1st Edition
The Big Lies of School Reform Finding Better Solutions for the Future of Public Education
Foreword
Kevin Kumashiro
Introduction
Paul C. Gorski & Kristien Zenkov
The Big Picture
1. The Pedagogy of Poverty: The Big Lies About Poor Children
Gloria Ladson-Billings
2. Improving Education and the Mistaken Focus on “Raising Test Scores” and “Closing the Achievement Gap”
Rochelle Gutiérrez
Curriculum and Assessment
3. The Common Core: Engine of Inequity
Anthony Cody
4. Direct Instruction: Effectively Teaching Low-Level Skills
Curt Dudley-Marling
5. Detangling the Lies about English-Only and Bilingual Education
Jim Cummins
6. The Test Does Not Know Best: On Collecting Good Evidence for Student Learning
Deborah Meier
Teachers and Teaching
7. Lying about Teachers and Their Training
Kristien Zenkov“
8. Debunking the Lie that Teachers’ Unions Are Bad for Kids
Katy Swalwell
Schools and Policy
9. The Truth about Tracking
Lauren Anderson and Jeannie Oakes
10. Poverty, Economic Inequality, and the Impossible Promise of School Reform
Paul C. Gorski
11. Seeing Students as Humans, Not Products: Why Public Schools Should Not Be Run Like Private Businesses
Wayne Au
12. The Trouble with Federal Turnaround Policies and Their Impact on Low-Scoring Schools
Michelle Renée and Tina Trujillo
Biography
Paul C. Gorski is an Associate Professor of Integrative Studies, teaching in the Social Justice and Education concentrations, at George Mason University and the founder of EdChange.
Kristien Zenkov is an Associate Professor at George Mason University, where he teaches courses in secondary and literacy education and serves as co-director of the "Through Students’ Eyes" project.
“This smart, accessible, well-researched, usable book by Gorski, Zenkov, and colleagues could not come at a better time. It helps us to see the masks, revealing the power of rhetorical strategies and confronting us with the realities that lie beneath. This book provides essential resources to reframe the debate and reclaim public education. Read this, share this, and join the movement.”—From the Foreword by Kevin Kumashiro, author of Against Common Sense
“The Big Lies of School Reform is truth serum for the false debates on school reform that permeate the mainstream. Here, some of the nation's best scholars and educators provide the history, context, and analyses needed to make sense of the ed policy wars. It's a primer every citizen concerned about public schools should read.”—Stan Karp, Director of the Secondary Reform Project for New Jersey’s Education Law Center, and editor, Rethinking Schools
