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A much-needed examination of the impact on teachers and parents of the effort to improve our schools through restructuring, this book looks at professionalization and parent empowerment programs from the ground level rather than from the large-scale policy level. The editor, active in both policy setting and monitoring implementation, approaches the subject with an overarching view that weaves together a set of diverse case studies that examine some of the most notable efforts in this area of school reform.
The first section demonstrates the tremendous difficulties involved in attempting to reshape the culture of public school teaching, noting both institutional resistance to change and the personal resistance of the professionals who are, in theory, being empowered through this approach. The second section details the problems of launching parent empowerment opportunities, in a large urban setting, and a contrasting case examines the choice of enrollment option. Here, too, these studies examine the effectiveness of these programs. The conclusion reflects on the opportunities such innovations provide for researchers and assesses the importance of such research in shaping the innovations themselves through evaluations while they are in process.
List of contents
Introduction: Examining School Restructuring Efforts by G. Alfred Hess, Jr.
Empowering TeachersWork That Is Real: Why Teachers Should Be Empowered by William Ayers
Rural Science and Mathematics Education: Empowerment Through Self-Reflection and Expanding Curricular Alternatives by Mary Jo McGee Brown
The Dangers of Assuming a Consensus for Change: Some Examples from the Coalition of Essential Schools by Donna E. Muncey and Patrick J. McQuillan
Empowerment of Teachers in Dade County's School-Based Management Pilot by Marjorie K. Hanson, Don R. Morris, and Robert A. Collins
Conflict in Restructuring the Principal-Teacher Relationship in Memphis by Carol Plata Etheridge and Thomas W. Collins
Rural Responses to Kentucky's Education Reform Act by Pamelia Coe and Patricia J. Kannapel
Empowering ParentsThe Case for Parent and Community Involvement by Donald R. Moore
Who's Making What Decisions: Monitoring Authority Shifts in Chicago School Reform by G. Alfred Hess, Jr. and John Q. Easton
School Reform in East Harlem: Alternative Schools vs. "Schools of Choice" by Diane Harrington and Peter W. Cookson, Jr.
Anthropological PerspectivesThe Role of Anthropologists in Restructuring Schools by Thomas G. Carroll
Critical Friends in the Frey: An Experiment in Applying Critical Ethnography to School Restructuring by John M. Watkins
Through the Eyes of Anthropologists by G. Alfred Hess, Jr.
Bibliography
Index
About the author
G. ALFRED HESS, JR. is Executive Director of the Chicago Panel on Public School Policy and Finance. One of the principal activists of the school reform effort in Chicago, his organization sponsored one of the three major pieces of legislation that constituted the Chicago School Reform Act and is also the primary independent monitor of the implementation of this act. He is the author of Restructuring Schools: Chicago Style and numerous articles.
