Tuesday, Ocotober 7, 3:45 PM
Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma
Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma
ADMIN 101
Andrew Milton
Will discuss his book
The Normal Accident Theory of Education
Why Reform and Regulation Won’t Make Schools Better
List Price: $24.95 + tax
Special Price at the Talk: $22, tax included
“Andrew K. Milton presents a provocative analysis of the
reasons that the accountability movement is doomed to failure, despite the
unprecedented fanfare associated with its implementation.”— Walt Gardner, writer of Reality Check
blog for Education Week
“This
eighth-grade English teacher from Washington state explains why centrally
mandated reforms on teachers, students and schools, imposed by federal and
state governments, create unintended failures in complex public school systems.
Reversing this trend, by giving teachers, parents and schools more flexibility
and more local control, is the better way to improve schools. As Mr. Milton
wisely says: ‘The degree to which a school can learn, then, will affect the
quality and character of that school. More personal involvement, more
collaboration, more trust---a better school will result. No amount of state or
federal programs, regulations or mandates will ever replace or transcend that.”—
Liv Finne, director for education,
Washington Policy Center
“Finally; a book about educational
reform that exposes the institutional realities inhibiting past and present
efforts at reform, told through the clear eye of an insider. Even more
importantly, the author provides the best prescriptions for going forward. A
must read for any parent, teacher, administrator and policy maker who wants to
achieve reform and not just talk reform.”
— Michael Jankanish, National Board Certified Teacher, Tacoma, WA
This book argues that as regulation of schools moves further up the
bureaucratic hierarchy (first to state departments of education then to the national
department of education) the legal and institutional requirements get more
intensive but less concretely useful in class rooms. This bureaucratization
serves to ‘tighten’ the organizational environment, thereby increasing the risk
of normal accidents. The increasing governmental management, in other words,
makes it more likely that schools will ‘fail’ to meet their goals.
Analyses of education are too often developed for public consumption in a
fast-moving political world. This book examines some of the deeper
organizational reasons why things don’t work so well in school, as well as a
look at some of things that do work. Most importantly, the book will explain
how the social and cultural expectations of what schools can do may create
unrealistic hopes. We, as a society, and schools, as institutions, embrace
these unreasonably high hopes at our collective peril.
Andrew K. Milton has spent his entire
professional life working in schools and universities. He has taught 8th grade
English in Steilacoom, WA for 7 years, and he has taught university-level
political science, at several institutions, for 15 years.
List Price: $24.95 + tax
Special
Price at the Talk: $22, tax included
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