Epiphany in Progress... The Film

Resources

Here are some books and web sites that address various issues raised in this film.

Books

Allen, Lew. A Guide to Renewing Your School: Lessons from the League of Professional Schools. San Francisco, 1999.

Anderson, Gary L., Kathryn Herr, and Ann Sigrid Nihlen. Studying Your Own School: An Educators Guide to Qualitative Practitioner Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, 1994. This guide presents research methods for educators.

Brouillette, Liane, edited. Charter Schools: lessons in school reform. Mahwah, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates, 2002. Brouillette uses an anthropological approach to study charter schools.

Bryk, Anthony S., Valerie E. Lee & Peter B. Holland. Catholic Schools and the Common Good. Harvard University Press, 1993. Bryk et al look at contemporary Catholic high schools their history, culture, and place within the larger American educational system: includes case studies of seven schools.

Burke, Mary Ann and Lawrence Picus. Developing Community-Empowered Schools. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Corwin Press, 2000. This step-by-step guide gives educators techniques for getting the community more involved in its schools.

Burke, Mary Ann. Recruiting Volunteers: A guide for non-profits. Los Altos, Calif.: Crisp Publications, 1992. Burke provides a how-to guide on recruiting volunteers for non-profits.

Carini, Patricia F. Starting Strong: A different look at children's school and standards. Practitioner Inquiry, 2001. Carini argues against high-stakes testing and advocates for public schools and school reform that use children's creative capacities.

Carper, James C. & Thomas C. Hunt, edited. Religious Schooling in America. Birmingham, AL: Religious Education Press, 1984. Carper and Hunt present a collection of essays on religious schools.

Cibulka, James G., Timothy J. O Brien & Doland Zewe. Inner City Private Elementary Schools: A Study. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1982. This study finds that there is higher student achievement in inner-city private elementary schools than in inner-city public schools.

Coleman, James S. and Thomas Hoffer. Public and Private High Schools: The Impact of Communities. Basic Books, 1987. Coleman and Hoffer argue that at-risk students can benefit from certain Catholic school characteristics.

Delpit, Lisa D. Other Peoples' Children: Cultural conflict in the classroom. New York: New Press: Distributed by W.W. Norton, 1995. Delpit argues that miscommunication between white teachers and minority students leads to low student achievement.

Doyle, Denis P. and Susan Pimental. Raising the Standard: Eight-step action guide for schools and communities. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Corwin Press, 1999. Doyle and Pimental present a guide for school reform.
Dryfoos, Joy G and Sue Maguire. Inside Full-service Community Schools. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, 2002. This book is a practical guide for building a full-service school.

Foster, Michelle. Black Teachers on Teaching. New York: New Press: Distributed by W.W. Norton, 1997. Foster interviews twenty black teachers about their experiences in the teaching profession.

Foster, Michelle and Jacqueline Irvine, editors. Growing up African-American in Catholic Schools. Teachers College Press, 1986. This is a collection of essays by African-American educators who believe that aspects of Catholic schools can help African-American children achieve academic success.

Fuller, Bruce. Inside Charter Schools: The paradox of radical decentralization. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000. Fuller presents and analyses the challenges that six different charter schools face.

Howell, William G. and Paul Peterson. The Education Gap: vouchers and urban schools. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2002. This book's data reveals higher student achievement among students who were given vouchers in randomized field trials.

Kozol, Jonathan. Savage Inequalities: Children in Americas Schools. New York: Harper Perennial, 1992. In this classic book, Kozol visits many schools throughout America and finds that the quality of education for the poor has declined dramatically.

Kotlowitz, Alex. There Are No Children Here: the story of two boys growing up in the other America. New York: Anchor Books, 1992. Kotlowitz documents the lives of two brothers who grew up in a Chicago public housing project.

Meier, Deborah. The Power of their Ideas: Lessons for America from a small school in Harlem. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995. Meier uses her experiences in the public education system to make an argument for smaller public schools.

Miron, Gary and Christopher Nelson. What's Public about Charter Schools: Lessons learned about choice and accountability. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, 2002. Miron and Nelson study the effectiveness of charter schools.

Ravitch, Diane and Joseph P. Viteretti. New Schools for a New Century: the Redesign of urban education. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997. Ravitch and Viteretti present a collection of essays on urban education reform by scholars in the field.

Schorr, Daniel and Lisbeth B. Schorr. Within Our Reach: Breaking the cycle of disadvantage. New York: Anchor Press/ Doubleday, 1988. The authors present an argument for social service reform.

Schorr, Jonathan. Hard Lessons: The Promise of an inner city charter school. New York: The Ballantine Publishing Group, 2002. Schorr exposes the challenges of a start-up charter school in Oakland, CA.

Schorr, Lisbeth B. and William Julius Wilson. Common Purpose: Strengthening families and neighborhoods to rebuild America. New York: Anchor Books, Doubleday, 1997. This book describes large-scale social programs that are helping inner-city communities.

Stuart, Amy Wells. Where Charter School Policy Fails: the problems of accountability and equity. New York: Teachers College Press, 2002. Stuart criticizes charter school policies that she believes limit the success of charter schools.

Suskind, Ron. A Hope in the Unseen: an American odyssey from the inner city to the Ivy League. New York: Broadway Books, 1998. This book describes Cedric Jennings experiences and challenges as a student who goes from an inner-city public school to an Ivy League university.

Wang, Margaret C. and William Lowe Boyd, editors. Improving Results for Children and Families: Linking collaborative services with school reform efforts. Greenwich, CT: Information Age Pub., 2000. Wang and Boyd argue that community services, such as healthcare, should be integrated into schools.

Wayson, William W. Handbook for Developing Public Confidence in Schools. Bloomington, Ind.: Phi Delta Kappa Educational Foundation, 1988. Wayson studies schools to decipher how they have gained the public's confidence.

Yancey, Patty. Parents Founding Charter Schools: Dilemmas of empowerment and decentralization. New York: Peter Lang Pub., 2000. This book chronicles the development of two start-up charter schools in California.

Websites

www.acsi.org/acsi The Association of Christian Schools Internationals website provides resources for Christian educators and schools.

www.bu.edu/libraary/education/glennschoolsbib.html A list of books about schools recommended by Professor Charles Glenn of Boston University School of Education.

www.capenet.org The Council for American Private Education's website offers information and resources for private school educators.

www.charterfriends.org/facilities.html A Policy Agenda for Charter School facilities financing.

www.charterschoolaw.com/topten-frame.htm Top ten websites for charter school resources centers.

www.eschoolnews.com/resources/funding/ Features Educator and Funding Resource Centers.

www.essentialschools.org The Coalition of Essential Schools guide.

http://fdncenter.org/funders/ A resource for grant seekers.
www.fundsnetservices.com: Provides funding resources.

www.lasw.org/protocols.html A guide for teachers to non-regimented and creative methods of student evaluation.

www.philaedfund.org/slcweb/guideli.html Outlines the processes that are in Homegrown Research (see below.)

www.pioneerinstitute.org: Features charter school resource center.

http://www.prospectcenter.org/institutes.html Describes the Prospect Institute and its processes.

www.researchforaction.org Homegrown Research: A guide for school communities. Assists school communities in looking at research and in carrying out their own home-grown research project as a school improvement tool.

Making the film | About the film crew | Film credits

Feature version | Epiphany School | Epiphany's first year | Epiphany School now |