The Business Agenda and School Reform: A Case Study of Charlotte, North Carolina

该项目根据对公立学校的商业批评，审查了一个社区为改革当地教育所做的努力。这项研究借鉴了三种截然不同的学术和理论：学校改革的性质和过程，劳动力技能和经济生产率之间的关系，以及学生对学校教育的抵制。在北卡罗来纳州夏洛特的一个社区，扩展了首席研究员之前NSF资助的对这些主题的研究。这项研究有三个主要目标：(1)确定当地的劳动力需求，并评估现有劳动力，特别是非大学入门级工人，目前在多大程度上满足这些需求；(2)确定和描述自20世纪80年代末以来夏洛特-梅克伦堡学区实施的实际改革，并评估改革的效果，特别关注对学校教育相对于劳动力准备的商业批评，教育质量的任何整体改善，以及改革对该地区不同学生群体的教育公平影响；以及(3)评估青少年对等待他们的劳动力机会的认识，并模拟这些观念是如何影响他们在高中的表现的。本研究的意义在于其独特性。自20世纪80年代以来，直言不讳和活跃的商界表达了他们对学校纠正这种情况的担忧。从那时起，夏洛特-梅克伦堡学校经历了大规模的重组，没有其他受商业启发的学校改革研究通过改革进程全面审查重组，以评估改革的结果。此外，很少有任何关于改革的分析，比如他们对学校和工作之间的关系的看法，以及这些观念在他们高中表现中所起的作用。因此，夏洛特可以作为探索这些问题的战略地点或关键案例研究。

The project examines one community's efforts to reform local education in light of the business critique of public schools. the research draws upon three distinct bodies of scholarship and theory: the nature and process of school reform, the relationship between workforce skills and economic productivity, and student resistance to schooling. Extending the principal investigator's previous NSF funded study of these topics in one community, Charlotte, North Carolina. The study has three main goals: (1) to identify the local labor force needs and to assess to what extent the available workforce, especially noncollege-bound entry-level workers, currently meets these needs; (2) to identify and describe the actual reforms enacted in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school District since the late 1980s and to evaluate the effects of the reforms with particular attention to the business critique of schooling vis-a-vis workforce preparation, any overall improvement in educational quality, and the educational equity effects of the reforms for diverse populations of students in the district; and (3) to assess adolescents' awareness of the labor force opportunities which await them and to model ho these perceptions shape their high school performance. the significance of this research lies in its uniqueness. since the 1980s, the vocal and active business community has articulated its concerns that schools remedy this situation. since then the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools have undergone massive restructuring No other study of business-inspired school reform has holistically examined restructuring, through the reform process, to an assessment of the outcomes of the reforms. Moreover, rarely does any analysis of reforms as to their view of the relationship between schooling and work and the role these perceptions play in their high school performance. thus, Charlotte can serve as a strategic site or a critical case study for an exploration of these issues.