The DAPP (Difference & Dissonance, Assumptions, Power, and Patterns) Tool is intended to help educators, leaders, teams, schools, districts, education agencies, and other organizations to engage in the type of critical reflection necessary to build critical consciousness, and undertake more equitable and just actions, toward learning,…

State chiefs have new responsibilities under the Every Student Succeeds Act, but their formal powers are still limited. Despite these constraints, the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) analysis finds that chiefs can make a difference by wielding their powers strategically, to build coalitions and persuade others. While turnover in the…

As more and more cities and states diversify the educational options available to parents and students, creating magnet, open-enrollment, small school, career and technical, charter, and private school opportunities, educational choice markets need to become a part of the regulation conversation. In this report, Mike McShane examines the…

Why are America's public schools falling so short of the mark in educating the nation's children? Why are they organized in ineffective ways that fly in the face of common sense, to the point that it is virtually impossible to get even the worst teachers out of the classroom? And why, after more than a quarter century of costly education reform,…

Everybody agrees that school bullying is a major problem, but considerable controversy exists over the best way to address the problem. The following discussion presents (a) a brief analysis and synthesis of the current state of the art, (b) underscores the need to avoid another piecemeal set of policy and practice initiatives, and (c) stresses…

Although theorists and policy makers agree that schooling should be democratic, what this exactly means often varies. This article establishes a conceptual model for analyzing education policy in democratic societies, based on the key concepts of equality, diversity, participation, choice, and cohesion. The model facilitates the design,…

Examines some of the issues that arise for women as they learn to use their power effectively while competing for leadership in male-dominated organizations and outlines six styles of power and principles for using these strategies appropriately. (CLB)

Since their inception, charter schools have been controversial. Because they often operate outside the direct control of school boards, superintendents and teachers unions, these entities usually view charter schools skeptically. The funding of charter schools also has provoked discomfort among these entities because they feel money is unfairly…

Team management became popular during the late 1960s and early 1970s as educators adopted the concept to help solve the increasingly complex problems facing schools. The mere existence of a management team of central office and building administrators does not mean that team management is being practiced. Chapter 1 enumerates the benefits of team…

The Chicago Public Schools, along with the city of Chicago itself, serve as an exemplary case of neoliberal reorganization, as corporate and governmental "leaders" remake Chicago into a global city meeting the needs of capitalism. As such, Chicago provides us with an example of "actually existing neoliberalism," in which…

The interplay of power, political behavior, and ethics has been the subject of many books and articles about business organizations, but little has been published about using power and political skills in ethical ways to lead whole-system change in school districts. This book does. Readers will learn about the context for change in school…

Language-spread policy (LSP) is policy promulgated by groups seeking to spread their languages to speakers or communicative domains. LSP can be internal or external, overt or disguised, and related in different ways to national policy. Intent may be to increase native-language advantage in international communication, disseminate ideology, create…

This is the first book to link the issues of emotional literacy, equity and social justice, and the education of the whole child, thus providing the social and political context for emotional literacy. In connecting emotional literacy and equity with the structure of schooling, it establishes that co-educational schools can contribute to enabling…

Discusses school power structures. Cites the following examples of "bottom-up" authority: (1) vouchers; (2) magnet schools; and (3) open enrollment. Suggests a new model in which the larger school districts function as "holding companies" and individual schools function as "subsidiaries" of the parent company. (FMW)

The concept of critical media literacy expands the notion of literacy to include different forms of mass communication and popular culture, as well as deepens the potential of literacy education to critically analyze relationships between media and audiences, information and power. The authors argue that critical media literacy is crucial for…