Death and Life of the Great American School SystemHow Testing and Choice Are Undermining Educationby Diane RavitchA passionate plea to preserve and renew public education, The Death and Life of the Great American School System is a radical change of heart from one of America’s best-known education experts. Diane Ravitch—former assistant secretary of education and a leader in the drive to create a national curriculum—examines her career in education reform and repudiates positions that she once staunchly advocated. Drawing on over forty years of research and experience, Ravitch critiques today’s most popular ideas for restructuring schools, including privatization, standardized testing, punitive accountability, and the feckless multiplication of charter schools. She shows conclusively why the business model is not an appropriate way to improve schools. Using examples from major cities like New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Denver, and San Diego, Ravitch makes the case that public education today is in peril.Ravitch includes clear prescriptions for improving America’s schools: leave decisions about schools to educators, not politicians or businessmen devise a truly national curriculum that sets out what children in every grade should be learning expect charter schools to educate the kids who need help the most, not to compete with public schools pay teachers a fair wage for their work, not “merit pay” based on deeply flawed and unreliable test scores encourage family involvement in education from an early ageThe Death and Life of the Great American School System is more than just an analysis of the state of play of the American education system. It is a must-read for any stakeholder in the future of American schooling.FonteUm livro que não pode deixar de ser lido, analisado e discutido.
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Heterodoxias
http://terrear.blogspot.com/2010/12/heterodoxias.html
- Tags:
- exames
- liberdade de escolha
December 8 2010, 4:55pm | Comments »
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João Marques passando os olhos por... terrear.blogspot.com
Escolha da escola - outros olhares
http://terrear.blogspot.com/2010/11/escolha-da-escola-outros-olhares.html
Este livro, da autoria de Clive Belfield e Henry Levin do Teachers College da Universidade de Columbia, descreve e analisa reformas privatizadoras que tiveram lugar essencialmente, mas não exclusivamente, nos países industrializados ocidentais e latino-americanos. Entre outros, os autores analisam os programas de cheques-ensino , a introdução da livre escolha da escola no sistema público, a desregulação e gestão privada de escolas financiadas com dinheiros públicos – como as charter schools -, o financiamento público de educação privada, etc. Os autores discutem o impacto destas reformas segundo vários critérios: liberdade de escolha, eficiência, equidade e coesão social, derivando daí ensinamentos para os decisores educativos. Ao mesmo tempo tentam não generalizar em demasia e defendem, de forma convincente, que tudo depende do contexto nacional e da forma como a reforma é planeada e implementada. Alguns sistemas de cheque-ensino que têm como alvo grupos mais desfavorecidos acabam por se tornar mais justos que os sistemas públicos tradicionais, socialmente segregados. Quando se delineia uma reforma, os planificadores têm de definir com clareza os seus objectivos e ter em conta a sua concepção global e especificidades.Novas lentes para ler a realidade.
November 23 2010, 1:41pm | Comments »
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Charter Schools: Ainda muitas questões por responder
http://terrear.blogspot.com/2010/11/charter-schools-ainda-muitas-questoes.html
In this article, we review the empirical evidence on the impact of education vouchers on student achievement, and briefly discuss the evidence from other forms of school choice. The best research to date finds relatively small achievement gains for students offered education vouchers,most of which are not statistically different from zero. Further, what little evidence exists regarding the potential for public schools to respond to increased competitive pressure generated by vouchers suggests that one should remain wary that large improvements would result from a more comprehensive voucher system. The evidence from other forms of school choice is also consistent with this conclusion. Many questions remain unanswered, however, including whether vouchers have longer-run impacts on outcomes such as graduation rates, college enrollment, or even future wages, and whether vouchers might nevertheless provide a costneutral alternative to our current system of public education provision at the elementary and secondary school level.Fonte
November 21 2010, 10:14am | Comments »
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Instructional Conditions in Charter Schools and Students’ Mathematics Achievement Gains
http://terrear.blogspot.com/2010/11/instructional-conditions-in-charter.html
Because charter school research on student achievement is mixed, many researchers and policymakers advocate looking inside the black box of schools to better understand the conditions under which schools of choice may be effective. We begin to address this issue with data from charter and a comparison group of traditional public schools; we also conduct propensity score matching at the student level to further understand achievement gains. In our analyses of these data, we find no charter school effects on students’ achievement gains. Instructional conditions, such as teachers’ focus on academic achievement, are related to mathematics gains. However, we find that our innovation measure is negatively associated with gains (controlling for other conditions) suggesting that innovation for innovation’s sake should not be the sole focus of schools, whether charter or not.Fonte
November 21 2010, 10:09am | Comments »
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Charter Schools: Hope or Hype
http://terrear.blogspot.com/2010/11/charter-schools-hope-or-hype.html
O Final do 1º capítulo, de um livro com um título estimulante:Finally, we conclude with an attempt to pull together the disparate empiricalfindings of the earlier chapters and view them through the lens of our organizingframework. We return to our central question: are charter schools, on the whole, abeneficial policy reform, or are the hope and the hype unjustified by the facts?
