About Education Policy and Practice: Bridging the Divide

There has long been a troubling divide between education policy and practice. Meaningful school reform efforts have suffered as a consequence. Policymakers often propose educational reforms that fail to take into account real schools, teachers, and students. Practitioners in turn often fail to see beyond their immediate challenges to the larger issues that preoccupy policymakers.

Education Policy and Practice aims to promote more effective school reform by illuminating important connections between education policy and teaching and learning practice. The contributors to this collection focus on how to meet the needs of teachers and the students they serve, providing insights that will be of great value to the key players in the field of education. The book places special emphasis on teaching in urban settings and on improving teacher-student interactions in the classroom.

The book addresses a number of pressing issues: how race, culture, power, and language affect actual classrooms and pedagogies; the social processes and school structures that can either hinder or support student learning; and the extent to which teachers have-or should have-control over their day-to-day instructional practices and decisions about their students.

Contributors include Lisa Delpit, Cynthia Ballenger, Cynthia Greenleaf, Ruth Schoenbach, Christine Cziko, Faye Mueller, Marilyn Cochran-Smith, Ray Rist, Sonia Nieto, Tamara Lucas, Rosemary Henze, Ruben Donato, Johanna Elena Hadden, Richard Ingersoll, and Richard Elmore.

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Table of Contents for Education Policy and Practice: Bridging the Divide

Section One
The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People's Children
Lisa D. Delpit
Because You Like Us: The Language of Control
Cynthia Ballenger
Apprenticing Adolescent Readers to Academic Literacy
Cynthia L. Greenleaf, Ruth Schoenbach, Christine Cziko, Faye L. Mueller
Blind Vision: Unlearning Racism in Teacher Education
Marilyn Cochran-Smith

Section Two
Student Social Class and Teacher Expectations: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy in Ghetto Education
Ray Rist
Lessons from Students on Creating a Chance to Dream
Sonia Nieto
Promoting the Success of Latino Language-Minority Students: An Exploratory Study of Six High Schools
Tamara Lucas, Rosemary Henze, and Rubén Donato

Section Three
A Charter to Educate or a Mandate to Train: Conflicts between Theory and Practice
Johanna Elena Hadden
Organizational Control in Secondary Schools
Richard M. Ingersoll
Getting to Scale with Good Educational Practice
Richard F. Elmore

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Publishing Information

Education Policy and Practice: Bridging the Divide
Edited by Suzanne Plaut and Nancy S. Sharkey
HER Reprint Series No. 37
©2003
ISBN 0-916690-40-7 $29.95 paperback, ORDER
318 pages

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