Stone Trumpet

Richard A. Gibboney is Associate Professor of Education in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania and holds the Lindback Award for distinguished teaching. He is a former public school teacher, Vermont Commissioner of Education, and Pennsylvania Deputy Secretary of Education.

"In the last ten years there has been much research on how to implement reforms; too little consideration has been given to what reforms are worth doing in the first place. Gibboney provides a useful Deweyan-progressive framework for assessing the educational value of reforms. The Stone Trumpet gives us insightful critiques of a wide variety of reforms from the new mathematics and science programs of the 1960s to competency-based education, Individually Guided Education and Theodore Sizer's Coalition of Essential Schools. Gibboney's chapter on a range of what he calls 'technological reforms' is especially telling for those policy makers who believe that there are easy, mechanical solutions to better learning and teaching. The Stone Trumpet is a practical book for thoughtful folk who do, think, or write about reform." — William A. Firestone, Rutgers University"This is a lively and remarkable little history of American school reform of the last third century. I find here a searching, irreverent, and above all, no holds-barred inventory of a host of major reform efforts. Here is an inventive critique, replete with rich description coupled with thoughtful analysis not only of school reform efforts but of the very concept of school reform itself." — Roland S. Barth, Harvard University"Gibboney's rich case-study detail and coherent theoretical perspective make this book excellent supplementary reading in courses on planned change, organizational influences on reform, and policy studies." — Bruce S. Cooper, Fordham University

• List of Photographs and Photographic Essays Foreword Acknowledgments 1. Taking Reform Seriously: The Anger and the Tears The Anti-reform Social Environmentthe Anti-reform Educational Environment 2. Judging the Worth of Reform: A Deweyan-Progressive Perspective Two Basic Concepts Used in This AnalysisThe Intellectual and Democratic CriterionThe Technological CriterionThree Decades of ReformRepresentative Reforms 1950-1990Overview of Reform in the 1950s 3. Reform's Green Fields The New Mathematics and the New ScienceThe Trump High SchoolThe Open ClassroomNongraded Schools and Team TeachingThe Coalition of Essential SchoolsThe Paideia Proposal: A SummaryA National Prepared: A SummaryConcluding Comment on Reform's Green Fields 4. Reforms As Technology: How Technique Displaces Thought The Promise and the Failure of Federally Funded Remedial Programs in Reading and ArithmeticConcluding Comment on Remedial ProgramsMastery Learning Chicago StyleConcluding Comment on Mastery LearningA Critical Review of the ResearchScientific Blues: M. Hunger's Teaching Model and the Research on Effective TeachingWhat it All MeansConcluding Comment on the Hunger Model and the Research on Effective TeachingTechnological Curriculums: Moving Backward into the Future 5. How Teachers' and Principals' Ideas Defined the Quality of a Major Reform The Real Stuff? Individually Guided Education in Adopting SchoolsIndividually Guided Education in Three Traditional Schools: What Does it Mean?Individually Guided Education in a Progressive SchoolHoes Does IGE Influence a Progressive School?Flowing Brook: A School without LaughterHow Good is Individually Guided Education as a Reform? 6. Like a Tree Planted by Water Rain in Sunny California: Five Inferences about ReformWhat to Do about Reform GridlockThe Structure of the DialogueThe Dialogue's Dynamic Qualities: Gladwyne Elementary SchoolThe Doxology Appendixes A. Toward a More Thoughtful School: Twenty-one Deweyan Criteria B. General Comment "In this Land of Dolts... " Competency-Based EducationIndividually Prescribed Instruction in  Reading and ArithmeticThinking Skills: CoRT and Instrument Enrichment C. General Comment Performance Contracting: The Psychological-Industrial ComplexThe Enfeebled Research-Development-Diffusion ModelThe Effective Schools ResearchAssertive DisciplineAccountability and State Testing ProgramsAligning the Curriculum to the Test Notes Selected Bibliography Index