The readings were excellent.  The texts included Frindle by Andrew Clements, (an excellent children's book which I have since used in my reading class), The Managerial imperative and the practice of leadership in schools by Larry Cuban and Justice, ideology, and education:  An introduction to the social foundations of education by E. Stevens, G.H. Wood and J. Sheehan.  We also read a number of articles for each class. 

            Each book and article opened a new window on an aspect of educational leadership or on the background of our educational system.  My library grew in leaps and bounds.   I did not want to leave the issues that I was discovering without delving into more depth.  During this summer course I bought the following books, most of which I have either read, half read or put on next summer's reading list:  The War Against American's Public Schools, by Gerald Bracey; Standardized Minds by Peter Sacks, The Disciplined Mind, Frames of Mind, Leading Minds all by Howard Gardner; Leading in a Culture of Change by Michael Fullan; Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol;   Fighting to Save our Urban Schools... and Winning by Donald McAdams; Dumbing us Down by John T. Gatto.  These are the ones which I can readily recall.  There were more. 

             This course contained so much material that everything we touched on was just that: "touched on".  It exposed us to issues, history, perspectives, research sources and first hand viewpoints.  Listening to the superintendent of Arlington schools talk about his day-to-day schedule and the way he prioritizes the issues he deals with on a daily/weekly/monthly basis opened my eyes to the politics of leadership in education.  Parallel to his visit, I was reading Fighting to Save our Urban Schools...and Winning which is the account of the Houston school board during a time of conflict (1989-99).  The book cover says it is about reform in a time of massive change but in reality it tells of the politics of a large multi-ethnic school system and how difficult it is to make change. 

           Not only was a lot of background reading required for this course but also research projects.  The writing projects were organized to build on each other.  The first paper was a research question.   I had difficulty with this paper and had to rewrite it because it did not have a strong thesis.  The second writing flowed much more smoothly and that is the one which is included.   (In retrospect, I wish I had already had a research course before writing this paper because I would have approached it differently.  Now that I have the McMillan and Shumaker book which we use in EDRS 810, I would have followed the Standards of Adequacy for a research question.)  For the research question I chose a topic which interested me and had a legal aspect to it.  I chose to look at implementation of Lau v. Nichols in public schools.  (Research question)

           The next writing assignment built on the research question.  The task was to look at the research which we had talked about in our last assignment and show how it was important for educational leaders to know and to use our information in their decision making process.  Again I wrote about Lau v. Nichols and how important it was for administrators to recognize that it was a legal obligation to educate English language learners.  (Application paper)

            All of my focus had been on Lau v. Nichols and so my final paper and my project took the work that I'd been doing one step further.  I integrated what I had been learning about the politics of education and wrote how decision makers often make education choices based on factors other than what is best for the students.  Implementing good language support programs for language minority students is one of those decisions which often gets lost in politics.  (Final Paper) (Lau v. Nichols powerpoint presentation)

          Presentating our topics in a small group format gave us the chance to explain and defend what we were looking at, where we were going and why.  The questions posed by my group enlightened me to what I had not said or what I had not stated clearly.  I have revised and added questions to my research topics because of that.

           This course entailed a lot of research.  I found myself exploring at the GMU library amid construction, researching on the computer, in journals, books, articles.  As I researched bilingual education and the public schools' compliance with Lau v. Nichols, my innocence in the research world was shattered.  I kept finding contradictory articles.  One would say that the most effective way to teach English was through the home language and the next would state the opposite.  I was starting to see that research wasn't 'pure'.
           The articles pro and against Proposition 227 brought to the foreground the ugliness of politics in education and the omnipresence of politics at the policy level.  The arguments against bilingual education told about how children made little or no progress and the proof was in the standardized test results.  On the other side were those against Prop. 227 saying that the reason these children didn't make progress was that they were not in bilingual programs.  They were not being taught by certified teachers..  They were being segregated.  They were being ignored; they were being taught by teachers who didn't speak their language!
          While I was taking this course and reading about bilingual education and the politics behind it, I was reading the book mentioned above about the Houston public school system.   I had picked up the book to see how education of Hispanic children was handled in such a large system.  That system of 200,000 students was 50% Hispanic and yet the focus of the book touched on the political importance of having a Hispanic member on the school board but not on the programs for these children.  The topic of programs for non-English speakers was barely mentioned. But the importance of having the Hispanic member of the board vote with the majority certainly was! 
           I was starting to feel my naiveté peel away and the real world of politics enter education.  At my level I hadn't seen it.   Now I know that politics is a pervasive force in all aspects.  Boy, was I naive!

           Another issue that was in the news at the time of this class was the restructuring of the New York City school system.  I found myself riveted to the politics involved with that issue.  As we studied about the make-up and responsibilities of school boards, I kept finding exceptions to the rule in New York.  It brought me back to Cuban and Tyack's analogy of education system being like grammar-- there are always exceptions to the rules.
            I am still following the New York City school system reform and trying to see where it fits in to what we learned this summer. 

            I also discovered good and bad research.  There are websites which spew personal opinions as research for and against bilingual programs.  Now that I am taking a research methods course, I can see that the articles which gave me a negative 'gut' reaction were really not research.  They were opinions couched in research terms.  I will talk more about this in EDRS 810.

           Overall, I enjoyed this class and was not eager to see it end.  I really loved the stimulation of all the topics and issues.  It had the effect of scattering me again.  I feel that I need to start taking courses on multicultural education before I go off and change my major to supervision or education law!  There is so much out there and there is so much to learn.