Journal Article

Envisioning good schools in Kappan

Preston, Teresa

2020

Overview

Over the decades, dozens of Kappan authors have offered their own perspectives on what a high-quality school looks like. And as they've demonstrated, how we define good schooling affects everything from our funding decisions and school reform priorities to the ways in which we prepare our teachers, design the curriculum, teach our classes, assess our students, and evaluate our schools. US public schools have a responsibility to educate enormous numbers of students, who come from a very wide range of backgrounds. In a report to the trustees of Teachers College, Columbia University, published in the February 1929 Kappan, William Russell, then dean of the college, argued that this created a tension between the quantity of students our schools seek to educate and the quality of the education schools provide. By the second half of the 20th century, most articles about school quality revolved around academics. But even then, authors disagreed as to what a good academic education entailed and how it should be evaluated.

• Publisher: Phi Delta Kappa
• Subject: College students / Curriculum development / Education / Educational Change / Effective Schools Research / Public schools / Quality of education / Standardized Tests / Teaching Methods / Urban Schools