Becoming Good American Schools: The Struggle for Civic Virtue in Education Reform (The Jossey-Bass education series) - Hardcover

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

9780787940232: Becoming Good American Schools: The Struggle for Civic Virtue in Education Reform (The Jossey-Bass education series)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0787940232 ISBN 13: 9780787940232

Publisher: Jossey Bass, 1999

"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.

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Review:

"Character does matter, and the authors make a compelling case that it is too important to personal happiness and the health of society to leave to chance. Anyone serious about adding a character development component to their curriculum would benefit from reading this book." — The Orff Echo

"Becoming Good American Schools presents an impassioned argument for respecting individual school communities.... This book inspires those of us who care about the survival of public education as a major democratic institution." --Educational Leadership "One of the important things that this book does is acknowledge and illustrate, with case histories and concrete examples, how difficult humane and progressive change is in the schools.... This book is healing and encouraging, worth reading to hear voices that inform the standards and structural debates about education with a deep sense of humanity." --Rethinking Schools, An Urban Educational Journal "There is rich detail on every page of this book--detail from an extraordinary amount of research--and the account the authors weave from it is terrifically engaging. It's the story of middle schools struggling to transform themselves, and the story, like the conceptual frame of the book, is instructive, just, caring, and invites our intellectual and moral participation." --Mike Rose, author of Lives on the Boundary: The Struggles and Achievements of America's Underprepared and Possible Lives: The Promise of Public Education in America "The authors paint a convincing portrait of teachers actively engaged in educational reform that honors and renews the great tradition of the common school--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. It is useful, vigorous, and persuasive." --Jonathan Kozol, author of Amazing Grace and Savage Inequalities "With measured passion and lively detail, the authors have described the real crisis facing our schools and some very hopeful and helpful ways we might respond to it. This book is built around years of research, school experience, and the tangible, living stories of many ordinary and extraordinary people's efforts to grapple with school change. For all of us whose vision of school reform is rooted in a concern for the nation as a whole, this is immediate and must reading. It was just what I needed as I launched my own middle school work." --Deborah Meier, principal of Mission Hill School in Boston, and founder and former principal of the Central Park East Schools in New York "Becoming Good American Schools is 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 "Character does matter, and the authors make a compelling case that it is too important to personal happiness and the health of society to leave to chance. Anyone serious about adding a character development component to their curriculum would benefit from reading this book." --The Orff Echo

From the Back Cover:

This book brings to life an ambitious American education reform agenda: transforming schools into places that foster meaningful engagement with ideas, caring people, principles of social justice, and democratic processes. It draws on longitudinal, comparative case-study research to tell the stories of sixteen schools in California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Texas, and Vermont that sought to alter their deep structures and daily practices. Their stories illuminate contradictions deeply rooted in American culture--incongruities that not only threatened their efforts, but also revealed the limits of technical and rational approaches to school reform.

The accounts in this book 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.

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