Small schools reform is often accompanied by familiar buzzwords that can
mean different things to different people (sometimes called "stakeholders").
Here's a short guide for wary beginners:
 |
|
|
| Small Schools |
| Teacher-led, student-centered, community-
connected school communities
shaped by concerns for democracy, social
justice, and racial equality. |
or
|
Isolated subdivisions of a bureaucratically
run system that erode the common
ground on which a democratic system of
public education depends. |
|
| Choice |
| Providing diverse, high-quality school
options to all children while promoting
equity, democracy, and the common
public interest. |
or
|
Introducing market practices that
privatize public institutions and
reproduce inequality in the name of
reform. |
|
| Empowerment |
| Organizing efforts that make the exercise
of power in schools transparent and shift
it from above to below. |
or
|
A conditional invitation extended by
those in control to participate in "reform
projects on their terms. |
|
| Community Involvement |
| A commitment to power sharing and
partnership in all aspects of school life
and challenging dialogue among varied
groups. |
or
|
Obligatory and passive community
presence at regularly scheduled official
events, often in exchange for
refreshments. |
| |
| Professional Development |
| Thoughtful school-based activity that
encourages collaborative practices and
shared experience inside schools and
classrooms. |
or
|
Externally designed, consultant-driven
intervention that imposes pre-packaged
agendas on school communities. |
|
| Autonomy |
| School-based decisionmaking about issues
of teaching and learning, staffing and
resource priorities, and accountability and
assessment practices. |
or
|
The freedom to decide what to cut out of
an inadequate budget. |
|
| Standards |
| Meaningful objectives, developed and
shared by a school community with the
aim of ensuring that all students are
educated well toward graduation and
higher education. |
or
|
A testing regime in which increased
dropout rates and distorted teaching
practices are the collateral damage. |
|
| Data-Driven Reform |
| The use of relevant research by school
communities to make informed, collaborative
decisions about school change. |
or
|
The selective use of data by
administrators to justify policy decisions
they would have made anyway. |
|
| Neighborhood Schools/Community Control |
| A commitment to allow poor and
working-class communities, particularly
communities of color and rural
communities, help design and shape the
nature of their children's education. |
or
|
A chance for whites/elites to reclaim
buildings in their neighborhood now
"occupied by "other people's children.
A handy term to make racial segregation
sound benign. |
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