School Reform in a Global Society is about how a silent, wealthy upper class in the United States waited until the end of the Twentieth Century to transform America into something it once was during the Age of the Robber Barons. Known today as neoliberals, this nostalgic elite, craving the return of the unregulated capitalism of the nineteenth century, see themselves as the new Victorian imperialists. Using the term globalization to mean economic colonialism, their corporate policies force Third World governments, parents and children alike to accept schooling that disregards and damages their cultures. Even in the United States they discovered they could not create their nineteenth century imperial nirvana without first forcing schools to develop an obedient working class that swore allegiance to them. This social history of schools, capitalism, colonialism and its child named globalization is about how those who crave wealth and power are willing to gamble away the lives of American youth to satisfy their dreams of past economic glory.

Peer learning allows a positive use of differences between pupils, turning them into learning opportunities. Yet education professionals often remain unfamiliar with the principles necessary to guarantee its effectiveness. The aim of this book is to help practitioners establish well-structured and effective peer learning projects using a variety of methods. It introduces and defines cooperative learning (mutual peer interaction) and peer tutoring (directional peer interaction) - outlining general organisational principles that will help practitioners implement peer learning in either of these forms. The authors consider how to prepare and train learners to undertake their roles effectively, and how to organise and monitor the process of interaction as it is happening. They then look at how these systems actually operate in the classroom, exploring how the organisational principles work in practice and giving many practical examples. Subsequently three successive chapters consider how to structure peer interactions in cooperative learning, same-age peer tutoring and cross-age peer tutoring. Finally, the advantages and problems, and the potential and challenges, of peer learning are examined. The book should be read in stages, with each part being able to be read on its own - thus providing time for reflection. Within each part, readers can choose to focus on cooperative learning or peer tutoring. The successive focuses on definitions, general principles of implementation and practical issues of implementation should help practitioners build their skills and confidence. Many choices between methods are described, and when teachers are confident in one method they may then consider trying a new method. It is the authors' hope that the book will become a model for peer learning by sharing with readers the skills of other practitioners, and thereby helping all children to develop to their full potential.

As the federal government forces states to create centralized systems of accountability, the notion of a "community" school is now less and less defined by substantive decisions on core curriculum. Yet, the idea of a school as community survives, through the local politics of education or the policies of magnet and charter schools with small student populations. This collection explores the extent to which our collective notions of school-community relations have prevented us from speaking openly about the tensions created when we imagine schools as communities.

Are you looking for ways to incorporate rigorous problem solving in your classroom? Are you struggling with how to include the ""E"" in your STEM instruction? Here is where to start. In this practical introduction to engineering for elementary through high school teachers, you'll learn how to create effective engineering-infused lessons that break down the barriers between science, math, and technology instruction. Veteran teacher Pamela Truesdell highlights engineering's connection to 21st century skills and college and career readiness, addresses the Next Generation Science Standards, and walks you through each step of the simple but powerful engineering design process. This is the essential tool of professional engineers and the key to engaging students in hands-on, collaborative projects that ask them to apply content area knowledge to find solutions for real-world problems. A sample lesson, links to additional resources, and guidelines for assessment ensure you'll have the essentials you need to kick off your students' exploration of engineering.

In a radically unequal United States, schools are often key sites in which injustice grows. Ansley T. Erickson's Making the Unequal Metropolis presents a broad, detailed, and damning argument about the inextricable interrelatedness of school policies and the persistence of metropolitan-scale inequality. While many accounts of education in urban and metropolitan contexts describe schools as the victims of forces beyond their control, Erickson shows the many ways that schools have been intertwined with these forces and have in fact via land-use decisions, curricula, and other tools helped sustain inequality. Taking Nashville as her focus, Erickson uncovers the hidden policy choices that have until now been missing from popular and legal narratives of inequality. In her account, inequality emerges not only from individual racism and white communities' resistance to desegregation, but as the result of long-standing linkages between schooling, property markets, labor markets, and the pursuit of economic growth. By making visible the full scope of the forces invested in and reinforcing inequality, Erickson reveals the complex history of, and broad culpability for, ongoing struggles in our schools.

