Education Commons^™

Commentary, Susan Freeman

Occasional Paper Series

Commentary, Martha Foote

Occasional Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Toward Meaningful Assessment: Lessons From Five First-Grade Classrooms, Laura Kates

Occasional Paper Series

A case study of six first grade teachers' responses to a performance assessment mandated in New York City Public Schools from 1998 to 2003.

Coda, Gail M. Boldt

Occasional Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Flip The Script, Kevin K. Kumashiro, Erica Meiners

Occasional Paper Series

"Each one of us must understand education reform as inseparable from our concurrent struggles in other sectors, including labor and healthcare, and the movements to secure full human and civil rights for all." --Authors.

A Glass Half Full, Jeffrey M. R. Duncan-Andrade

Occasional Paper Series

Presents a vision for remaking ourselves as a society by addressing the basic needs of all children and defining, assessing, and developing high quality teaching.

Creating The Schools We Need, Pedro Noguera

Occasional Paper Series

The struggle for education remains vital to the struggle for democracy, equality and justice. The only question is who will align themselves with those who must be integral to making this possibility a reality.

Silver Linings, Gil Schmerler

Occasional Paper Series

Looking for rays of sunshine amidst an educational landscape that has taken a particularly horrific beating in the last decade or two is a difficult – maybe quixotic – undertaking.

The New Orleans Reformed Public School System: National Model?, Raynard Sanders

Occasional Paper Series

The author describes what happened to the New Orleans Public Schools after Hurricane Katrina.

Schooling Of And For Democracy, Deborah Meier

Occasional Paper Series

The author asserts that it’s time for us to “measure” schools by the values we believe in for public life in general, and to “measure” our students, then, by the long-term impact they will have on our larger society and the vitality of our democracy.

“If We Look To Buy The Cheapest Paper, Why Not The Cheapest Teachers?”, Fred Klonsky

Occasional Paper Series

Describes the assessment driven state of the author's school district in Illinois.

Racing To The Top: Who’S Accounting For The Children?, Celia Genishi, Anne Haas Dyson

Occasional Paper Series

The authors argue that teachers are accountable not to some narrow “top” but to the rhythms and rhymes of their developing students.

Educational Revolution, Peter Taubman

Occasional Paper Series

Invites the reader to reclaim the conversation and turn back the on-going privatization and corporatization of public schools.

The Teacher Accountability Debate, Diane Ravitch

Occasional Paper Series

The teacher accountability narrative is part of a larger effort to restructure the teaching profession by turning it into a market-based activity.This paper seeks to deconstruct the assumptions embedded in the narrative.

Accountability And The Contemporary Intellectual, Greg Dimitriadis, Marc Lamont Hill

Occasional Paper Series

Analyzes the language and values that have framed the accountability movement.

Introduction: Diving Into The Wreckage: Our Schools, Education Reform, And The Future Society, William Ayers

Occasional Paper Series

"In this special issue of the Bank Street Occasional Papers, we will dive into the wreckage, engage the fight, and hope to reclaim the ground of education in and for democracy." --Author.

Preface: Challenging The Politics Of The Teacher Accountability Movement, Gail M. Boldt

Occasional Paper Series

Explains that this issue is intended as a resource for anyone concerned with re-framing and taking back the educational conversation, moving toward meaningful school reform that is based in a commitment to creating conditions under which teachers can develop the kinds of complex and sophisticated professional knowledges and practices that support authentic student learning.

From Access To Interaction, Daniel Atkins

Occasional Paper Series

Atkins calls on educators to see beyond access to identify “core moments” for child-centered experiential learning in inclusion classrooms. He warns that “[t]he process of scaffolding the child’s inclusion in the activities or interactions of the day can too often become conflated or confused with the process of scaffolding the child’s physical ability to gain access to those activities or interactions.”

Overcoming Barriers To Coteaching, Seamus O'Connor

Occasional Paper Series

Seamus O’Connor, a high school special education teacher, shares a story of bridging a divide. He takes a clear and honest look at the evolution of his relationship with his coteaching partner, Carol. In doing so, he explores themes of equity, trust, and negotiated differences in building a collaborative classroom.

