A Learning-Centered Framework for Education Reform

In her new book, Betty Demarest describes a bold agenda for education reform—one that is firmly grounded in a synthesis of educational research about learning, teaching, and the contexts of education. The author’s “learning-centered” framework includes: (1) a broad and balanced set of education goals; (2) a multifaceted concept of achievement; (3) classroom capacity for learning; (4) systemic capacity and infrastructure; (5) shared, reciprocal accountability; and (6) systems of multiple assessments. New research-based concepts in these six areas are compared critically to older concepts behind standards-based reform and No Child Left Behind.

Book Features:

• A comprehensive, alternative framework for future education reform that focuses on improving the core educational practices of learning, teaching, content, and leadership.
• A federal role that emphasizes meaningful partnerships rather than top-down control.
• A critique of past standards and present accountability-based frameworks, with implications of the learning-centered framework for future national policy, especially ESEA.
• An operational definition of educational capacity, a re-conceptualization of accountability, and a sharp reversal of the relative emphasis placed on these strategies.

Elizabeth J. Demarest is an education consultant living in Alexandria, Virginia. She was formerly with the U.S. Department of Education and the National Education Association.

“Betty Demarest clearly defines a learning-centered framework for improving policy and practice in our nation’s classrooms.”
—Gerald N. Tirozzi, National Association of Secondary School Principals

“This book is a welcome gift to policymakers and practitioners.”
—Roland Tharp, University of California, Berkeley

“Demarest provides a research-based foundation for informed discussion and debate as Congress renews federal education law. Her synthesis of key issues should provide a starting point for any serious discussion of the way forward in federal education policy.”
—Mary Haywood Metz, professor emerita, University of Wisconsin–Madison