From the Campus: Perspectives on the School Reform Movement

(Hardback)

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This book assembles prominent school-of-education faculty researchers to provide perspectives on the school reform or excellence movement. The contributors represent a wide variety of disciplines including comparative and international education, history, sociology, political science, curriculum theory, testing and evaluation, school administration and special education. They confront the most controversial issues in education of our time; equity and excellence, at-risk children, the education of language-minority students, the governance of education, parental choice, and the importance of home, family and of elementary and pre-school education. This book broadens the scope of the debate over school reform to include concerns that the current enthusiasm for excellence will erode earlier gains for equality, and that the reform movement is not paying enough attention to at-risk and disadvantaged children. The contributors examine the need for radical restructuring of schools in order to combine excellence with equality.

Reviews

This incisive volume speaks to the compelling need for faculty in teacher education to respond critically and constructively to clarion calls for drastice overhaul in American education. Cohen and Solmon compile an enviable collection of a dozen essays by their colleagues in the Graduate School of Education at UCLA. Enlisting multiple perspectives from educational research and practice, they treat such diverse topics as testing (James E. Bruno); special education (Frank M. Hewett and Virginia de R. Wagner); vocational education (Harry F. Silberman and John E. Coulson); comparative education (Val D. Rust); organizational reform (Richard C. Williams; structural change (Burton R. Clark); communal ethos and privatization (Donald A. Erickson); language arts and literacy (Concepcion M. Valdez and Barbara hecht); and historical (Cohen), political (James S. Catterall and Harry Handler), and neo-humanistic (Carl Weinberg) dimensions. Refreshingly, the book is intended for the general public as well as for policymakers, school personnel, and educational theorists. It provides a rare scholarly account of the potential contributions of educational research in popular debates on school reform. All levels. * Choice *
Numerous UCLA education faculty and researchers contribute their views on the direction of the school reform movement to promote academic excellence. Issues raised include concerns that the movement is not adequately addressing at-risk and disadvantaged students; administrative methods; parental choice; and the value of early schooling. * UCLA Magazine *

Author Bio

Sol Cohen is a noted historian and professor in the UCLA Graduate School of Education. He is the editor of the five-volume Education in the United States: A Documentary History. He has served as president of the American History of Education Society and vice-president of the History and Historiography of Education division of the American Educational Research Association. Lewis C. Solmon is dean of the UCLA Graduate School of Education. His central interests are in the economics of education, and his research includes studies on the costs and benefits of higher education, educational implications of the changing labor market, manpower forecasting in the PhD labor market, foreign students, merit pay, and educational equity, issues.