Public School Reforms Ist Reading Response

Running head: st Reading Response 1

1st Reading response

Ist Reading Response

Tinkering towards Utopia \\\"Policy cycles and institutional trends.\\\"

Tinkering towards utopia, a century of public school reform by David Tyack and Larry Cuban is set to explore and answer the nature of educational reform. The book is divided into four chapters that tackle an issue on its own. In chapter 2 of the book, the overall argument is that reform may be gradual; the oratory is often repetitive or cyclical. \\\"It would be a mistake to dismiss cycling discourse about school reform as \\\"mere rhetoric\\\" (Tyack & Cuban, 1995).  The book\\\'s theory in chapter 2 is that reform in public school is the role a teacher plays, societal events, and political movements in policy cycles and institutional trends. The book draws on narration through a sequence to highlight the several enacted policies.

My peers, professional assistant principals in urban communities can find helpful the idea by separating the phases involved in educational reform. Stakeholders in the education sector can adequately understand the aspect of the educational system that remains constant and correctly differentiate between policy talk and policy action. The chapter gives a detailed overview of policy changes and reforms; however, something that does not add up, in my opinion, is that the book entirely focuses on change that happens within a single stage, and this should not be the case. Education should begin a new stage indefinitely.

Isabel Wilkerson. (2020). Caste: The origins of our discontents

In part one of the book that comprises the preface and three chapters, I think the main idea in the book \\\"the man in the crowd\\\" (Wilkerson, 2020) is what it poses to be a person who stands up for what is right despite being the only one dissenting. The first chapter discusses the United States\\\' state after the 2016 general election; the author urges people to look deeper to realize the dissatisfaction. The finding in the second chapter is that the problems America faces cannot fix themselves and how the country is based on a caste system. In part one of the book, the last chapter discusses how people can be oppressed even if granted full freedom and free will. The book\\\'s theoretical framework draws from is the author trying to find the hierarchy in America\\\'s caste system. The book draws on comparing the oppression in India, Nazi Germany, and Black Americas during slavery. The comparison elicits how the upper-class sense of self-entitlement is damaging to society.

My professional peers can find the information about the book on the caste system helpful and how it\\\'s an issue in the education system. As assistant principals, we should denounce the caste system and create an accommodative school environment for everyone. Part one of the book connects to my work by exploring the issues of the caste system and the inequalities it causes at school because some students might feel more entitled than others. One critique of Isabela Wilkerson\\\'s work is her combination of race and caste. She elicits that the two are synonymous with each other and coexist with each other, which is untrue, in my opinion.

As American as public schools

I think the overall argument drawn from the episode as American as public school is that they had to be reformed to increase the students\\\' knowledge. The significant finding is that schools were becoming very integral and not optional. The theory the book draws is on how immigration played a vital role in public education. The episode\\\'s method to convey the ideas is first-person narration, where live segments of interviews are placed on how different people viewed education from 1900 to the 1950s.