Summary Of The Prize By Dale Russakoff

LITERATURE REVIEW #1: The Prize In the book, The Prize, written by Dale Russakoff discusses the issues urban schools face with the limits of money and a top-down approach in how to run the schooling system. The book is based of Newark schools, and starts off with New Jersey politicians Cory Booker and Chris Christie who are troubled with the $100 million pledge from Mark Zuckerberg to transform the Newark school. Money is limited to reform education, even more so with the top-down autocracy of the locally elected officials who are not allowing reform to take place. The book further describes the situations in the Newark school, with the problems of poverty and violence at the forefront of it all. The exertion of teachers and others trying

An argument that contributes to this discussion is the equality of educational opportunity study of 1966 by James Coleman, found that family level characteristics are more effective and powerful in students’ achievement in school versus school level characteristics (money, class size, teacher training, etc). Russakoff does mention a couple family level characteristics, but focuses on the school-level, the opposition of Coleman’s findings. This was an interesting study that shocked many people and could possibly relate back as to why Booker and Christie could have had trouble with this study’s findings. It could relate back to the autocracy of the locally official elects in how to utilize the money for the Newark schools, and how according to Coleman’s argument that the money ‘would not help,’ as much as it

Bulman is based on why Hollywood films represent students and education in constant way that can be predicted by the actors/plot social class based on American culture. The difference among urban, suburban, and private school genres are separated and compared to find their consistencies in films. Bulman uses Durkheim’s theory of individualism (utilitarian and expressive) to indicate how individuals are dependent on one another and although it is a product of social life, it can restrict some from recognizing their connection to the social life. This foundation of individualism guides the reader as the book further breaks down how the films ‘choose’ their plots to portray a stereotyped social class. Urban schools are in need of a savior, suburban schools have student heroes and do not need education, and the private school that challenges the culture of privilege are the three sections