Becoming Good American Schools P: The Struggle for Civic Virtue in Education Reform - Softcover

Oakes, Jeannie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0787962244 ISBN 13: 9780787962241

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, 2002

Synopsis

Becoming Good American Schools 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. This work is useful for administrators, policy makers, and practitioners.

About this title

Review:

"...is a provocative and challenging analysis..." (Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk, Volume 7, #3)

Synopsis:

"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.

About this edition

• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0787962244
• ISBN 13: 9780787962241
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 424