Developmental and Educational Psychology for Teachers brings together a range of evidence drawn from psychology to answer a number of critical educational questions, from basic questions of readiness - for example, when is a child ready for school, through to more complex matters, such as how does a teacher understand and promote good peer relationships in their classroom? The answers to these and other questions discussed draw here on the interplay between a teachers' craft expertise and their knowledge of evidence and theory from developmental and educational psychology. Presenting a range of classic theories and contemporary research to help readers understand what the key issues are for teachers and other professionals, this book aides informed educational decisions in situations such as: inclusion, ability grouping, sex differences, developing creativity, home and peer influences on learning, and developing effective learners. Teachers in early years, primary and secondary settings are routinely faced with questions regarding the development of children. This not only relates to the planning and delivery of lessons, but also to the mental and physical wellbeing of the children and adolescents that they teach. The pedagogical features of this book are accessible and clearly presented, including focus questions that direct the reader's attention to key issues, activity posts that point the reader to meaningful and relevant research and show the practical applications of material covered, and extension material that gives depth to many of the topics covered. This book aims to inform the practice of both in-service and trainee teachers, addressing issues that are relevant to their practice. With no other detailed and accessible text presenting this evidence and theory specifically for an audience of practicing and trainee teachers currently on the market, this book will be of essential reading to practicing and trainee teachers for early years, primary and secondary education and other related educational contexts such as educational psychologists, counsellors, paediatric and child doctors and nurses.

Within the past few years, schools, communities, and parents throughout the world, have begun to recognize that bullying is not something that can be ignored with dismissive comments or admonitions. There is no doubt that school violence is a critical problem in America's schools and bullying is a maladaptive behavior with consequences. Bullying can be reduced, but first, educators and parents must recognize the pervasive nature of the problem. This easy-to-read book describes the problem of bullying at all school levels-elementary, middle, and high. Chapters include different types of bullying that occur and how they effect the bully, the bullied, and the bystander. The authors report the results of many studies including personal research to discuss incidences of bullying at school, and list of sources for preventing and intervening to reduce this type of misbehavior are included. For K-12 educators, professors of education, and parents.

This comprehensive look at Chinese-heritage students' academic, sociocultural, and emotional development in the public schools examines pertinent educational theories; complex (even inconvenient) realities; learning practices in and outside of schools; and social, cultural, and linguistic complications in their academic lives across diverse settings, homes, and communities. Chinese-heritage students are by far the largest ethnic group among Asian American and Asian Canadian communities, but it is difficult to sort out their academic performance because NAEP and most state/province databases lump all Asian students' results together. To better understand why Chinese-heritage learners range from academic role models to problematic students in need of help, it is important to understand their hearts and minds beyond test scores. This book is distinctive in building this understanding by addressing the range of issues related to Chinese-heritage K-12 students' languages, cultures, identities, academic achievements, and challenges across North American schools.

There are no magical prescriptions for success as a school leader, but Joe Batory's exemplary career as a superintendent provides ample examples of effective leadership. He truly 'Lets it All Hang Out' in this very revealing portrait of the human side of an award-winning superintendent. Beyond the issues of school leadership, Joey addresses the complexities of public education_the goals, aspirations, and ideals; the special qualities of the people who work inside schools, and the propaganda that surround them. This book will appeal to anyone who cares about education in America.

Catch a new vision of leadership that fosters school communities that are socially just and academically excellent with this accessible guide. It combines promising theoretical perspectives with stories about practitioners and schools across the United States, Canada, and in the South Pacific (Fiji, Australia, and New Zealand) to show how, in many varied contexts, leaders are making a difference. Good Intentions Are Not Enough, is designed to raise the awareness of all concerned citizens about how to develop schools with diverse populations. Comprehensive and research-based, this book offers theories and practical ideas helpful to both teachers and administrators.

At least 24 state legislatures have authorized state takeovers of local schools. This handbook assumes that state legislatures will continue endorsing takeovers as state policy, which begs an important question: how can takeovers be made effective? Garland argues that those who execute takeovers should expect a mess_racial, legal, political, and bureaucratic. This book serves as a first and chief resource for those interested in state takeovers of local school districts including a persuasive description of effective legislation, a strategy for implementation, and a comprehensive and well-researched compilation of takeover experiences. The main message is a warning that takeovers always cause turbulent waters but the author presses on to draft a strategy for more effectively navigating these waters. Will be of interest to parents, teachers, administrators, academics, students, and policymakers.

