Showing papers in "Teachers College Record in 1995"

Toward a Critical Race Theory of Education.

Abstract: The goal of this chapter goal is to map critical race theory (CRT) scholarship in education over the past decade and draw this map with respect to larger conceptual categories of the scholarship on CRT, primarily focusing on the ideas applied from CRT in legal studies. The chapter focuses primarily on the past 10 years and creates "spatial" markers based on the view of significant features in the literature. Some of these markers are whiteness as property, counternarrative, and interest convergence. Others are newly-represented such as microaggressions, intersectionality, and research methods. From the perspective of far too many students of color in schools, we are STILL not saved. While the chapter outlines several recommendations for CRT scholarship to move forward, perhaps the most important recommendation is to collectively seek to ensure that CRT becomes more than an intellectual movement.

Parental Involvement in Children's Education: Why Does It Make a Difference?.

Abstract: We assert that the most important questions concerning parental involvement in children's education address why parents choose to become involved and why their involvement, once underway, often positively influences educational outcomes. We present a model suggesting that parents become involved primarily because (a) they develop a personal construction of the parental role that includes participation in their children's education, (b) they have developed a positive sense of efficacy for helping their children succeed in school, and (c) they perceive opportunities or demands for involvement from children and the school. Parents then choose specific forms of involvement in response to the specific domains of skill and knowledge they possess, the total demands on their time and energy, and specific requests for involvement from children and the school. The model suggests that parental involvement then influences children's developmental and educational outcomes through such mechanisms as modeling, reinforcement, and instruction, as mediated by the parent's use of developmentally appropriate activities and the fit between parental activities and the school's expectations. The major educational outcomes of the involvement process are children's development of skills and knowledge, as well as a personal sense of efficacy for succeeding in school. Major implications of the model for research and practice are discussed.

Two Cities' Tracking and Within-School Segregation.

Abstract: Evidence from two school systems whose ability grouping and tracking systems were subject to scrutiny in 1993 in conjunction with school desegregation cases demonstrates how grouping practices can create within-school segregation and discrimination against African-American and Latino students. In both school systems, tracking created racially imbalanced classes at all three levels—elementary, middle, and senior high, with African-American or Latino students consistently over represented and white and Asian students consistently underrepresented in low-ability tracks in all subjects. Neither district’s placement practices created classrooms with a range of measured student ability and achievement in classrooms sufficiently narrow to be considered homogeneous “ability groups,” and African-American and Latino students were much less likely than whites or Asians with comparable scores to be placed in high-track courses. These disproportionate lower-track placements worked to disadvantage minority students’ achievement outcomes. Whether students began with relatively high or relatively low achievement, those who were placed in lowerlevel courses showed lesser gains over time than similarly situated students placed in higher-level courses. In both systems, grouping practices created a cycle of restricted opportunities and diminished outcomes, and exacerbated differences between African-American and Latino and white students.

Strategies for Enhancing Teachers' Beliefs in Their Effectiveness: Research on a School Improvement Hypothesis.

Abstract: Teachers’ beliefs in their effectiveness consistently predict desired student outcomes. This article argues that the achievement impact of Teacher Efficacy (TE) arises from goal-setting and attributional processes. Teachers who anticipate that they will be successful set more challenging goals for themselves and their students, accept responsibility for the outcomes of instruction, and persist through obstacles. These findings suggest that student achievement of cognitive and affective goals can be enhanced by strengthening TE. The hypothesis that school improvement will flow from enhanced TE has been tested in a variety of skill-development projects with mixed results. It is pro -posed that skill-development approaches be augmented by attending to teacher beliefs (particularly about the mutability of intelligence) and to conditions of teacher work.

Race, Social Class, and Educational Reform in an Inner-City School

Abstract: Drawing on an assessment of reform efforts in one school in an urban ghetto in a large district in the Northeast, this article describes processes and events that illustrate how social manifestations of racial and social class status can combine to vitiate efforts at school reform. I argue that three factors—sociocultural differences among participants in reform, an abusive school environment, and educator expectations of failed reform—occurring in a minority ghetto where the school population is racially and economically isolated constitute some of the powerful and devastating ways that concomitants of race and social class can intervene to determine what happens in inner-city schools, and in attempts to improve them.

