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Countless sociological studies and official reports have described the dreadful condition of the nation's ghetto schools in abstract terms, but the general public has no concrete idea of what goes on inside them. Jonathan Kozol recounts his experience as a teacher in the Roxbury section of Boston.

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For two years, beginning in 1988, Jonathan Kozol visited schools in neighborhoods across the country, from Illinois to Washington D.C., and from New York to San Antonio. He spoke with teachers, principals, superintendents, and, most important, children. What he found was devastating. Not only were schools for rich and poor blatantly unequal, the gulf between the two extremes was widening—and it has widened since.  The urban schools he visited were overcrowded and understaffed, and lacked the basic elements of learning—including books and, all too often, classrooms for the students. 

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Since the early 1980s, when the federal courts began dismantling the landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, segregation of black children has reverted to its highest level since 1968. In many inner-city schools, a stick-and-carrot method of behavioral control traditionally used in prisons is now used with students. Meanwhile, as high-stakes testing takes on pathological and punitive dimensions, liberal education has been increasingly replaced by culturally barren and robotic methods of instruction that would be rejected out of hand by schools that serve the mainstream of society. Filled with the passionate voices of children, principals, and teachers, and some of the most revered leaders in the black community, The Shame of the Nation pays tribute to those undefeated educators who persist against the odds, but directly challenges the chilling practices now being forced upon our urban systems. 

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Urban education and its contexts have changed in powerful ways. Old paradigms are being eclipsed by global forces of privatization and markets and new articulations of race, class, and urban space. These factors and more set the stage for Pauline Lipman's insightful analysis of the relationship between education policy and the neoliberal economic, political, and ideological processes that are reshaping cities in the United States and around the globe. Using Chicago as a case study of the interconnectedness of neoliberal urban policies on housing, economic development, race, and education, Lipman explores larger implications for equity, justice, and "the right to the city". She draws on scholarship in critical geography, urban sociology and anthropology, education policy, and critical analyses of race.

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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.

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Most Americans believe that local school districts are the only means by which citizens may exercise control over public education. Kathryn McDermott argues to the contrary that existing local institutions are no longer sufficient for achieving either equity or democratic governance. Not only is local control inequitable, it also fails to live up to its reputation for guaranteeing public participation and citizen influence. Drawing upon democratic theory and the results of field research in New Haven, Connecticut, and three suburbs, McDermott contends that our educational system can be made more democratic by centralizing control over funding while decentralizing most authority over schools to the level of schools themselves while enacting public school choice controlled for racial balance.

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This text is a provocative investigation of the political, social, and economic factors underlying classroom practices, offering a unique introduction to the contemporary field of critical pedagogy. Life in Schools features excerpts from the author's best-selling work, Cries from the Corridor: The New Suburban Ghetto. The text provokes analytic discussion of social problems and a theoretical framework for formulating potential solutions (Parts III & IV). It also includes a new discussion of race and class, a chapter on the social construction of whiteness, and a new chapter that challenges current domestic and foreign policies of the current White House administration (including the No Child Left Behind Act) and their impact upon American public schooling.

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Because the organization of the classroom and the school provide the framework for teaching and learning, this important volume reviews research that focuses on specific issues including: achievement effects of alternative school and classroom organizational practices, ability grouping, departmentalization, special and remedial programs, evaluation processes, and class size. The studies utilize realistic evaluations rather than laboratory or experimental data, and do not prescribe particular practices.

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At a time when popular solutions to the educational plight of poor children of color are imposed from the outside-national standards, high-stakes tests, charismatic individual saviors-the acclaimed Algebra Project and its founder, Robert Moses, offer a vision of school reform based in the power of communities. Begun in 1982, the Algebra Project is transforming math education in twenty-five cities. Founded on the belief that math-science literacy is a prerequisite for full citizenship in society, the Project works with entire communities-parents, teachers, and especially students-to create a culture of literacy around algebra, a crucial stepping-stone to college math and opportunity.Radical Equations provides a model for anyone looking for a community-based solution to the problems of our disadvantaged schools.

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How can schools prepare students for real life? What should students learn in high school that is rarely addressed today? Critical Lessons recommends sharing highly controversial issues with high school students, including "hot" questions on war, gender, advertising, and religion.

