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Title: It Takes a City: Getting Serious About Urban School Reform by Paul Thomas Hill, Christine Campbell, James Harvey, Paul Herdman, Janet Looney, Lawrence Pierce, Carol Reed, Abigail Winger ISBN: 0-8157-3639-8 Publisher: Brookings Institution Press Pub. Date: 01 March, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3 (1 review)
Rating: 3
Summary: Where's the Teacher?
Comment: It takes a ... what? It takes more than this book recognizes to improve education. The rhetoric here implies that the so-called "reform" movement is the way to cure school ills. To most teachers, however, this is simply another year's bureaucratic fad to morph educators into paper pushers. Although I found several insights here, and detailed information on six inner-city school districts, I was somewhat amazed by two important omissions: teachers and students. Teacher unions were trivialized by the suggestion that each little school decide, on their own, if they want to unionize.The writer recommends "hiring halls" for teachers, putting us on a level with farm workers and factory hands. This writing shows absolutely no understanding about why teachers need unions or how such organizations originated.
This writer clearly identifies a target audience -- mayors, civic leaders and school board members. By decision, it excludes teachers and students. It's sad to think -- and I've seen this happen -- that ivory tower bureaucrarts actually make decisions based on this type of dubious theory rather than getting down in the trenches with the reality of the classroom.
Content here is peppered with educratic jargon which twists other terminology into bastardized educational theories. School "incubators" make me think of premature babies."Real dollar budgets" make me wonder if bureaucrats are playing Monopoly with our taxes. "CEO Strong Schools strategy" pretends that a principal, who is middle management, is a CEO. Get real. The only CEO in the school district is the superintendent who is hired by an elected school board.
This book, to it's credit, recognizes the inability of reform to reform anything (last paragraph, page 84). Any good book offers new insights and "policy churn" gets my prize here. Teachers are jaded by bandwagon bureaucrats who recycle new versions of old ideas, one after another, never saying, "stop this" or "drop that."
Hillary Clinton quotes the African proverb, "It Takes a Village." This book spins the idea into, "a city." I'm waiting for the next trendy realization for someone to discover that, "It takes a teacher."
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Title: The Color of School Reform: Race, Politics, and the Challenge of Urban Education by Jeffrey R. Henig, Richard C. Hula, Marion Orr, Desiree S. Pedescleaux ISBN: 0691088977 Publisher: Princeton University Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 2001 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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Title: Building Civic Capacity : The Politics of Reforming Urban Schools (Studies in Government and Public Policy (Paper)) by Clarence N. Stone, Jeffrey R Henig, Bryan D Jones, Carol Pierannunzi ISBN: 0700611185 Publisher: University Press of Kansas Pub. Date: 01 July, 2001 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Safe Passage: Making It Through Adolescence in a Risky Society by Joy G. Dryfoos ISBN: 019513785X Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 2000 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Fixing Urban Schools by Paul T. Hill, Paul Thomas Hill, Mary Beth Celio ISBN: 0815736134 Publisher: Brookings Institution Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 1998 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Community Organizing for Urban School Reform by Dennis Shirley ISBN: 0292777191 Publisher: University of Texas Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 1997 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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