In 2012, Chicago's school year began with the city's first teachers' strike in a quarter century and ended with the largest mass closure of public schools in U.S. history. On one side, a union leader and veteran black woman educator drew upon organizing strategies from black and Latinx communities to demand increased school resources. On the other side, the mayor, backed by the Obama administration, argued that only corporate-style education reform could set the struggling school system aright. The stark differences in positions resonated nationally, challenging the long-standing alliance between teachers' unions and the Democratic Party. Elizabeth Todd-Breland recovers the hidden history underlying this battle. She tells the story of black education reformers' community-based strategies to improve education beginning during the 1960s, as support for desegregation transformed into community control, experimental schooling models that pre-dated charter schools, and black teachers' challenges to a newly assertive teachers' union. This book reveals how these strategies collided with the burgeoning neoliberal educational apparatus during the late twentieth century, laying bare ruptures and enduring tensions between the politics of black achievement, urban inequality, and U.S. democracy.

The book features an analysis of teacher reform in Indonesia, which entailed a doubling of teacher salaries upon certification. It describes the political economy context in which the reform was developed and implemented, and analyzes the impact of the reform on teacher knowledge, skills, and student outcomes.

Education policymaking is traditionally seen as a domestic political process. The job of deciding where students will be educated, what they will be taught, who will teach them, and how it will be paid for clearly rests with some mix of district, state, and national policymakers. This book seeks to show how global trends have produced similar changes to very different educational systems in the United States and Japan. Despite different historical development, social norms, and institutional structures, the U.S. and Japanese education systems have been restructured over the past dozen years, not just incrementally but in ways that have transformed traditional power arrangements. Based on 124 interviews, this book examines two restructuring episodes in U.S. education and two restructuring episodes in Japanese education. The four episodes reveal a similar politics of structural education reform that is driven by symbolic action and bureaucratic turf wars, which has ultimately hindered educational improvement in both countries.

During the last 20 years, governments around the world have paid increasing attention to the recruitment, preparation, and retention of teachers. Teacher supply and teacher quality have become significant policy issues, taken up by policy-makers at the highest levels. This is because teachers are now seen by many governments as the ‘lynch-pin’ of educational, economic and social reform. This volume grew out of a recognition by the Editors of the growing significance of teacher education policy and a curiosity about international trends and differences. The book brings together nine papers from leading academics around the world: from the UK (England and Scotland), the USA, Australia, Singapore and Belgium, plus a joint paper comparing Namibia and the USA. Taken together, the papers reveal the complexities and contradictions of international trends. On the one hand, they demonstrate that there is indeed a common direction of travel along the lines encouraged by international bodies such as the OECD. At the same time however, the papers also reveal important differences among countries in terms of how they are addressing common aspirations as well as some apparent contradictions within the policies of individual nations. This book was based on the special issue of Teachers and Teaching.

The author investigates the discourse of contemporary educational reform using a thematic perspective (rather than a chronological one) of 19th- and 20th-century history. The book begins with an examination of the central conceptual and historical issues in the study of educational change.

'Despite the Odds' examines five examples of education reform in South America, focusing on the political battle to secure reform in the face of powerfully entrenched opposition. It shows how strategic choices by reformers can reshape power equations & undermine institutional biases.

Yearbook of the Politics of Education Association A competent, caring, and qualified teacher for every student in the United States! This audacious goal is taken right from the opening pages of the report of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future (NCTAF)-What Matters Most: Teaching for America's Future. The NCTAF findings are so powerful and unique that The Politics of Teacher Association (PTA) uses them as the basis for this 2000 Y=yearbook. Editors Gallagher and Bailey, along with leading educators, explore the controversies and ramifications of the Commission's major recommendations: Get serious about standards-for both students and teachers Reinvent teacher preparation and professional development Overhaul teacher recruitment and put qualified teachers in every classroom Encourage and reward teaching knowledge and skill Create schools that are organized for student and teacher success The contributors to this book speak to the underlying assumptions, research bases, and values found in the recommendations. Long-time and persistent issues about teaching, teacher education programs, and public policy making are examined under the new light of the latest research. Real-life successes of the recommendations in action are shown in two state-level stories and an urban school partnership. This PEA 2000 yearbook will prove a valuable resource for students, researchers, and all educators interested in teacher education reform in the 21st century.