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Acclaimed as the "best overview in the field" by the Teaching Philosophy and predicted to "become the standard textbook in philosophy of education" by Educational Theory, this now-classic text includes an entirely new chapter on problems of school reform, examining issues of equality, accountability, standards, and testing.

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Selected by the American School Board Journal a "Must Read" book when it was first published and named one of 60 "Books of the Century" by the University of South Carolina Museum of Education for its influence on American education, this provocative, carefully documented work shows how taking—"reflects the class and racial inequalities of American society and helps I perpetuate them. For his new edition, Jennies Oaks has added a new Pre force and two new chapters in which she discusses the "tracking wars" of the last twenty years.wars in which Keeping hand has played a central role.

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Postman suggests that the current crisis in our educational system derives from its failure to supply students with a translucent, unifying "narrative" like those that inspired earlier generations. Instead, today's schools promote the false "gods" of economic utility, consumerism, or ethnic separatism and resentment. What alternative strategies can we use to instill our children with a sense of global citizenship, healthy intellectual skepticism, respect of America's traditions, and appreciation of its diversity? In answering this question, The End of Education restores meaning and common sense to the arena in which they are most urgently needed."Informal and clear...Postman's ideas about education are appealingly fresh."—New York Times Book Review

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A no-holds-barred assault on outdated teaching methods--with dramatic and practical proposals on how education can be made relevant to today's world.

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A passionate plea to preserve and renew public education, The Death and Life of the Great American School System is a radical change of heart from one of America’s best-known education experts. Diane Ravitch—former assistant secretary of education and a leader in the drive to create a national curriculum—examines her career in education reform and repudiates positions that she once staunchly advocated. Drawing on over forty years of research and experience, Ravitch critiques today’s most popular ideas for restructuring schools, including privatization, standardized testing, punitive accountability, and the feckless multiplication of charter schools. She shows conclusively why the business model is not an appropriate way to improve schools. The Death and Life of the Great American School System is more than just an analysis of the state of play of the American education system. It is a must-read for any stakeholder in the future of American schooling.

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Remedial, illiterate, intellectually deficient—these are the stigmas that define the educational underclass to which Mike Rose once belonged. Here, he tells of his personal journey from a Los Angeles ghetto to a major research university, bringing a vital challenge to those who must shape America's educational agenda.

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This practical handbook will introduce readers to social justice education, providing tools for developing ''critical social justice literacy'' and for taking action towards a more just society. Accessible to students from high school through graduate school, this book offers a collection of detailed and engaging explanations of key concepts in social justice education, including critical thinking, socialization, group identity, prejudice, discrimination, oppression, power, privilege, and White supremacy. Based on extensive experience in a range of settings in the United States and Canada, the authors address the most common stumbling blocks to understanding social justice. They provide recognizable examples, scenarios, and vignettes illustrating these concepts. 

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By rediscovering the radical educational movements in the US, this text paves the way to re-conceiving the possibilities of reforming schools and society. It adds to the debate about the need for change amidst the current crisis of confidence in the education of children.

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Can America’s faith in public education be restored? As they analyze the ways in which public school leaders successfully formed and transformed American education, historian Tyack and political scientist Hansot conclude that the main challenge facing today’s leaders is to create a new community of commitment to public education as a common good.

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The American republic will survive only if its citizens are educated—this was an article of faith of its founders. But seeking common civic ground in public schools has never been easy in a society where schoolchildren followed different religions, adhered to different cultural traditions, spoke many languages, and were identified as members of different "races."In this wise and enlightening book, filled with vivid characters and memorable incidents that make history but don't always make history books, David Tyack describes how each American generation grappled with the knotty task of creating political unity and social diversity.Seeking Common Ground illuminates puzzles about democracy in education and chronic conflicts that continue to make news. Americans mistrusted government, yet they entrusted the civic education of their children to public schools. American history textbooks were notoriously dull, but they were also highly controversial.

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Hailed by the New Society as the "best book on male working class youth," this classic work, first published in 1977, has been translated into several foreign languages and remains the authority in ethnographical studies.