November 21 2010, 9:41am | Comments »
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Escolha de escola, igualdade de oportunidades e estratificação social
http://terrear.blogspot.com/2010/11/escolha-de-escola-igualdade-de.html
Fátima AlvesDoutora em Educação pela Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) e professora do Departamento de Educação da PUC-RioNa perspectiva da estratificação, as escolhas familiares por estabelecimentos escolares podem ser consideradas ações voltadas à superação ou moderação da estratificação educacional. O estudo explora a ideia de que a estrutura de oportunidades para as famílias de classes populares está relacionada com determinadas estratégias de escolhas do estabelecimento escolar. Este é o caso, por exemplo, das escolas municipais localizadas a uma "melhor" distância da casa do aluno. Os resultados apresentados indicam que estas ações possuem efeitos sobre a aprendizagem dos alunos em comparação aos alunos cujas famílias fazem escolhas "mais tradicionais", de matricularem seus filhos em escolas próximas de casa.No entanto, não posso deixar de mencionar que essas ações diferenciadas das famílias podem, também, agravar o problema da estratificação para quem não faz esse tipo de escolha, já que as escolas de seus filhos perdem os alunos cujas famílias fazem determinadas escolhas em busca da qualidade, diminuindo a "positividade" do efeito de pares. Além disto, apesar de a estrutura do sistema educacional oferecer oportunidades para famílias de classes populares que buscam um diferencial de qualidade, alguns fatores irão limitar a realização de determinadas escolhas. Por exemplo, a opção por educação diferenciada no âmbito de escolas privadas possui diversas limitações: mesmo as mensalidades mais baratas constituem-se em obstáculo intransponível para famílias mais pobres, e mesmo a bolsa integral só pode ser usufruída por crianças de famílias que têm condições de fazer investimentos monetários e de lidar com os desafios culturais associados a este tipo de escolha de estabelecimento escolar.A despeito da importância que este estudo concede às mencionadas estratégias de mobilização familiar para o acesso dos filhos às escolas com diferencial de qualidade, não assumo, a priori, que elas conduzam automaticamente as crianças ao sucesso escolar, pois estudos recentes indicam diversos mecanismos que engendram desigualdades educacionais. Dentre os resultados encontrados destacam-se: a) mais variabilidade de desempenho escolar entre turmas de uma mesma escola do que entre escolas públicas (Machado Soares, 2005), indicando processo de estratificação dentro dos estabelecimentos escolares; b) indicação de que a seleção e a abordagem de conteúdos matemáticos são fortemente condicionadas por características do perfil socioeconômico médio dos estudantes das escolas e das turmas (Ortigão, 2005); e c) desenvolvimento de estratégias de fechamento (closure strategy) por parte das famílias de classe média como, por exemplo, pressionar as escolas para alocarem os alunos em turmas por nível de habilidade, por receio de que a presença de crianças de classes populares diminua o grau de exigência dos professores e, consequentemente, a qualidade do ensino (van Zanten, 2003).Os resultados apontados também contribuem para a reflexão sobre o significado do debate da existência de possibilidade de escolha de escola no setor público, particularmente intenso em alguns países. A visão prevalente entre a maior parte dos estudiosos do assunto é de que a existência de escolas públicas diferenciadas e o movimento de school choice têm como principal consequência o aumento da estratificação social e o recrudescimento de desigualdades (Adcock e Phillips, 2000; Lee, 1993). Por outro lado, tem ficado cada vez mais claro que argumentos em favor da escolha de escolas não têm origem exclusiva em setores privatistas, e, ao longo da última década, alguns pesquisadores têm produzido evidências de que a escolha escolar pode ter efeitos sobre a diminuição da segregação racial e sobre o aumento da equidade (Gamoran, 1996; Smrekar e Goldring, 1999). Sem dúvida, este é um tema polêmico, com repercussões em termos de política educacional; no entanto, no Brasil, temos poucos estudos enfocando esta temática.Texto integral
November 20 2010, 11:37am | Comments »
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João Marques passando os olhos por... terrear.blogspot.com
Informação e Escolha de Escola
http://terrear.blogspot.com/2010/11/informacao-e-escolha-de-escola.html
In England, so-called ‘league tables’ based upon examination results and test scores are published annually, ostensibly to inform parental choice of secondary schools. A crucial limitation of these tables is that the most recent published information is based on the current performance of a cohort of pupils who entered secondary schools several years earlier, whereas for choosing a school it is the future performance of the current cohort that is of interest. We show that there is substantial uncertainty in predicting such future performance and that incorporating this uncertainty leads to a situation where only a handful of schools’ future performances can be separated from both the overall mean and from one another with an acceptable degree of precision. This suggests that school league tables, including value-added ones, have very little to offer as guides to school choice.Keywords: Examination results, Institutional comparisons, League tables, Multilevel modelling,Performance indicators, Ranking, School choice, School effectiveness, Value-addedTexto integral
November 20 2010, 11:25am | Comments »
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What Parents Want
http://terrear.blogspot.com/2010/11/what-parents-want.html
