential to improving the effectiveness of support mechanisms and understanding why they have been insufficient: how students experience these reforms.

Purpose: How can the social context of schools keep underrepresented minority students on track to transition to college? This study investigates how students experience the social contexts of their schools in relation to their college ambitions, and the particular attributes of schools’ social contexts that might positively affect their transition to four-year colleges.

Research Design: Using a mixed-methods case study design, this three-year study examined students’ educational pathways in a Chicago charter high school. Data collection methods included ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, and a longitudinal survey. Supplemental secondary data sources were utilized to contextualize the case study.

Analysis: Interview transcripts and field notes were transcribed and coded to examine variation in students’ experience of their social context and their college transition plans. To contextualize these findings, the author utilized descriptive, associative, and logistic regression techniques to analyze quantitative data from the case study survey and corresponding city and national datasets.

Findings: The school’s organization facilitated academic, social, and college preparatory support through structured relationships. Notwithstanding, there was notable within-school variation in students’ transitions to college. Students in this urban charter school often experienced multiple obstacles that interfered with the college ambitions they generally shared with their families and school peers. School regard is a mechanism identified in this study as central to students’ transition success. Students’ perceptions of their teachers’ and their peers’ regard for their capacity for educational success was associated with their persistence through the transition to college in the face of academic, socioeconomic, and other challenges.

Conclusions/Recommendations: This study demonstrates the effort and engagement underrepresented students expend in the effort to become college-ready, and the risk for burnout as a result of both academic and non-academic hardships during their high school years. School regard may mitigate these effects. Mere expectations for college appear insufficient in the current access-for-all climate. Rather, it is important that students perceive value and esteem for their potential from school faculty and peers, sustaining their ambitions through the obstacles they encounter in high school and expect in college.

Świat znajduje się w nieustannym ruchu i zmianie. Uczniowie, którzy opuszczają mury szkoły, idą w pewnym sensie w nieznane. Czy poradzą sobie w ciągle zmieniającej się rzeczywistości? Czy ich szkoła dała im możliwość zdobycia wiedzy i umiejętności, wykształciła postawy, które pozwolą im swobodnie funkcjonować w społeczeństwie i gospodarce XXI wieku? Czy szkoła także nie powinna się ciągle zmieniać, rozwijać, aby być jak najbliżej świata?

"Dobre zmiany" to publikacja wydana w związku z jubileuszem 10 lat działalności Edunews.pl. Publikacja ta jest wyborem około 20 tekstów, które na przestrzeni kilku lat ukazywały się w Edunews.pl i były poświęcone edukacyjnej zmianie w szkole.

Okładka publikacji symbolizuje edukacyjną podróż. Widzimy Ziemię i startującą z niej rakietę. Są też uczniowie przy komputerach, a nawet książka, kredka i lupa. Słowem połączenie tradycji i nowoczesności, ale jednak w kontekście pewnej wyprawy. Per aspera ad astra – przez trudy do gwiazd… Symbolika tej okładki nie jest przypadkowa. Zmarły w tym roku w dniu liczby Pi Stephen Hawking, jeden z najwybitniejszych umysłów w historii naszej cywilizacji, powiedział, że ludzie mają tylko 100 lat, aby zdobyć możliwość opuszczenia Ziemi w obliczu zagrożenia kataklizmem. To całkiem niedużo czasu… Zasadne zatem jest pytanie, które adresujemy do dyrektorów i nauczycieli – jak polska szkoła przygotowuje uczniów do podróży na Marsa? Mars jest tu oczywiście tylko symbolem podróży człowieka przez kosmos.

Musimy w edukacji przestać patrzeć wstecz i zacząć myśleć globalnie, do przodu. Nie jedynie poprzez pryzmat historii naszego kraju, ale szerzej – myśleć wyzwaniami, które nas jako ludzkość czekają za 20, 50 czy 100 lat. Bo dzieci, które uczymy, będą musiały się zmierzyć z wieloma problemami i wyzwaniami, o których nam się nawet dziś nie śni. I dlatego musimy myśleć o rzeczywistych dobrych zmianach w edukacji i zacząć działać, aby przygotować młodych ludzi do życia w innym świecie, niż ten, który znamy.

The enduring existence of disproportionate representation of students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds in special education programs and disciplinary practices creates a double bind for educators, educational leaders, and families. Disproportionality is an adaptive systemic issue that is not under any entity’s control; thus, it demands collaboration and critical dialogue among local stakeholders. This article examined the implementation of Learning Lab, a new methodology of systemic transformation, for local stakeholders to collectively examine and address disproportionality in behavioral outcomes from the ground–up. Learning Lab aims to increase equity within the local implementations of Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) by opening up decision-making and problem-solving processes with local stakeholders. Designed to increase authentic collaboration and dialogue among educators, families, and community based organizations, Learning Lab offers the possibility of contextually fit, culturally responsive implementations of PBIS and building the capacity for forming adaptive and inclusive schools.

Background: Local control has historically been a prominent principle in education policy-making and governance. Culminating with the passage of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), however, the politics of education have been nationalized to an unprecedented degree, and local control has all but disappeared as a principle framing education policymaking. During the same period, policies imposed upon locales by state and federal governments have shifted from an emphasis on equity to accountability.

Background/Context: Scholars agree that students' academic preparation for college begins as early as middle school. This preparation includes both instructional and social supports. The present study draws much-needed attention to how Black males articulate the role and function of their Chicago high school for helping them negotiate the challenges of urban living to both earn admittance to, and graduate from, a four-year college or university.