Becoming Good American Schools The Struggle for Civic Virtue in Education Reform

by Oakes, Jeannie; Quartz, Karen Hunter; Ryan, Steve; Lipton, Martin

• ISBN13: 9780787962241
• ISBN10: 0787962244
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-04-04
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass

Summary

"A convincing portrait of teachers actively engaged in educational reform...offering a hopeful yet realistic vision of revitalized democracy inspired by a passion for the public good. This book is an eloquent defense of civic virtue."--Jonathan Kozol, author of Amazing Grace and Savage Inequalities "Rich, realistic, invigorating, and scary. Any middle school educator who has been part of an effort to reform the educational process will see himself or herself in this book--as the brave risk taker, the naive visionary, the frightened frontline trooper, and the touched individual who can make a difference."--Judy Cunningham, principal, South Lake Middle School, Irvine, California This book tells the stories of sixteen schools in California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Texas, and Vermont that sought to alter their structures and practices and become places fostering innovative ideas, caring people, principles of social justice, and democratic processes. Based on longitudinal, comparative case-study research, these accounts attest to the power of committing to public virtue and the struggle of educators to transform that commitment into changed school practice. The authors argue that better schools will come only when policy makers, educators, and citizens move beyond technical and bureaucratic reforms to engage in the same educative, socially just, caring, and participatory processes they want for schoolchildren. Those processes constitute betterment--both the means and the ends of school reform. Becoming Good American Schools is for administrators, policy makers, practitioners, and citizens who are prepared to blend inspiration and caution, idealism and skepticism in their own pursuit of good schools.

Author Biography

Jeannie Oakes is professor of education at the University of California, Los Angeles Karen Hunter Quartz is a research scientist at the Center for Research in Educational Equity, Assessment, and Teaching Excellence (CREATE) at the University of California, San Diego Steve Ryan is assistant professor of secondary education in the School of Education at the University of Louisville Martin Lipton is a research associate in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles

Table of Contents

Introduction	xi
Acknowledgments	xxix
The Authors	xxxi
Part One: Situating the Struggle
The Struggle to Become Good Schools	3	(21)
Cultural Contradictions	24	(41)
Part Two: Four Cultural Struggles
Becoming Educative	65	(39)
Becoming Socially Just	104	(44)
Becoming Caring	148	(37)
Becoming Participatory	185	(36)
Part Three: Becoming Better
Struggling to Scale Up	221	(42)
Struggling in the Reform Mill	263	(45)
A Passion for the Public Good	308	(19)
Appendix: Studying the Technical, Normative, and Political Dimensions of School Reform	327	(18)
Notes	345	(18)
Index	363