Adeline Levine

The Social Context of Evaluative Research: A Case Study.

Evaluation takes place in a social context that influences research design, selection of variables, the written report, and the timing of its release. There are also consequences for program implementors, for those subject to the program, and for the evaluators. Evaluations and evaluators may become involved in political conflict within the subject system and conflict external to it as well. The present study makes use of archival data to illustrate the issues in evaluations of the Gary plan of education that took place between 1914 and 1918. Suggestions for confronting political and social realities surrounding evaluation emerge from an application of concepts deriving from the sociology of knowledge.

Education Deformed: No Child Left Behind and the Race to the Top. ‘This Almost Reads Like Our Business Plans’

S hrill critics of public education have manufactured a crisis. They claim that today’s public education system is ‘‘broken,’’ that schools are ‘‘dropout academies,’’ that teachers are failing. These sweeping conclusions are based solely on lower achievement test scores and high school graduation rates in the poorest localities. Critics ignore the generally good education that public school teachers and principals provide in our suburbs and prosperous city neighborhoods. Critics invoke a mythological past when public education supposedly accomplished miracles: educated and Americanized immigrants, provided work skills, and built character. According to the critics, we can’t do that now because teachers protected by unions, civil service, or both are lazy and uncaring, and because unmotivated bureaucrats stifle innovation. The solution to cure educational ills, critics argue, is to apply management methods: close supervision of workers who are accountable for reaching specified goals and whose jobs depend on their students’ achievement from year to year. Reformers also assert that free market competition with charter schools will produce dedicated public school teachers and caring principals. Calls for reform are a familiar and recurring theme in public school history. The constant criticism has grown exponentially in recent years, and respect for the millions of public school teachers has declined sharply. Accountability is the new mantra. Achievement test scores, no longer educational tools, are now reasons to restructure schools and fire allegedly bad teachers. Why is the criticism so intense, and why is the private sector so interested? One answer is that public elementary and secondary education in the United States is big business. In 2009, annual education expenditures were almost

Charters and foundations: are we losing control of our public schools?

600 billion. In 2002, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) created a good way for private interests to increase their share of the education market, when it mandated annual testing of children on state-devised achievement tests in reading and math. The resulting requirement for tests themselves, related services, and test supplies for 50 million children in 132,000 schools enriches private companies. The recent federal Race to the Top legislation requires comprehensive data systems for the evaluation of teachers and more charter schools to compete with conventional public schools—two more opportunities for the private sector to profit.

Follow the money: There's no business like the ed. business...

From their inception, United States public schools have been subject to reform efforts. The most recent, and perhaps the most potent, is the current effort to establish charter schools as replacements for traditional public schools. They are supposed to be the analog of private schools, providing choices to parents, financed by public funds, but operating largely free of state and local regulations. The schools are organized under charters specified by state laws and authorized by public agencies. This essay traces the development and growth of charter schools and note changes in their original mission to improve public education. It concludes with the role that very wealthy foundations play in promoting charter schools. In effect, they control public education policy without real accountability to the public.

Coming Full Circle: A Social Context for Henry Kempe’s Work

The debate about charter schools and public schools has been conducted on an ideological level. However, the ideological argument obscures the ongoing transfer of public funds to private use, the creation of business and investment opportunities, and the effects of the private enterprise model on education. In the current two-part article, the authors discuss charter schools and finances. Part 1 concerns charter schools and management organizations. Part 2 focuses on charter schools as business investments. Throughout, the authors link the information to effects on education.

