Bruce S. Cooper

The Politics of Homeschooling New Developments, New Challenges

Homeschooling has developed from a small, isolated, parent-led effort to a vibrant national movement to lobby for and legalize K-12 education at home in all 50 states. Although a majority of homeschool families are Evangelical Christians, the others come from a variety of religious and nonreligious backgrounds, giving homeschooling a broad national political and social base. Homeschool families have organized regional and national associations, gained children’s access to after-school and even during-school classes and activities in local public schools, and increasingly gained entry to college. About 1.35 million children in the country are being officially home-schooled, making it a vital and expanding form of private education and political force in U.S. society.

Do Principals with Stronger Academic Backgrounds Hire Better Teachers? Policy Implications for Improving High-Poverty Schools.

Principals play an important role in determining the quality of their schools by the selection of teachers. A preponderance of evidence from the economic and education policy literature indicates that teachers with stronger academic backgrounds produce better student outcomes. This article hypothesizes that school principals with certain attributes are likely to favor teachers with similar attributes to their own. This study uses the Schools and Staffing Surveys from 1993 to 1994 to test whether school administrators who attended more selective universities are more or less likely to hire teachers who attended more selective undergraduate institutions. Findings suggest that principals’undergraduate background matters when it comes to their recruitment, selection, and perhaps retention of teachers with strong academic undergraduate backgrounds, especially in high-poverty schools. Principals in high-poverty schools who attended highly or the most selective undergraduate institutions were 3.3 times more likely to hire teachers who attended similar institutions.

Parent choice and school involvement: Perspectives and dilemmas in the United States and Great Britain

Abstract The role of parents in their childrens education in western nations is at best problematic. Large school bureaucracies — often hostile to the demands of individual consumers — struggle to understand the appropriate function of parents in controlling, participating in, and benefitting from their childrens education. Hence, a major part of the reform movements in the United States and Great Britain has been to ‘privatize’ education — to introduce greater choice, competition, and autonomy into the provision of elementary and secondary schooling. Choice and involvement programs are described and analyzed in this chapter.

Teacher Unions and the Politics of Fear in Labor Relations

Union-management relationships have been filled with fear since the rise of capitalism; public education is no different. Workers fear exploitation by owners (profits depend on it) and capitalist/management has always worried that the working classes will organize and either take over the firm or strike and bring production to a screeching halt. In public education, teachers turned to collective bargaining in the 37 states that allow it to give them greater voice and power over their wages, benefits, and working conditions using collective actions through the American Federation of Teachers (AFL-CIO) and National Education Association, not unlike worker unionism in the private sector. Fear still resides beneath the surface but, since the 1990s, strikes are less common and teachers are well organized and earning better salaries and benefits than ever before. Whenever policies change, as under No Child Left Behind (NCLB) or charter school laws, teacher unions take the lead and are now even opening charter schools to guarantee that these teachers remain union members.

Involving Parents in Improving Urban Schools.

Families play a vital role in supporting school improvement—especially par ents, who are critical in inculcating personal values and civic virtues in their children; in teaching basic life skills; in helping schools as parent vol unteers and as decisionmakers; in selecting schools for their own chil dren ; and as advocates for all children.

Fear and Privatization

Supporters of public education fear attempts to privatize schools, while the private sector has always struggled against the monopolistic power of the public schools that educates almost 90% of all K-12 students. This trepidation has recently been intensified by the creation of a “third sector” that includes charter schools, voucher programs, and the increased diversity of private education. This article looks at the dynamics of fear as shaped by increased competition among public, private, and privatized schools. In fact, both public schools and their private school counterparts, fear privatization of education because it draws students and resources away from traditional schools. And recently, the opening of new “religious charter schools” has crossed the lines between church and state, and between private and public education. Thus, the politics of education have become somewhat more confused and unnerving as the distinctions between public and private education are virtually disappearing.

The Introduction of Religious Charter Schools: A Cultural Movement in the Private School Sector.

Charter schools are opening, and religious associations are also sponsoring these schools since religious groups find private school tuitions to be high and prohibitive. This study includes studies of Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy, a Minnesota Arabic charter school (Blaine and Inver Grove Heights, MN); Ben Gamla Charter School, a Florida English-Hebrew Charter School (Hollywood, FL); the Hellenic Classical Charter School, a New York City Greek Orthodox parochial school (Brooklyn, NY); and Community of Peace Academy, a Minnesota Hmong cultural charter school (St. Paul, MN). These charter schools are exemplary educational programs around the schools mission, curriculum, language courses, and extracurricular activities that are all culturally relevant to their particular culture and religion while so-far remaining legal under the Zelman decision, legalizing funding for religious school vouchers.

Educating American Baptist Pastors: A National Survey of Church Leaders

The role of the typical Baptist pastor has evolved well beyond providing spiritual direction. Congregations expect them to fulfill complex leadership roles, similar to those in secular institutions, such as church administrators, political strategists, and social activists. Leadership preparation in seminaries for clergy has not kept up with the changing demands on parish ministers, particularly in urban churches. This study focuses on American Baptist pastors, their leadership styles, roles as spiritual, political, and social leaders within their churches and communities. A national survey of 255 randomly selected pastors analyzed their perceptions of pastoral preparation, leadership roles, and styles. The results show that Black pastors perceive themselves as playing more of a social and political leadership role in their communities than White pastors. Leadership preparation is significant for efficacy and satisfaction with mentoring being a key component.

Is “Superintendent Preparation” an Oxymoron? Analyzing Changes in Programs, Certification, and Control

The preparation of school superintendents is critical to improving education, although the process is rife with difficulties. Five problems are treated in this analysis. First, training programs confront dilemmas coordinating the timing of preparation and when superintendents actually take office: synchronization is critical to becoming an effective leader. Second, programs strive to connect theory-based academic degrees (doctorates) and practice: do content, needs, and experiences jell? Third, superintendents need more than a two-year program; they require life-long help and instruction. Fourth, superintendents want national and regional learning networks to give them the support and knowledge they need. And fifth, the field seeks an up-to-date knowledge base to ensure that superintendents are kept current in the latest theories of leadership, technology, curriculum theory, law, labor relations, and finance. What is the appropriate role of the university – its formal and informal preparation programs and research – under the watchful eye of the state departments and national groups such as NCATE?

Relating school policies and staff attitudes to the homework behaviours of teachers: An empirical study

Research on homework has typically focused on students’ beliefs, commitment to, and benefits of doing homework, but what about the influence of school policies and teachers’ beliefs and attitudes on the topic? Do schools with stricter rules and a clearer focus have teachers giving more homework? Are teachers who believe in the virtues of homework as a learning device and a convenient means for communicating with the home more likely to give, collect, mark, and return homework to students than teachers who see no benefits? This study developed a valid, reliable instrument, the homework attitude and behaviour inventory for teachers (HABIT), and administered it to 120 teachers in two schools with a clear, focused homework policy, and two without. Findings were that schools with a well‐defined homework policy had teachers who: gave, collected, marked, and returned homework significantly more often; and believed in the usefulness of these assignments. Multiple regressions showed a significant relationship between beliefs about homework, the homework behaviours, and the types of assignments made (repeat classwork, introduce new materials, explore new ideas, pursue imaginative topics at home). Regressing homework attitudes and school policies against teacher homework behaviours produced an adjusted R‐square of 49.5 (p < 0.001).