Bureaucracy in Education
Federal government Department of education (No Child Left Behind)
State Department of Education (DESE)
Board of Education
Superintendent
Central Office Administrators Curriculum specialists, CFO
Building head principals
Assistant principals
Counselors
Building instructional specialists
Teachers
Students
Formal schooling
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Education that is provided and regulated
by society
Ch12 Section 1
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Advantages of formal education (aka
bureaucratic or factory
model)
Tendency to specialize in subject areas
Age based classrooms
Efficiency
Educate more students for less money
Criticisms of Formal schooling
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Children are not inorganic raw materials
made to be molded into factory products
Too rigid
Too standardized ….b/c one-size does not
fit all
Not individualized
Your Opinions
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List five things that are
wrong with Ursuline
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List five things that are
right or
positive
about Ursuline
positive
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Serviam
Uniforms
Interesting teachers
Pretty campus
Math lab
Advisement
Students are given
Autonomy
Friendly environment
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Teach values
Strict
No one left behind if they
ask for help
Nice administrators
Classes are fun
Options with electives
complaints
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No discipline
No options for classes
teachers don’t care
Bad food
Lame teachers
Aren’t flexible
Laptops
Little academic emphasis
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Inflexibility
Too much busy work
Little discussion ALL ppt
We get little respect
Unhappy teachers
Costs a lot
Too many movies
Educational success
and its obstacles
parents
students
teachers
School reforms
Democratic reforms in the
classroom
Open classroom
A non-bureaucratic
approach to
education based on
democracy, flexibility
and noncompetitive
learning.
Enhances and
reinforces creativity
Montessori philosophy –
every child helps decides
his-or her approach to
Cooperative
learning
Pg 391
Instructional method that
relies on cooperation
among students
Students learn together
and teach together
Integrative
curriculum
Pg 391
an approach to
education based on
student-teacher
cooperation
Open Classroom experiment
1.
Pick a topic in sociology (in this chapter)
2.
Decide how you want to …
gain more knowledge about the topic and
demonstrate your knowledge
(a)
(b)
1.
Get it approved by ME then Begin the
process
Must have proof of work done
Topics must be connected to Sociology
Demonstration ideas
• Make a skit that exemplifies an idea or
sociological concept
• Create poem that demonstrates idea
• Draw or illustrate ideas that typify a
concept
• Write a story that uses sociological
concepts
Create a collage that exemplifies an idea
or sociological concept
 Break down a story (from Am. Lit, for
example) explain how it relates to
concepts in sociology
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Assessment based on
Scope
Depth
The area covered by a
given activity or
subject
How deep you go into
the content you cover
– the complexity of
the topic
Back To Basics Movement
pg 393
Gov. report A Nation at Risk
Stated that Gov. report A Nation at Risk
Stated that Americans were deficient in
“education” and therefore were at risk of
being taken over (economically) by worldwide competitors
Back to Basics
Movement
prompted Schools to return back to teaching
the “basics”
Example:
4-years math
4-years science
4 years reading/writing
4 years of social studies
School Choice Movement
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Voucher system
pg 393
A system by which public funds may be
used to support tuition (payment) to a
school of your choice
Charter schools
pg 394
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Publicly funded schools that operate like
private schools by public school teachers
and administrators
Magnet schools
pg 394
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Public schools that focus on particular
disciplines or areas – fine arts, science,
technology, etc…
For profit
schools
Pg 394
Schools that are operated by private
companies on government funds.
Educational Tracking (398)
The European model of education
Schools place students in “tracked”
programs according to their academic
ability.
School
Examples:
College-bound track
Service industry track
Carpentry track
Technical service track
Nursing track
Business track
School desegregation
The achievement of racial balance in the
classroom
Multicultural
education
An education curriculum that emphasizes
differences among gender, ethnic, and racial
categories
Compensatory
education
Specific curricular programs designed to
overcome a deficiency
ex. head start
Pros and cons of
educational reform
Using as graph, indicate (at least) one advantage
and (at least) disadvantage of each educational
reform movement
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Voucher system
Charter schools
Magnet schools
For profit schools
Tracking
School desegregation
Multicultural education
Compensatory education
Sociological perspectives
(1) Functionalists perspective
emphasizes the positive functions of the educational system
(2) Conflict perspective
emphasizes the inequities and negative aspects of the educational
system
(3) Symbolic interactionism
emphasizes how culture transmits attitudes and values
Section 2
Functionalist …
on education
Schools serve a purpose; they create a
common identity for all students
Manifest functions – intended results
Latent functions – unintended consequences
Page 400
Conflict perspective
 Popular conceptions about education are not necessarily true
Theories
Meritocracy
A society in which social status is based on
ability and achievement
Competition
A system in which rewards are based on
relative performance
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If one is rewarded for ACT scores, does
this mean American education is a
meritocracy?
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Or are some at a disadvantage?
Educational equality
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An attempt to produce the same results for
lower-class and minority children as it
does for other children
Intelligence
Cognitive ability
Capacity for thinking abstractly
Cultural bias
unfair measurement of the cognitive
abilities of people in some social
categories
http://wilderdom.com/personality/intelligence
ChitlingTestShort.html
School
desegregation
The attempt to achieve a racial balance in
the classroom
Compensatory
education
Specific curricular programs designed to
overcome educational deficiency
Symbolic
interactionism
“We don’t know how to learn, we learn how
we know”
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Hidden
curriculum
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The non-academic agenda that teaches
discipline, order, cooperativeness, and
conformity
a
hidden agenda is also present in textbooks
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Espousing patriotism, civic duty and responsibility
Self-fulfilling prophecy
A prediction about oneself that results in
behavior that makes the prediction come
true