Doing The Civil Right Thing: Supporting Children With Disabilities In Inclusive Classrooms, David J. Connor, Kristen Goldmansour

Occasional Paper Series

David J. Connor and Kristen Goldmansour explore cotaught inclusion classrooms through the lens of the social justice narrative. They write about the parents who asserted “that it was their children’s civil right to be educated within a diverse classroom, one that truly mirrored the nation’s population.” They critique the alternative to inclusion as “segregation,” which results in “devaluation, a loss in cultural capital for individuals” and argue that cotaught classrooms can upend “artificial notions of ‘normalcy’ that have served to diminish and devalue ‘disabled’ children.”

Inclusion: What Came Before, Judith Lesch

Occasional Paper Series

Judith Lesch’s firsthand account of her teaching experiences from the late 1970s through the mid-1990s takes us on a journey through the evolving approaches to inclusion.

Front Matter And Introduction, Valentine Burr

Occasional Paper Series

The writers in this issue of Occasional Papers advocate for models of inclusion that support children’s capabilities and challenge systemic inequities based on ableism and cultural biases. They examine the complex and changing nature of collaboration between general and special educators in inclusion settings. Underlying these essays, though not always explicitly stated, is recognition that the fields of special education and disability studies can deepen and inform each other.

Selected Works By Harriet Cuffaro, Miriam Raider-Roth, Jonathan Silin

Occasional Paper Series

Selected works by Harriet Cuffaro.

Presence In Double Vision, Miriam Raider-Roth

Occasional Paper Series

Early childhood offers us the opportunity to view humanity in its rawest form – the joys, sorrows, desires are expressed through words, body, play, and creative expression. Cuffaro (1995) teaches us that in early childhood classrooms, we begin to learn to live in community, practice democratic living, and experience, enact and build essential understandings of the social world. In early childhood classrooms where play is encouraged, facilitated, and observed, the essential tensions of our culture are played out. These spaces offer perceptive observers an opportunity to understand how gender identity, development, and relationship shape teaching and learning (Chu, 2014; Katch, …

Doing Dewey, Carol Rodgers

Occasional Paper Series

In this article, I describe and analyze my experience as a teacher of, and a teacher who does, Dewey. In the process I hope to draw a picture of what it means to strive for integrity between theory and practice. I talk about why it matters to work from a theory of education, especially in an age where “clinical practice” is vaunted and theory is viewed as expendable, even as a slightly shameful waste of time. I focus on particular Deweyan principles, primarily the principle of reflection, and illustrate how that theory manifests itself in my practice. I …

An Inquiry Into The Pedagogical Implications Of Dewey’S Ecological Thinking, Simon Jorgenson

Occasional Paper Series

My primary purpose is to (re)examine Dewey in the context of contemporary conceptions of ecology and environmental education. With this in mind, I will focus primarily on what Dewey has to say about the natural world, beginning with his general philosophy and moving through several of his educational works.

Caroline Pratt: Progressive Pedagogy In Statu Nascendi, Jeroen Staring

Occasional Paper Series

This article explores two themes in the life of Caroline Pratt, founder of the Play School, later the City and Country School. These themes, central to Harriet Cuffaro’s values as a teacher and scholar, are Pratt’s early progressive pedagogy, developed during experimental shopwork between 1901 and 1908; and her theories on play and toys, developed while observing children play with her Do-With Toys and Unit Blocks between 1908 and 1914. Focusing on her early and previously unexplored writings, this article illustrates how Caroline Pratt developed a coherent theory of innovative progressive pedagogy.

The Experience Of Working And Learning Together, Jane Clarke

Occasional Paper Series

Before describing some remarkable learning experiences that stand out from her most recent observations of and conversations with teachers, the author shares three film clips of children which demonstrate some activities that can become an important “habit,” as children engage daily in outdoor activities using simple, open-ended building materials.

When Unit Blocks Came To Gardaborg, Kristín Einarsdóttir

Occasional Paper Series

Unit blocks have probably been used in some Icelandic preschools since 1950 or 1960, but a turning point occurred when one of the author's teachers from the Iceland University of Education (Fosturskoli Islands), Jonina Tryggvadottir, returned from studying with Harriet Cuffaro at Bank Street College in New York City.

Thinking Through Early Childhood, Jonathan Silin

Occasional Paper Series

Working against the grain of history and contemporary assumptions about the nature of the field, the author makes a counterintuitive argument that decenters the child and brings forward the adult in early childhood education (ECE).