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

该项目考察了一个社区根据对公立学校的商业批评对当地教育进行改革的努力。 这项研究借鉴了三个不同的学术和理论：学校改革的性质和过程，劳动力技能和经济生产力之间的关系，以及学生对学校教育的抵制。 在北卡罗来纳州的夏洛特社区，扩展了主要研究者先前由NSF资助的这些主题的研究。 本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，特别是非大学入学的入门级工人，目前在多大程度上满足这些需求;（2）确定和描述夏洛特颁布的实际改革-梅克伦堡学区自20世纪80年代末以来，并评估改革的影响，特别注意学校教育与劳动力准备的商业批评，本研究的目的在于探讨教育品质的整体改善，以及教育改革对区内不同族群学生的教育公平效果;（3）评估青少年对劳动机会的认知，并探讨这些认知如何影响青少年的高中表现。 本研究的意义在于其独特性。 自1980年代以来，积极发言的商界人士表达了对学校纠正这种情况的关切。 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研究的商业启发学校改革已经全面审查重组，通过改革过程，以评估改革的成果。 此外，很少有任何分析的改革，以他们的看法之间的关系，学校和工作和这些看法在他们的高中成绩发挥的作用。 因此，夏洛特可以作为一个战略网站或一个关键的案例研究，探索这些问题。

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.