Category: School Change and Education Reform

Community Organizing as an Education Reform Strategy Series

Summary: This powerful series was created by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform and the Nellie Mae Education Foundation.

"Community organizing for school reform offers an urgently needed alternative to traditional school reform - one that situates schooling issues within larger economic and social systems, directly attends to issues of power, and builds democratic capacity to sustain meaningful reform over the long term (Anyon 2005; Mediratta, Shah & McAlister 2009a; Oakes & Rogers 2006; Shirley 2009)."

Democracy at Risk: The Need for a New Federal Policy in Education

Summary: Report by the Forum for Education and Democracy that provides analysis and recommendations that call for a new federal role in education to provide every child with the skills needed to strengthen our democracy. Drafted by Linda Darling-Hammond and George Wood along with the Forum's conveners and staff, the report focuses on a new vision of learning, support for quality teaching, and the equalizing of resources.

Rated: (3/5), based on 2 reviews Posted in InformationResearchSchool Change and Education Reform

Getting Teacher Assessment Right: What Policymakers Can Learn From Research

Summary: "Given the experience to date with an overwhelming focus on student achievement scores as a basis for high-stakes decisions, policymakers would do well to pause and carefully examine the issues that make teacher assessment so complex before implementing an assessment plan. To facilitate such examination, this brief reviews credible research exploring: the feasibility of combining formative assessment (a basis for professional growth) and summative assessment (a basis for high-stakes decisions like dismissal); the various tools that might be used to gather evidence of teacher effectiveness; and the various stakeholders who might play a role in a teacher assessment system. It also offers a brief overview of successful exemplars."

National Center for Education Statistics

Summary: The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) (see Organizational Chart) is the primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education in the U.S. and other nations. NCES is located within the U.S. Department of Education and the Institute of Education Sciences.

National Urban Alliance

Summary: The NUA's mission is to substantiate an irrefutable belief in the capacity of all public school children to achieve the high intellectual performances demanded by our ever changing global community. Our focus is teacher and administrator quality through professional development which incorporates current research from cognitive neuroscience on learning, teaching, and leading. We partner with school districts to support the building of their capacity to advocate community-wide responsibility for realizing the learning potential of its children.

North Dakota Study Group

Summary: The North Dakota Study Group on Evaluation is a diverse network of progressive educators dedicated to advocacy for useful, fair, and democratic ways to document and assess children's learning and offering a criticism of educational reform and practice in the light of an enduring concern with democracy and the estate of childhood.

Rated: (5/5), based on 1 review Posted in InformationResearchSchool Change and Education ReformStudent Involvement and Youth VoicePolicy Papers

Organized Communities, Stronger Schools: Case Study Series

Summary: Since the emergence of education organizing for school reform in the early 1990s, organizers, researchers, and foundations have debated the impact of community organizing on educational outcomes. This study looks at organizing efforts by residents of seven urban communities across the country to improve their public schools. The researchers aimed to document community members' organizing campaigns and measure the impact on three critical indictors of education reform: district-level policy, school-level capacity, and student outcomes. Cities that were included in the study are: Austin, TX, Chicago, IL, Los Angeles, CA, Philadelphia, PA, Bronx, NY, Oakland, CA, & Miami, FL.

The Education City

Summary: Written by an expert change-agent with the Israeli Institute for Democratic Education, this paper describes the what, why, and how of building an education city, which is a city that aims to develop a society that recognizes and supports the equal rights of all its members for self actualization in their own community.

Trust in Schools: A Core Resource for School Reform

Summary: Important consequences play out in the day-to-day social exchanges within a school community. Recent research shows that social trust among teachers, parents, and school leaders improves much of the routine work of schools and is a key resource for reform. This article discusses social trust in schools, factors that help to shape it and what benefits it produces. A longitudinal study of 400 Chicago elementary schools shows the central role of relational trust in building effective education communities.

Using Participatory Action Research to Build Healthy Communities

Summary: This paper lays out the ideas of participatory action research and explains how it is useful for creating change in communities, including a focus on 2 specific communities.