When Agnes Met Alzheimer: The Elderly—A Growing Minority in America

W ith this article and the symposium in which it was first presented, we mark the 50th anniversary of the seminal article by Denver pediatrician C. Henry Kempe and his colleagues on ‘‘The Battered Child Syndrome.’’ That work is correctly attributed to have been the impetus for the subsequent political and professional interest in child abuse, the development of the American child protection system, the establishment of similar structures in many other countries, and the promulgation of legal and social norms vesting all health and social service professionals (in some states, all citizens) with responsibility for initiating legal proceedings for protection of children. To use Seymour Sarason’s helpful term, there was a time ‘‘before the beginning,’’ a history before Kempe’s work. The problems of child neglect and abuse, including sexual abuse, were well recognized far more than 50 or even 150 years ago. But somehow that history slipped off political and professional radar screens so that child abuse had to be rediscovered by Kempe about half a century ago. We now turn to some of that history as a context for Kempe’s work. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a full complement of social problems, most noticeably among the immigrant and other low-income groups in cities all over the country. The problems included delinquency, prostitution, desertion, and drunkenness, to say nothing about educational the community

Toward Universal Higher Education, Maybe

O ld people in the United States comprise a large, rapidly growing minority of the population. Currently, some 40 million people, 13% of the U. S. population, are 65 and older. These numbers are steadily increasing now that the baby boomers are turning 65. By 2030, the elderly group is projected to grow to 72 million, nearly 20% of the population. The Census Bureau estimates that the cohorts of 85 years or more will also increase markedly; by 2009, there were already 64,000 people at least 100 years old, a tribute to modern medicine and our relative prosperity. The elderly will increasingly need special housing, suitable recreation, and ample medical and caretaking services for a cohort largely better educated than today’s elderly and perhaps accustomed to a more comfortable lifestyle. Will the caregiving environment be able to accommodate their needs and expectations? For many, probably not. There seems to be little popular attention to this issue. In the United States, we have just endured a 2-year-long presidential election campaign during which numerous candidates discussed numerous topics of national concern. No candidate expressed any intent to consider planning good care for the rapidly expanding number of old people. Rather, a major emphasis for many was how best to reduce Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, the very programs providing crucial support for our current oldest citizens. The purpose of this essay is to “put a face” on the problem by focusing on one woman, who has one disease of the many that people have as they grow old. The person is someone we know quite well, and the disease is Alzheimer’s, the most common form of dementia. Currently, it affects one in eight people aged 65 and older and almost one half of those aged 85 and older. We will summarize the complex background and experiences of this woman and then her responses to her recent diagnosis. To protect her privacy, we will disguise her identity. In the final section, we will move

Nuke the Nanny State: A Dream of Life in the Bad Old Days

I n the American dream, one’s children attend college and, by so doing, reap material, intellectual, and spiritual rewards. And now, it seems that this American dream is about to come true for everyone. Or is it? The Obama administration has proposed a reform of elementary and secondary education, with the intention to prepare all or most students to succeed in a 2-year or 4-year college. The proposal for universal higher education is bold, but it does not address some important issues intrinsic to sending a large, socioeconomically diverse population to college. What will the impact be on all levels of education? How will we pay for expansion of the postsecondary sector? Before we address these questions, we will briefly describe the movement in our country from higher education for the few to proposals for higher education for everyone. The most recent proposal follows a long record of progress in our country from elite to mass to universal public education.

Helping Children: A Social History

P resident Reagan’s budget director, David Stockman, once proposed that the federal government run up deficits so massive that the only recourse would be to slash social programs, derisively characterized as the ‘‘Nanny State.’’ The social programs were opposed by those who never got over Franklin Roosevelt’s election in 1932. Stockman recanted many years later, but we are now at the point that his proposal is close to being implemented. In the face of the national debt of many trillions of dollars and deficits growing by

A social history of helping services : clinic, court, school, and community

1.5 trillion annually, we hear calls for a return to the days when taxes were low, the federal government was smaller, and social policies were guided by principles of the free market and compassionate conservatism. Given that harsh budget cuts at the federal and state levels are in the air, we may be moving in that direction. The following program descriptions and history are based on actual policies and institutions that existed in the United States before 1932, so we do not have to stretch our imaginations to envision consequences. We are addressing the question of what might happen if we drastically cut back on social welfare and regulatory programs that developed after 1932.