A strategic plan is a useful tool for communicating the purpose of the library media center (LMC) to the administrators, teachers, and parents of the school community. An initial benefit is an assessment of the library program's strengths, weaknesses, and impact on the teaching and learning process. The library media specialist should use the planning process to garner greater support, identify priorities for future direction, provide the basis for effective budget development, and articulate the LMC's integral role in the school's instructional program. Based on Information Power, as well as input from focus groups of librarians, computer educators, teachers, administrators, and parents, the authors identified a core of the essential elements found in quality library media programs. Rubrics developed for this core provide a foundation for developing and prioritizing goals and objectives, as well as tools for ongoing evaluation. School library media centers, often short of time and staff, will welcome this easy-to-follow blueprint, packed with forms, questions to consider, templates, rubrics, and charts. From forming a committee and constructing surveys, to good PR and a consistent evaluation process, this essential handbook provides the tools to create a visionary mission statement, the strategic plan that embodies it, and the steps to implement it.

If you have more questions than answers about online learning for K-12 students, then you need this comprehensive guide that takes you through all of the planning and implementation steps need to go from vision to actual delivery of online courses. Clearly written and incorporating useful aids such as a timeline for planning and creating your online program, this book provides information on evaluating online courses, how-to successfully mentor students online, and some opportunities and services that will enhance the online program. More multi-layered than step-by-step, the process described involves working in many areas simultaneously. Superintendents, board members, administrators, and teachers can successfully pull all of the pieces together with this book as their guide.

Do principals see themselves as others see them? Many new and veteran principals remark that one cannot truly know what it means to be a principal until you are one. However, most people have developed their own perceptions of the role of a principal based on their direct experience. Sharon Pristash describes the various perceptions of the principalship based on interviews with students, teachers, parents, and community members. She also offers some implications these perceptions might have for the profession. Viewpoints of practicing or former principals are included allowing the reader to compare and contrast the public and personal view of the profession. Whether novice or veteran principal, there's something for everyone in this fascinating study.

This easy-to-read book integrates research and performance-based concepts in order to demystify and debunk the conventional wisdom about education. For many years, education has been beset by myths - myths that it can't be fixed with new concepts, that it takes specialists to diagnose what's wrong, that research doesn't reflect the real world, that the lessons of business cannot be generalized to education. This book takes on these misunderstandings and shows precisely what educators may do in order to overcome them. Educators will find Salowe and Lessinger's advice to be a rational, sober, and research-based approach to an often-debated topic.

This is a time of far-reaching change and debate in American education and social policy, spurred in part by a rediscovery that civil-society institutions are often better than government at meeting human needs. As Charles Glenn shows in this book, faith-based schools and social agencies have been particularly effective, especially in meeting the needs of the most vulnerable. However, many oppose providing public funds for religious institutions, either on the grounds that it would threaten the constitutional separation of church and state or from concern it might dilute or secularize the distinctive character of the institutions themselves. Glenn tackles these arguments head on. He builds a uniquely comprehensive and persuasive case for faith-based organizations playing a far more active role in American schools and social agencies. And, most importantly, he shows that they could do so both while receiving public funds and while striking a workable balance between accountability and autonomy.

Glenn is ideally placed to make this argument. A leading expert on international education policies, he was for many years the director of urban education and civil rights for the Massachusetts Department of Education, and also serves as an Associate Minister of inner-city churches in Boston. Glenn draws on all his varied experience here as he reviews the policies and practices of governments in the United States and Europe as they have worked with faith-based schools and also with such social agencies as the Salvation Army and Teen Challenge. He seeks to answer key theoretical and practical questions: Why should government make greater use of faith-based providers? How could they do so without violating First Amendment limits? What working relationships protect the goals and standards both of government and of the organizations that the government funds? Glenn shows that, with appropriate forms of accountability and a strong commitment to a distinctive vision of service, faith-based organizations can collaborate safely with government, to their mutual benefit and that of those they serve. This is a major contribution to one of the most important topics in political and social debate today.

This book presents, in 11 chapters, a comprehensive look at the school superintendent that will be welcomed in the fields of education management and policy. Many different perspectives are represented: studying the school manager (Glass, Kowalski, and Glasman), minorities in the profession (Ortiz and Brunner), and the radical decentralization of the British school system under Thatch and Major (Campell, Powell, and Parker). Legal positions and collective bargaining are also discussed to great effect. Professors, public school educators, and policymakers should all find this book useful due to the critical nature of the superintendency.