The Political Economy of School Choice.

Abstract: The analysis of the competitive delivery of educational services has often been coached in terms of an opposition between government regulation and the free market. This article suggests that regulation and markets may be complementary institutions that under appropriate conditions interact as a context for cost-effective equalitarian and socially accountable education.

When Basic Skills and Information Processing Just Aren't Enough: Rethinking Reading in New Times.

Abstract: Is reading simply a matter of neutral information processing or functional skills? This article draws on historical and contemporary perspectives to make the case that reading is a malleable social practice with identifiable moral and ideological consequences. It builds a four-tiered model that defines reading in contemporary social life in terms of four interconnected roles: coding, semantic, pragmatic, and critical. Critical reading—an awareness of and facility with the techniques by which texts and discourses construct and position human subjects and social reality—is an essential component of everyday life in social institutions. This is illustrated through text analyses of three “functional” texts: a textbook passage, a tenancy agreement, and a job application.

Opportunity-to-Learn Standards and the State Role in Education.

Abstract: Standards are the new focus of state and federal policymaking in education. The current policy debate addresses several types of standards, including performance, content, and opportunity to learn (OTL). This article focuses on opportunity-to-learn standards which define a set of conditions that schools, districts, and states must meet in order to ensure students an equal opportunity to meet expectations for their performance. States have been concerned about the issues raised by OTL standards for over a century, but they have not had much success in addressing these issues with state policy. We present some explanations for the historical inability of states to influence the equal provision of education and we offer some principles for designing new state policies that incorporate new knowledge about opportunity to learn. We conclude the article with a discussion of how states might address the underlying problem of reconciling policies more focused on performance with the problems of assuring equitable opportunities to learn.

Reexamining Social Science Research on School Desegregation: Long- versus Short-Term Effects.

Abstract: This article summarizes the role of social science research in examining the effects of school desegregation policies on African-American students. The author argues that much of the earliest research on the short-term effects of school desegregation on African-American students was not particularly helpful to policymakers because it tended to be simple input/output studies of standardized test scores after only one or two years of desegregation. Thus, this research tried to answer the question of whether school desegregation “works” to improve student achievement without con -textualizing the experiences of African-American students in desegregated schools or considering that “school desegregation” implementation may look radically different in different schools and districts. On the other hand, research on the short-term effects of desegregation on intergroup relations, which was more focused on what was taking place within the schools, and the long-term-effects research, which emphasized that integrated institutions provide access to social mobility and powerful social net -works, are more insightful and helpful to policymakers.

Time for Teachers in School Restructuring.

Abstract: This article asserts that time for teachers is not an easily defined commodity. It cannot readily be constructed and scheduled for them by reformers or administrators. There are many kinds of time for teachers, each constructed by teachers themselves, shaped to serve different needs, and tightly interrelated with other types of time. Drawing on theoretical writings about time and reports from schools that are trying to restructure, this article delineates these different kinds of time for teachers, and explores their interrelationship. It argues that a multitude of school reforms are bound to wither if they ignore the multiple constructs, boundaries, rhythm, and patterns of time for teachers.

Issues in Systemic Reform for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students.

Abstract: The ethnic and linguistic diversity of U.S. schools has grown significantly in the last two decades. Such diversity provides distinct new challenges for school reform efforts. New policy and federal programs, particularly exemplified in Title VII of the 1994 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, attempt to address this challenge. This act calls for integrated and comprehensive programming based on a new empirical and conceptual knowledge base, which has emerged in the last decade. This article addresses the demographic circumstances of student diversity, the emerging knowledge base, and the related federal educational reform policy changes related to these issues.

Race and Choice in Montgomery County, Maryland, Magnet Schools.

