Product Description: ''Few social problems are of more pressing importance than the challenge of increasing access to higher education. Howard, Tunstall, and Flennaugh carefully outline those problems and give us our marching orders. Historical. Empirical...read more

Product Description: More than 60 years after the Brown v. Board of Education decision declared segregated schooling inherently unequal, this timely book sheds light on how and why U.S. schools are experiencing increasing segregation along racial, socioeconomic, and linguistic lines...read more

As schools grow more and more vulnerable to the whims of profiteers and, as a result, become less and less a sacred public space of learning and justice, the voices of everyday educators and students are increasingly marginalized. This is the tyranny of neoliberal school reform: silence the people who know education, the people committed to equity and justice, and elevate the voices and desires of the privileged few whose knowledge of education is peripheral and profit-driven. Talking Back and Moving Forward: An Education Revolution in Poetry and Prose is a collective response to this tyranny, a collecting rallying cry for reclaiming our schools. It is a chorus of voices from teachers, educators, and educational justice advocates who refuse to be silenced—who are standing up and responding to the imposition of damaging school reform initiatives. Unconfined by the conventions of the traditional scholarly voice, the contributors use poetry, memoir, short stories, and photography, choosing the expressions that most effectively capture their experiences and their demands for educational and social justice.

Product Description: Since the 1990s, there has been a resurgence of interest in single-sex education across the United States, and many public schools have created all-boys and all-girls classes for students in grades K through 12. The Separation Solution? provides an in-depth analysis of controversies sparked by recent efforts to separate boys and girls at school...read more

Though more students are entering college, many drop out, especially those who are low income and/or of color. To address this problem, educational stakeholders have focused on the concept of college readiness, or the preparation a student needs to succeed in college. However, what it means to be college ready and how to help more students become ready are questions without clear answers. By way of historical and contemporary analyses, this book uses California as a case study to demonstrate how the state has endeavored to make postsecondary opportunity accessible for all students. The contributors also explore the challenges that remain and address what states and schools can do to improve college readiness and completion."

A volume in Urban Education Studies Series Series Editors: Nicholas D. Hartlep, Illinois State University, Thandeka K. Chapman, University of California, San Diego and Kenneth Fasching-Varner, Louisiana State University A school is only as good as its principal. This quip forms the thesis of Better Principals as it provides a bird's eye view on the enactment of Haberman's eleven core functions of a star principal. Better Principals is imperative for two main reasons. First, the achievement gap between 20 million children in poverty and their mainstream counterparts is continuing to become even wider. Many students are constantly subjected to inequality of educational opportunity, which limits their future opportunities. Second, Haberman is one of the most prolific producers of administrators of the twentieth century (and into the twenty-first century). He reminds us that quality school systems, with quality leaders, benefit our society. Haberman explained that there is often selection blindness when it comes to identifying school leaders, and this deficiency has many negative consequences for education in general, and learners in particular. Haberman has generated theories, training programs and tools to engender substantive changes needed to produce better schools. Each chapter in this volume contains reflection questions for discussion to remind us all why selecting quality principals must be paramount when hiring school leaders. These illustrative book chapters emphasize the execution of Haberman's star principal ideology.

In Cracks in the Schoolyard, Conchas challenges deficit models of schooling and turns school failure on its head. Going beyond presenting critical case studies of social inequality and education, this book features achievement cases that depict Latinos as active actors―not hopeless victims― in the quest for social and economic mobility. Chapters examine the ways in which college students, high school youth, English language learners, immigrant Latino parents, queer homeless youth, the children of Mexican undocumented immigrants, and undocumented immigrant youth all work in local settings to improve their quality of life and advocate for their families and communities. Taken together, these counternarratives will help educators and policymakers fill the cracks in the schoolyard that often create disparity and failure for youth and young adults. This powerful book examines: The processes that operate within and outside of school to push students out and keep them from thriving academically and socially. The patterns that exist among individuals―students, teachers, parents, and other caring adults―to resist failure and construct for school success. The role of case study methods in illuminating power, inequality, and success in education.

