Product Description: In a reporting tour de force, award-winning journalist Steven Brill takes an uncompromising look at the adults who are fighting over America’s failure to educate its children―and points the way to reversing that failure.Brill’s vivid narrative―filled with unexpected twists and turns―takes us from the Oval Office, where President Obama signs off on an unprecedented plan that will infuriate the teachers’ unions because it offers billions to states that win an education reform “contest”; to boisterous assemblies, where parents join the fight over their children’s schools; to a Fifth Avenue apartment, where billionaires plan a secret fund to promote school reform; to a Colorado high school, where students who seemed destined to fail are instead propelled to college; to state capitols across the country, where school reformers hoping to win Obama’s “contest” push bills that would have been unimaginable a few years ago...read more

Product Description: How can districts bring instructional improvement to scale within and across schools? The authors of Collaborative School Improvement argue that districts can play a powerful part in helping schools build the capacity to engage in inquiry-based reform—but that this effort requires a shift in districts’ traditional role as a professional development provider...read more

Product Description: This timely and important book looks at what truly democratic educational practice in schools should be and gives readers case study tools and practices they need in order to reform schools toward social justice and an education system that truly leave no child behind...read more

A high-performing school is described as one where student achievement is high and student and teacher absenteeism is low. Student behavior is such that teachers seldom have to control them or tell them what to do. This results in greater time on task, higher teacher morale, low teacher absenteeism, and improved parental support. One other distinctive feature of a high-performing school is that the student peer group is a positive force and not a negative force. The end result is a school culture where faculty and students trust and care about each other, and there is a cooperative attitude.

Product Description: Responding to the growing epidemic of academic dishonesty, this authoritative text lays the groundwork for a positive school makeover. This guide—which culled research from six high schools in Connecticut that indicated that more than 90 percent of students participate in some form of cheating during the average school year—provides teachers, school administrators, and parents with a toolkit of resources and strategies needed to engender a culture of scholastic honesty...read more

Product Description: Diverse needs, streamlined schedule—find out how with this all-in-one resource! How can each school day be inclusive for all learners, while making the most of limited time and resources? Help has arrived with this latest book from school-scheduling gurus Elliot Merenbloom and Barbara Kalina...read more

This book describes in detail the attributes of learning communities and how these characteristics help students acquire a sense of moral responsibility and commitment to fellow students. Clifford H. Edwards provides an account of how schools fail to satisfy student needs and thus promote discipline problems. Special attention is given to children's need for self-direction and how empowering them can promote more responsible learning involvement. There is also a focus on the factors that motivate learning and those that do not and how teachers can help their students become more intrinsically interested in school learning. Constructivist learning theory is presented as the most accepted explanation of how children learn and how it articulates with the learning community approach to education. The inquiry learning strategy is given as the most effective way to apply constructivist learning theory in classrooms. Appropriate relationships and effective communications are presented as essential components of learning communities and how they accentuate the effectiveness of this learning orientation. Democratic discipline within learning communities is described in detail.

Product Description: A democratic, ethical leader integrates democracy, social justice, and school reform through dialogue and is guided by a sense of responsibility to students, families, and the community. Democratic Ethical Educational Leadership presents a cohesive framework for aspiring and practicing leaders to explore the complex nature of leadership that can support democratic citizenry and social responsibility...read more

Dream! Create! Sustain! is written for courageous, passionate, and visionary change leaders working in school systems throughout the world. It provides those change leaders with essential concepts, principles, strategies, and tactics for how to create and sustain whole-system change in their school systems. The information provided by Duffy is based on years of research on and real-world experience with systemic change, learning organizations, systems thinking, and organization-wide change. This book includes a description of a transformational change methodology and set of tools specifically designed to create and sustain whole-system change.

Dystopia and Education: Insights into Theory, Praxis, and Policy in an age of Utopia Gone Wrong provides an as-of-yet unexplored critical perspective for examining contemporary educational theory, praxis, and policy with particular reference to the current state of dehumanizing and often oppressive policy and practices that have come to demarcate the era of NCLB and RTT. The authors in this collection employ dystopian themes found in literature, film, visual art, and video games as the lens for that critical inquiry. As such Dystopia and Education: Insights into Theory, Praxis, and Policy is an essential contribution to the philosophical/critical tradition in educational scholarship. It is especially valuable because the inquiry undertaken is from a new perspective-one that will extend the critical tradition into a yet unexplored arena. Given the educational climate established by NCLB and RTT, this collection is especially important to the ongoing critical analysis of such policy mandates. There is also a significantly important timeliness to this book given NCLB's utopian expectation of universal academic proficiency among American schoolchildren by the year 2014: as educators race to achieve such a noble yet naïve goal, this collection of essays examines the educational environment that has been enacted to achieve such ends, and describes our current state as a utopia-gone wrong.

Product Description: Educating from the Heart: Theoretical and Practical Approaches to Transforming Education is based on the questions: "What does it mean to educate from the heart? What does it mean to educate with spirit?" It offers both theoretical overviews and practical approaches for educators, academics, education students and parents who are interested in transforming schools...read more

Product Description: During the last 20 years, the United States has experienced more attempts at education reform than at any other time in its history. Efforts to reform financing, the assessment of student performance, accountability and equity, and school choice have all been implemented - with varying levels of success...read more

The intent of this book is to look at our educational system as it currently works and to evaluate not only why this system is broken, but also how we might move forward, together, to fix it.So, how do we fix our failing schools? We begin by finally taking the educator out from behind the desk and bring them to the table to share in the decisions and solutions regarding what is happening in our schools. It is time to part the curtains on our public school system and show you the villains, the heroes, the talented, and the not so talented. It is time to give you a behind the scenes view of our educational stage.

Product Description: Educationally Correct Academically Sound moves school from what research says to how to institute research-based concepts in schools. This book not only provides the ingredients found in high performing schools, but it shows educators how to use the ingredients so all stakeholders are working toward the same end on a daily basis...read more

Product Description: Reimagine school practices to meet the needs of modern learners. With today's digitally rich classrooms and highly connected world, the context on which traditional schools are built must shift dramatically. The author challenges school administrators and leaders to let go of their assumptions about the relevance of traditional schooling in learners' lives and deeply reevaluate the effectiveness of their current methods...read more

Product Description: Enter the Alternative School is an in-depth examination of public school alternatives to traditional educational models in the US. This book analyses how urban education can respond to a system growing increasingly standardised and privatised...read more

This book unveils “essential measures” that create a revitalized educational system of which educators and parents can use to promote student success. When these measures are applied properly, the benefits include, eradicating student fear, elevating student motivation, improving school attendance, and reducing student dropout rates. These measures aim to improve student pride and academic excellence while closing the student achievement gap.