Abstract: Analysis of the pattern of requests to transfer into elementary school magnet programs in Montgomery County, Maryland, suggests that the direction in which choice points may exacerbate, rather than ameliorate, racial segregation. White families were most likely to request transfer into schools with low proportions of minorities (which also were those located in higher-income neighborhoods), and minority families were more likely to opt for schools in low-income neighborhoods (which also tended to be schools with higher proportions of minority students). Significantly, this racial pattern held even when other characteristics of the schools were taken into account. Evidence from parental surveys suggests that, lacking other sharply defined clues about which schools are likely to benefit their children most, both minority and nonminority parents fall back on other criteria, including convenience, informal word-of-mouth, and concerns about their child's social integration. These criteria, while not racially determined, are racially influenced. The Montgomery County, Maryland, experience suggests that unfettered choice has the potential to exacerbate racial separation, even in a relatively liberal and prosperous setting. Choice can be structured so that it promotes racial integration and socioeconomic equality, but doing so requires that public officials take strong stands, and often politically unpopular ones.

The Clinton Human Capital Agenda

Abstract: Throughout 1992 Bill Clinton campaigned on the position that the strength of our nation—our economy, our work force, our democracy, and our society—depends on the capacity of our people. “It’s time to put people first,” he wrote, “That is the core of our national economic strategy for A m e r i c a . ” His emphasis on human capital development, especially education and training, had been shaped by his experience as Governor of Arkansas, where he made education reform the centerpiece of his agenda. The emphasis was further honed during Governor Clinton’s stint as chair of the National Governor’s Association, during which he stood together with then President Bush in Charlottesville in 1989 and announced the bipartisan National Education Goals. Human capital development continued to be prominent on the agenda as President-elect Clinton put together his initial legislative plans and cabinet. His Education Transition Task Force prepared substantial new proposals for education reform and a school-to-work initiative, and for a reconceptualization of existing education programs. The appointment of Richard Riley, a former governor and a close ally of President Clinton in efforts to reform education in their respective states, as secretary of education underscored the new president’s intentions to make education a legislative priority. This article provides a brief overview of the Clinton administration’s human capital agenda, with a focus on elementary and secondary education, specifically the Goals 2000: Educate America Act and the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. It is a secret well kept from the public that both of these education acts, as well as five other major pieces of legislation that define the administration’s human capital agenda, were passed and signed into law by President Clinton by the end of the One hundred and third Congress. Our focus is on the substantive aspects of the agenda—we leave to another time a consideration of the politics of the passage of the acts and of speculations about future education politics now that the One hundred and fourth Congress is dominated by the Republican party.

A Disabling Vision: Rhetoric and Reality in Tomorrow's Schools of Education.

Abstract: In this article, I analyze both the rhetoric and the practical implications of the third report of the Holmes Group (1995b), which seeks to spell out a design for Tom row’s Schools of Education. As a result of this analysis, I find that the report is both contradictory and counterproductive. Its populist rhetoric presents an anti-intellectual vision of the education school that hopelessly muddles the composite message of the three Holmes reports and substantially undermines the credibility of the Holmes Group as a voice for educational reform. At the same time, this vision sets out an agenda for education schools that, if followed, would radically narrow their currently broad range of functions for American education, both instructionally and intellectually. The report would reduce instructional programs to the point that broadbased schools of education would effectively turn into schools of teacher education; and it would constrain the scope of intellectual activities to the point that academic research on education would devolve into industrial-style research and development, focusing on the production of educational technologies for schools.

Public Opinion and School Desegregation

Abstract: Media reports and social commentators often assume that whites, African Americans, and Latinos are now uniformly disenchanted with racial integration. Mean -while, recent Supreme Court rulings that allow for the termination of school desegregation plans may lead communities to consider entering a court battle to end such plans. It is therefore increasingly important that community leaders have the facts about what the public and parents and students affected by desegregation actually believe. Public opinion surveys reveal a reality of public opinion on desegregation far more nuanced and complicated and far more positive than media reports and common assumptions would have us believe.

