Project Description

“Provide our children with rich diverse curriculum with multiple pathways to success that they need to become cognitively nimble and responsible citizens. …stop wasting time, money and children’s futures on trying to compare them to some mythical prototype in another country or trying to make every child the same. Let’s reject standardization and national testing, and move forward democratically, creatively, innovatively and locally.”

For more information visit www.christienken.com | Video produced by arsenal AV | Music by God Is An Astronaut and Angels and Airwaves | Music by God Is An Astronaut and Angels and Airwaves

In his recent book, The School Reform Landscape: Fraud, Myth, and Lies, Christopher Tienken, Ed.D. and co-Author Donald C. Orlich take an in-depth and controversial look at school reform since the launch of Sputnik I. They scrutinize school reform events, proposals, and policies from the last 60 years through the lens of critical social theory and examine the ongoing tensions between the need to keep a vibrant unitary system of public education and the ongoing assault by corporate and elite interests to create a dual system. The following events, proposals, and policies are critiqued:

  • Sputnik
  • A Nation At Risk
  • Big Business Values in Education
    • No Child Left Behind<[/fusion_li_item]
  • State Standards Movement
  • Common Core State Standards Initiative
  • High Stakes Testing
  • Charter Schools
The authors provide an evidence-based contrarian view of the free-market education ideas and pierce the veil of the new reform policies to find that they are built not upon empirical evidence, but instead rest solidly on foundations of fraud, myth, and lies. The fight for a unitary system of public schools and the rise of the dual system is chronicled. Ideas for a new set of reform policies, based on empirical evidence and supportive of a unitary, democratic system of education are presented.

See more at: http://christienken.com/publication/the-school-reform-landscape-fraud/#sthash.fi4Napr8.dpuf

About the Author; Christopher Tienken, Ed.D. is an assistant professor of Education Administration at Seton Hall University in the College of Education and Human Services, Department of Education Management, Policy, and Leadership. He has public school administration experience as a PK-12 assistant superintendent, middle school principal, director of curriculum and instruction, and elementary school assistant principal. He began his career in education as an elementary school teacher. Tienken is currently the editor of the American Association of School Administrators Journal of Scholarship and Practice and the Kappa Delta Pi Record.

Tienken’s research interests include school reform issues such as the influence of curriculum quality on student outcomes and the construct validity of high-stakes standardized tests as decision-making tools to determine school effectiveness. The Institute of Education Sciences recognized his research about the effects of professional development on student achievement and the National Staff Development Council awarded him the Best Research Award in 2008 and he received the Truman Kelley Award for Outstanding Scholarship from Kappa Delta Pi in 2013.

Tienken has authored over 80 publications including book chapters and articles. His new book, with co-author Don Orlich is titled, The School Reform Landscape : Fraud, Myth, and Lies. He presents papers regularly at state, national, international, and private venues. Tienken has ongoing research collaborations with colleagues at the Universita` degli Studi Roma Tre, Rome, Italy, the University of Catania, Sicily, and he was named as a visiting scholar at both universities.

See more at: http://christienken.com/bio/bio/#sthash.sCzUSaxe.dpuf