Parental demand for academic performance is a key element in the view that strengthening school choice will drive up school performance. In this paper we analyse what parents look for in choosing schools. We assemble a unique dataset combining survey information on parents’ choices plus a rich set of socio-economic characteristics; administrative data on school characteristics, admissions criteria and allocation rules; and spatial data attached to a pupil census to define the de facto set of schools available to each family in the survey. To achieve identification, we focus on cities where the school place allocation system is truth-revealing (“equal preferences”). We take great care in trying to capture the set of schools that each family could realistically choose from. We also look at a large subset of parents who continued living in the same house as before the child was born, to avoid endogenous house/school moves. We then model the choices made in terms of the characteristics of schools and families and the distances involved. School characteristics include measures of academic performance, school socio-economic and ethnic composition, and its faith school status. Initial results showed strong differences in the set of choices available to parents in different socio-economic positions. Our central analysis uses multinomial logistic regression to show that families do indeed value academic performance in schools. They also value school composition – preferring schools with low fractions of children from poor families. We compute trade-offs between these characteristics as well as between these and distance travelled. We are able to compare these trade-offs for different families. Our results suggest that preferences do not vary greatly between different socio-economic groups once constraints are fully accounted for.Keywords: school preferences, school choice, parental choiceTexto integral
- Tags:
- liberdade de escolha
November 20 2010, 11:16am | Comments »
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João Marques passando os olhos por... terrear.blogspot.com
The impact of school choice and public policy on segregation: Evidence from Chile
http://terrear.blogspot.com/2010/11/impact-of-school-choice-and-public.html
School choice advocates argue that the introduction of vouchers can make improved educationalopportunity available to the most disadvantaged children. Critics contend that vouchers increase the risk of exacerbating inequities based on race and socioeconomic status. They are worried about whether disadvantaged parents have enough information to make good choices and whether parental preferences will lead families to select schools based on the race or class composition of their student bodies and not on their academic quality. Critics also fear that in order to remain competitive and save costs, private schools will have incentives to skim off the highest performing students who are usually least demanding in terms of resources. Most evidence in Chile confirms skeptics’ concerns. Researchers have found that Chile’s unrestricted flat per-pupil voucher program has lead to increased stratification across public and private schools. What has been overlooked, however, is segregation between schools within a sector and variation within private voucher forprofit and non-profit (religious and secular) school sectors. Using a highly detailed dataset, I examine public and private school segregation. I find that public schools are more likely to serve disadvantaged – low-income and indigenous – students than private voucher schools. I also find that the typical public school is more internally diverse with regard to ethnicity and socioeconomic status than the typical private voucher school. While differential behavior is also found across private school ownership types, the differences do not always comport with theory. The data suggest that school tuition is much more important than other factors in explaining segregation patterns between and within school sectors. I also find that policies that provide incentives for schools to enroll disadvantaged students can help to mitigate the stratifying effects of educational vouchers.Texto Integral
November 20 2010, 11:10am | Comments »
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João Marques passando os olhos por... terrear.blogspot.com
Escolha da Escola e Segregação
http://terrear.blogspot.com/2010/11/escolha-da-escola-e-segregacao.html
The economic debate around school choice is centered on two key questions. The proponents of school choice argue that the competitive forces released by school choice increase efficiency and make the schools more responsive to parents’ preferences. The resulting quality improvement benefits all students, including those not exercising choice themselves (e.g., Hoxby, 2003). The opponents argue that choice merely increases segregation. According to a typical argument, the students will be increasingly sorted according to family background or ability. This may hurt the most disadvantaged students who may become isolated in the worst schools (e.g., Fiske and Ladd, 2000.(...)The change in the admission system is only one of the important changes that affect segregation of students across schools. Segregation across residential areas has also increased. The increase in the private school sector also increases choice options and might lead to an increase in segregation across schools. However, the quantitative importance of these two changes appears to be small compared to the effects of the admission reform. This should not be very surprising. Changes in residential segregation are slow compared to sudden changes caused by the change in the admission system.Further, even though the private school sector has grown rapidly, it still represents a rather small fraction of students. For most students, the choice between different public schools is far more important than the choice between public and private schools.Texto IntegralEstudar para debater e escolher.
November 20 2010, 11:00am | Comments »
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