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Selected Works

Social and Philosophical Foundations of Education

Brian R. Beabout

Selected Works

Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Education

Portfolio Management Districts And Rebuilding Inequality, Brian R. Beabout Dec 2010

Portfolio Management Districts And Rebuilding Inequality, Brian R. Beabout

Brian R. Beabout

Despite over fifty years of near-constant educational reform movements in the USA, most attempts at improving outcomes in urban public schools have meet with predictable failure (Sarason, 1990). The recently coined term Portfolio Management Models (Bulkley, Henig & Levin, 2010) describes a reform to citywide governance in which the district serves as a coordinator of public education services, rather than the single provider of these services. Cities such as New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and New Orleans are noted for having schools run by a variety of groups including national and local charter operators, magnets and neighborhood schools run by the …


Urban School Reform And The Strange Attractor Of Low-Risk Relationships, Brian R. Beabout Dec 2009

Urban School Reform And The Strange Attractor Of Low-Risk Relationships, Brian R. Beabout

Brian R. Beabout

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, school leaders in a newly decentralized school system reached out to external organizations for partnerships—a job that had previously resided in the central office. The necessity of these contacts and the quantity of newly independent schools make a unique context for studying how school leaders think and act in relation to external partnerships. Iterative interviews with 10 New Orleans public school principals reveal a range of external partnerships that can be classified into a three part taxonomy consisting of charitable relationships, technical support relationships, and feedback relationships. A discussion of low-risk relationships …


Urban School Reform And The Strange Attractor Of Low-Risk Relationships, Brian R. Beabout Dec 2009

Urban School Reform And The Strange Attractor Of Low-Risk Relationships, Brian R. Beabout

Brian R. Beabout

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, school leaders in a newly decentralized school system reached out to external organizations for partnerships—a job that had previously resided in the central office. The necessity of these contacts and the quantity of newly independent schools make a unique context for studying how school leaders think and act in relation to external partnerships. Iterative interviews with 10 New Orleans public school principals reveal a range of external partnerships that can be classified into a three part taxonomy consisting of charitable relationships, technical support relationships, and feedback relationships. A discussion of low-risk relationships …


More Fully Human: Principals As Freirian Liberators, Brian R. Beabout Dec 2007

More Fully Human: Principals As Freirian Liberators, Brian R. Beabout

Brian R. Beabout

This article calls for an investigation into a new breed of urban school leadership consistent with Freirean notions of dialogue, praxis, and pedagogy (Freire, 1993) in work with youth. Critical theorists have called for educational practices that emphasize the political role that teachers and students play in the educational process. Their vision of education calls for students to locate themselves in the historical process that has left them with little to count on and to struggle against social reproduction that gives life to the inequality that is so pernicious in capitalist American society. The central question is: How can principals …