What Price Inclusion

Abstract: In this article I first examine the nature of the case for regarding inclusion as a conversational and theoretical ideal. I argue that inclusion is best understood as a moral rather than an epistemological virtue. I then try to show that embracing inclusion as a conversational and theoretical ideal does not require either the rejection of the universal, or the rejection of scholarly standards.

Ruling Out Rules: The Evolution of Deregulation in State Education Policy.

Abstract: In the late 1980s and mid-1990s, states began working to decrease the level of regulation of public education. Operating under the assumption that greater school autonomy is an important spur to school improvement, policymakers tried a variety of approaches to regulatory flexibility. This article examines the evolution of deregulation from limited waiver programs to charter programs and new performance-based accountability systems that include broad-scale deregulation. Early deregulation programs were so limited in design that they had very modest results, but policymakers are finding expanded efforts very difficult to achieve. Many of the same political forces and habits of practice that limited early efforts continue to pose barriers to deregulation. Underlying the barriers is a historic, continuing uncertainty about the state role and about how states should relate to districts of varying types.

Teaching and Moral Perception.

Abstract: Moral perception, the capacity to comprehend the unique needs and aspirations of individual persons and the best possibilities of equally unique social contexts, is important to teachers who rely on sympathetic understanding to facilitate their classroom practice. Yet moral perception and teachers’ “intuitions” have been denigrated and ignored by educational theorists and researchers who emphasize rational judgment and rule-governed principles. In our article we develop the Aristotelian theory of practical reasoning and its defense of moral perception as logically necessary to any goo d moral practice. We bolster our defense by calling on the work of John Dewey. We explicate the neo-Aristotelian theory of practical teaching wisdom in terms of the assessments of one fourth grader, Tony Mitchell. We argue that assessing students without providing a role for moral perception is a tragic mistake.

Reflections on the Promise of Brown and Multicultural Education.

Abstract: This article examines the dual meaning of “promise”—hope and vow—in relation to Brown I and II. It then proceeds to discuss how these two conceptions of promise are carried out in a desegregated junior high school. The article concludes with a discussion of how multicultural education can help meet the dual expectations of Brown as promise/vow and promise/hope Desegregation is not and was never expected to be an easy task. Racial attitudes ingrained in our Nation's childhood and adolescence are not quickly thrown aside…. But just as the inconvenience of some cannot be allowed to stand in way of the rights of others, so public opposition, no matter how strident, cannot be permitted to divert this Court from enforcement of … constitutional principles. –Thurgood Marshall

Reflections on Goals 2000.

Abstract: When the legislative dust settles and future historians examine the Clinton administration, they will devote a major chapter to the GOALS 2000: Educate America Act, which was signed into law on March 31, 1994. GOALS 2000 takes the 1990 National Education Goals—agreed to by the nation’s governors, with the leadership of then Governor Clinton of Arkansas and former President George Bush, expands them, and makes them the law of the land. It encourages the development of voluntary, world-class academic and occupational standards and asks states and school districts to set challenging academic standards. It provides financial support for states and communities working to improve their schools and to help their students meet their own high standards. Finally GOALS 2000 offers states and school districts a revolutionary management lever: broad authority from the U.S. Department of Education to waive burdensome federal regulations. GOALS 2000 accomplishes all of this without imposing a single new mandate on states and localities. For the first time in the nation’s history, a statutory framework defines the federal role as one of support and facilitation to improve all schools for all children, while maintaining state and local control. Overwhelming bipartisan majorities in both the House of Representatives and Senate of the United States approved that framework. Most of the nation’s state leaders endorsed it. It was backed by an impressive coalition of groups representing American education, business, and families. And it was signed into law by the president of the United States of America. These are some of the reasons Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers, called GOALS 2000 “the most important education legislation we’ve ever had.” This is the story of GOALS 2000.

The False Premises and False Promises of the Movement to Privatize Public Education.

