Karen Symms Gallagher – författare

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:

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.

Many factors complicate the education of urban students. Among them have been issues related to population density; racial, ethnic, cultural, and linguistic diversity; poverty; racism (individual and institutional); and funding levels. Although urban educators have been addressing these issues for decades, placing them under the umbrella of "urban education" and treating them as a specific area of practice and inquiry is relatively recent. Despite the wide adoption of the term a consensus about its meaning exists at only the broadest of levels. In short, urban education remains an ill-defined concept.

This comprehensive volume addresses this definitional challenge and provides a 3-part conceptual model in which the achievement of equity for all -- regardless of race, gender, or ethnicity – is an ideal that is central to urban education. The model also posits that effective urban education requires attention to the three central issues that confronts all education systems (a) accountability of individuals and the institutions in which they work, (b) leadership, which occurs in multiple ways and at multiple levels, and (c) learning, which is the raison d''être of education. Just as a three-legged stool would fall if any one leg were weak or missing, each of these areas is essential to effective urban education and affects the others.