Product Description: Schwarz, founder of the groundbreaking Citizen Schools program, shares his vision for reducing inequality by pairing successful adults with low-income students.  Parental wealth now predicts adult success more than at any point in the last hundred years...read more

Product Description: Joel Spring’s American Education introduces readers to the historical, political, social, and legal foundations of education and to the profession of teaching in the United States. In his signature straightforward and concise approach to describing complex issues, Spring illuminates events and topics and that are often overlooked or whitewashed, giving students the opportunity to engage in critical thinking about education...read more

Resegregation as Curriculum offers a compelling look at the formation and implementation of school resegregation as contemporary education policy, as well as its impact on the meaning of schooling for students subject to such policies. Working from a ten-year study of a school district undergoing a process of resegregation, Rosiek and Kinslow examine the ways this "new racial segregation" is rationalized and the psychological and sociological effects it has on the children of all races in that community. Drawing on critical race theory, agential realism, and contemporary pragmatist semiotics, the authors expose how these events functioned as a hidden curriculum that has profound repercussions on the students' identity formation, self-worth, conceptions of citizenship, and social hope. This important account of racial stratification of educational opportunity expands our understanding of the negative consequences of racial segregation in schools and serves as a critical resource for academics, educators, and experts who are concerned about the effects of resegregation nationwide.

Product Description: In its twenty-five years of existence, Teach For America (TFA) has transformed from an organization based on a perceived need to ameliorate a national teacher shortage to an organization that seeks to systematically replace traditional fully-certified teachers while simultaneously producing alumni who are interested in facilitating neoliberal education reform through elected political positions...read more

Product Description: Critical theory has much to teach us about higher education. By linking critical models, methods, and research tools with an advocacy-driven vision of the central challenges facing postsecondary researchers and staff, Critical Approaches to the Study of Higher Education makes a significant―and long overdue―contribution to the development of the field...read more

The phrase "teaching for social justice" is often used, but not always explained. What does it really mean to teach for social justice? What are the implications for anti-oppressive teaching across different areas of the curriculum? Drawing on his own experiences teaching diverse grades and subjects, Kevin Kumashiro examines various aspects of anti-oppressive teaching and learning in six different subject areas. Connecting practice to theory through new pedagogical elements, the revised edition of this bestselling text features: A new and timely preface that considers the possibilities of anti-oppressive teaching and teaching for social justice in the face of increasing pressure from both the Right and the Left to accept neoliberal school reform policies. End of chapter questions that enhance comprehension of arguments, help concretize abstract ideas into classroom practice, and encourage critique. A sampling of print and online resources that will inspire students to further their social justice education The new pedagogical components of the revised edition will offer K-12 teachers and teacher educators the tools they need to teach against their common sense assumptions and continue the evolution of social justice in education.

A public school principal’s account of the courageous leaders who have dismantled the tracking systems in their schools in order to desegregate classrooms  What would happen if a school eliminated the “tracks” that rank students based on their perceived intellectual abilities? Would low-achieving students fall behind and become frustrated? Would their higher-achieving peers suffer from a “watered-down” curriculum? Or is tracking itself the problem? A growing body of research shows that tracking doesn’t increase learning for the minority and low-income students who are overrepresented in low-track classrooms. This de facto segregation has led many civil rights advocates to argue that tracking is turning back the clock on equal education.   As a principal at a New York high school, Carol Corbett Burris believed that the curriculum for the best students was the best curriculum for all. She helped lead a bold plan to eliminate tracking from her school, and the results couldn’t have been further from the doom-and-gloom scenarios of tracking proponents. Instead, there was a dramatic improvement in the achievement of all students, across racial and socioeconomic divisions, and a near elimination of the achievement gap. Today, due to those efforts, International Baccalaureate English is the twelfth-grade curriculum for South Side students, and all students take the same challenging courses, together, to prepare them for college.   In On the Same Track, Burris draws on her own experience, on the experiences of other schools, and on the latest research to make an impassioned case for detracking. Not only does the practice of tracking fail to benefit lower-tracked students, as Burris shows, but it also results in the resegregation of classrooms. Furthermore, she argues that many of today’s popular reforms emanate from the same “sort and select” mentality that reinforces social stratification based on race and class.   On the Same Track is a rousing, controversial, and yet optimistic account of how we need to change our assumptions and policies if we are to live up to the promise of democratic public education. Only by holding all students to the same high standards can we ensure that all have the same opportunity to live up to their full potential.

Product Description: Still Failing: The Continuing Paradox of School Desegregation is a significantly updated and revised version of Caldas and Bankston’s previous book Forced to Fail: The Paradox of School Desegregation. The book includes an analysis of the most significant Supreme Court cases that have been decided in the ten years since the first edition of the book appeared...read more