Suchergebnisse

Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1 Marching As If to War -- Stalking the Elusive Skills Shortage -- Corporate Schizophrenia -- Button-Down Revolutionaries -- Wisconsin Turns Right and Becomes a National Model -- Children as a Cash Crop -- The Shape of Things to Come -- 2 And Now a Word from Our Sponsor -- Apples and Other Temptations -- Harnessing Peer Pressure -- Seal of Community Approval -- Well-Targeted Learning -- Good Cop/Bad Cop -- How Junior Has Grown -- Learning Can Be Sweet ... or Salty -- A Captive Market -- Decades of Battle -- The Crowded Classroom -- Pizza and Other Educational Values -- Keep Drugs in Schools -- A Pattern of Abuse -- The Critics Take a Powder -- Seizing the Moment -- 3 High-Tech Hucksters Go to School -- Connections Plugs In -- Principles, Even Abstract Ones, Die Hard -- Sanitizing the Shill -- Tax Assessors Get an Education -- Shut Out of New York -- Open Warfare in California -- Advertisers Sold Power over Students -- The Hidden Persuaders -- Behind the Educational Facade -- Class in the Classroom -- The Expensive Education of Mr. Whittle -- The Low Life of High Tech -- 4 Schools for Profit: Follow the Yellow Brick Road -- Same Old Tune, Same Old Criticism -- The Mythical Crisis -- The Master Myth -- Enter the Traveling Salesmen -- First Take Twelve Minutes, Then the Whole School -- Dark Days for Edison -- EAI—Founded on Fantasy -- Privatization Works Its Wonders -- Trouble in the Classroom -- Born-Again Savior -- Reaping Education's Nonexistent Financial Bounty -- 5 Private School Vouchers: A False Choice -- We've Been There -- The Other Choice—Public School Choice -- The Milwaukee Voucher Experiment—Success Without Results -- An Unpopular Reform -- The Apparatus of the Right -- Business Unlocks the Door -- Confusion on the Left -- The Market Myth

The Sixth Annual Report on Schoolhouse Commercialism Trends, Year 2002-2003, finds that commercial activity remains firmly entrenched in American public schools as protest mounts from citizens and legislative efforts to rein it in.

Commercialism appears to be alive and well, in society at large and in schools. In 2007, we see a marketing environment that recognizes few boundaries. Advertisers ply their trade wherever they can and even engage consumers as collaborators in their marketing strategies. This "total environment" of marketing is enabled in part by new technologies that allow advertisements to appear in places they could not have been before, such as video games, social networking websites, and cell phones. It is also the result of greater cultural acceptance of marketing as an everyday fact of life, a friendly political environment, and a willingness on the part of marketers and advertisers to breach boundaries that previously limited their activities. Whereas, for example, there used to be a clear boundary between "editorial content" (e.g., television programming, magazine articles, or school curricula) and advertisements, we now see the judges on American Idol sipping from Coca-Cola cups, the debonair cavemen from Geico commercials starring in their own television program, and Disney Publishing providing comics to schools for a reading program.

The Sixteenth Annual Report on Schoolhouse Commercializing Trends finds that, in a context of fierce corporate opposition to regulation, lack of concern in the education sector about commercialism, and a general assumption by stakeholders that school participation in marketing programs is a constructive way to raise money little state or federal legislation related to school commercialism was signed into law in 2012 or 2013. Advocacy groups within the United States and internationally are, however, increasingly aware of the threats that marketing programs pose to children, especially in the areas of nutrition and privacy. The report outlines the threats that commercializing activities in schools pose to the health and well-being of students and to the integrity of schools' educational programs, and recommends that policymakers ban them outright unless an independent entity certifies that a proposed commercializing activity will cause no harm to children or otherwise undermine the quality of their education.

This NEPC Policy Memo offers a list of experts who can speak to the overall knowledge base — to the weight of scholarly thought and research evidence in a given education policy area.

This 2015 report is third in a series of annual reports on virtual education in the U.S. It is organized in three major sections. Section I examines the policy and political landscape associated with virtual schooling and describes the current state of affairs related to finance and governance, instructional program quality, and teacher quality. The authors analyze to what extent, if any, policy in the past year has moved toward or away from their 2014 recommendations. Based on an analysis of legislative development across all states, the authors find that troubling issues continue to outpace informed policy. Section II reviews the research relevant to virtual schools. It finds that despite considerable enthusiasm for virtual education in some quarters, there is little credible research to support virtual schools' practices or to justify ongoing calls for ever greater expansion. The authors find that even as research on virtual schooling has increased, there is still little high-quality evidence that justifies ongoing calls for the expansion of virtual schools. Section III provides a descriptive census of full-time virtual schools and their expansion based on data gathered from state, corporate and organizational sources. Details on enrollment include the student characteristics of race/ethnicity, sex, free and reduced lunch eligibility, special education designation, ELL status, and grade level. Other information includes student-teacher ratios. In addition, details on student achievement include Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) ratings, state ratings, and graduation rates.

As proponents continue to make the case that virtual education can expand student choices and improve the efficiency of public education, full-time virtual schools have attracted a great deal of attention. Advocates contend that this potential for individualization allows virtual schools to promote greater student achievement than can be realized in traditional brick-and-mortar schools. NEPC researchers found, however, that the research evidence does not support this claim. This three-part brief provides disinterested scholarly analyses of the characteristics and performance of full-time, publicly funded K-12 virtual schools; reviews the relevant available research related to virtual school practices; provides an overview of recent state legislative efforts to craft virtual schools policy; and offers policy recommendations based on the available evidence.

This national study, which comprehensively reviews 311 virtual schools operating in the United States, finds serious and systemic problems with the nation's full-time cyber schools. Despite virtual schools' track record of students falling behind their peers academically or dropping-out at higher rates, states and districts continue to expand virtual schools and online offerings to students, at high cost to taxpayers. The advocates of full-time virtual schools are several years ahead of policymakers and researchers, and new opportunities are being developed and promoted largely by for-profit entities accountable to stockholders rather than to any public constituency. The report's authors conclude that continued rapid expansion of full-time cyber schools is unwise. More research is needed; and to enable such research, state oversight agencies need to require more, and better refined, data. Financial controls and funding unique to cyber schools need to be established.

This second annual report in a series on virtual education is organized in three major sections. Section I examines the policy and political landscape associated with virtual schooling and describes the current state of affairs related to finance and governance, instructional program quality, and teacher quality. The authors analyze to what extent, if any, policy in the past year has moved toward or away from the 2013 recommendations. Section II reviews the research relevant to virtual schools. It finds that despite considerable enthusiasm for virtual education in some quarters, there is little credible research to support virtual schools' practices or to justify ongoing calls for ever-greater expansion. Section III provides a descriptive overview of full-time virtual schools and their expansion based on data gathered from state, corporate, and organizational sources. Details on enrollment include the student characteristics of race/ethnicity, sex, free and reduced- price lunch eligibility, special education designation, ELL status, and grade level. Other information includes student-teacher ratios. In addition, details on student achievement include Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) ratings, state ratings, and graduation rates.