Abstract: The movement to provide parents with financial incentives to send their children to private schools will increase the racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic homogeneity of the nation's schools. The case for privatizing public education is based on several assumptions about the positive effects of reducing the costs of enrolling in private schools. Six of the most commonly cited of these assumptions are examined and found to be false.

The Unending Struggle for Equal Educational Opportunity.

Abstract: This article finds that Brown has not fulfilled its promise of securing equal educational opportunity for black children and that racial discrimination in the nation's public school systems is still the norm. In the great metropolitan areas of the country, demographic factors, segregated housing, neighborhood assignment policies, and school district configurations clustering poor and minority children in school districts separate from the largely white surrounding areas mean that a generation or more of blacks will be educated in racially isolated schools in many of the urban centers of the country. Thus our immediate concern must be to require those racially isolated schools to produce quality education for the black children who must attend them. Educators must take the lead in the fight to make Brown's promise a reality, evaluating and monitoring the educational offerings provided for minority children to determine their quality and sufficiency. Educators should define and conceptualize equal educational opportunity in terms of its educational methodology, form, and content.

Goals 2000: Framework for the New Educational Federalism.

Abstract: The passage of GOALS 2000 represents an important victory for the “cosmopolitan centralists” of educational policy who advocate a stronger role for the federal government in improving schools. This article explores the principle elements of GOALS 2000: the origins of the “New Federalism”, the education legislative record of the Clinton administration, and a discussion of what further efforts should be made if the needs of American children are to be met.

Revisiting the Supreme Court's Opinion in Brown v. Board of Education from a Multiculturalist Perspective.

Abstract: This article looks back at the Supreme Court's school desegregation opinions, including Brown v. Board of Education, from the perspective of a multiculturalist. A multiculturalist prefers an American society that has learned to appreciate and value the existence of multiple racial and ethnic cultures. A prerequisite to accomplishing this multicultural vision of a utopian American society is to bring diverse racial and ethnic students together in public schools. But for this appreciation to occur, more than the physical presence of a racially and ethnically diverse student body is required. Thus a multiculturalist also wants to foster meaningful cross-cultural understanding, though not necessarily cross-cultural agreement. The Supreme Court's opinionin Brown produced significant positive changes in American society. Nevertheless, with the beginning of the termination of over 500 school desegregation decrees, the United States has entered a post desegregation era. Racial and ethnic segregation in public schools is likely to increase. Thus the utopian vision of a multiculturalist is not where our society is currently headed. After reexamining the Supreme Court's school desegregation opinions, I conclude by stating the reason the multicultural vision is not the one our society is moving toward. This vision was simply not part of the vision of public schools articulated by the Supreme Court in the school desegregation cases. If local school systems decide to engage in further efforts to bring racially and ethnically diverse students together, it must not be on the ideological basis of the Supreme Court's school desegregation opinions. The very kind of thinking about the issues of cultural diversity that Brown I was based upon is the very kind of thinking that must be overcome in order for true multicultural education to occur.

Diversity and the New Immigrants.

Abstract: New immigrants in the United States are enlivening the schools at the same time as they are overwhelming them. The waves of immigration have led to an increasingly diverse school population and have created a new set of problems. Today, with children from such diverse backgrounds, schools are inadequately prepared to serve the needs of the students who are arriving in increasing numbers. The challenges associated with the new immigrants are numerous. Problems now exist that are related to desegregation, multicultural education, higher-quality education, and bilingual education. As the population of our schools becomes more and more diverse, the most appropriate ways to educate this fascinating heterogeneous population must be sought.

Culture and the Sciences of Pedagogy.

Abstract: Three points are made with regard to culture and the sciences of pedagogy. The first has to do with the changing knowledge base for pedagogy, which is likened to where medical education was about a century ago. The second point has to do with the domain of the pedagogical sciences, which should be the knowledge base for education. The third discusses the intersection between these pedagogical sciences and culture. I draw heavily on current interests in a sub-discipline some are calling cultural psychology. Basically it has to do with how the cultural contexts in which knowledge exists, and from which it is produced and interpreted, shape the knowledge itself, and its application.