Unlike other humanistic disciplines, the academic study of religion must contend with a phenomenon that touches every dimension of human experience. For scholars so engaged, the study of religion often becomes a cross-cultural as well as a necessarily interdisciplinary endeavor. In this collection of original essays, Jon R. Stone has brought together the intellectual autobiographies of fourteen senior scholars--all with national or international reputations in their respective fields--each of whom reflects upon his or her own theoretical assumptions and methodological approaches to the study of religion. Taken together, these essays represent the variety of research methods and interpretive rigor mature scholars bring to the task of examining religious phenomena, religious actions, religious movements, and religious ideas.

This book considers in unprecedented detail one of the most confounding questions in American racial practice: when to speak about people in racial terms. Viewing "race talk" through the lens of a California high school and district, "Colormute" draws on three years of ethnographic research on everyday race labeling in education. Based on the author's experiences as a teacher as well as an anthropologist, it discusses the role race plays in everyday and policy talk about such familiar topics as discipline, achievement, curriculum reform, and educational inequality.

Pollock illustrates the wide variations in the way speakers use race labels. Sometimes people use them without thinking twice; at other moments they avoid them at all costs or use them only in the description of particular situations. While a major concern of everyday race talk in schools is that racial descriptions will be inaccurate or inappropriate, Pollock demonstrates that anxiously suppressing race words (being what she terms "colormute") can also cause educators to reproduce the very racial inequities they abhor.

The book assists readers in cultivating a greater understanding of the pitfalls and possibilities of everyday race talk and clarifies previously murky discussions of "colorblindness." By bridging the gap between theory and practice, "Colormute" will be enormously helpful in fostering ongoing conversations about dismantling racial inequality in America.

Can charter schools save public education? This radical question has unleashed a flood of opinions from Americans struggling with the contentious challenges of education reform. There has been plenty of heat over charter schools and their implications, but, until now, not much light. This important new book supplies plenty of illumination.

Charter schools--independently operated public schools of choice--have existed in the United States only since 1992, yet there are already over 1,500 of them. How are they doing? Here prominent education analysts Chester Finn, Bruno Manno, and Gregg Vanourek offer the richest data available on the successes and failures of this exciting but controversial approach to education reform. After studying one hundred schools, interviewing hundreds of participants, surveying thousands more, and analyzing the most current data, they have compiled today's most authoritative, comprehensive explanation and appraisal of the charter phenomenon. Fact-filled, clear-eyed, and hard-hitting, this is the book for anyone concerned about public education and interested in the role of charter schools in its renewal.

Can charter schools boost student achievement, drive educational innovation, and develop a new model of accountability for public schools? Where did the idea of charter schools come from? What would the future hold if this phenomenon spreads? These are some of the questions that this book answers. It addresses pupil performance, enrollment patterns, school start-up problems, charges of inequity, and smoldering political battles. It features close-up looks at five real--and very different--charter schools and two school districts that have been deeply affected by the charter movement, including their setbacks and triumphs. After outlining a new model of education accountability and describing how charter schools often lead to community renewal, the authors take the reader on an imaginary tour of a charter-based school system.

Charter schools are the most vibrant force in education today. This book suggests that their legacy will consist not only of helping millions of families obtain a better education for their children but also in renewing American public education itself.

This book explores the utilisation of seclusions and restraints in schools. In certain circumstances, teachers and other staff may decide that it is necessary to restrain or seclude children in order to protect them from harming themselves or others. Some doctors and teachers contend that using seclusions and restraints can reduce injury and agitation and that it would be very difficult for organisations to run programs for children and adults with special needs without being able to use these methods. The authors highlight cases where staff at some programs employed unsafe restraint techniques, resulting in the death and abuse of teens in their care. Recent reports by advocacy groups indicate that similar restraint techniques have been used at public and private schools throughout the country.

Specialized Schools for High-Ability Learners focuses on educational programming offered in nontraditional, publicly approved, and private settings, with important details about how to serve high-ability learners in specialized schools and deliver schoolwide educational change. Each chapter offers a differentiated resource for educators who are interested in designing and implementing programs in specialized school settings by providing a discussion of the critical components for inclusion in a carefully planned, coherent, and quality-minded K-12 curricular sequence. This book delivers a comprehensive discussion with recommendations for the learning experiences of high-talent students in specialized schools and alternatively approved educational programs. Through relevant research and practical applications, this compendium will help in developing high levels of talent among the next generation of competent critical thinkers.

The world of the school librarian has changed significantly over the past ten years with the proliferation of technology into all phases of education; this book attempts to address these issues. What does a school librarian need to know about technology? Technology for the School Librarian: Theory and Practice is an introduction to all aspects of technology in the school library and provides a starting point for further study of this wide-ranging-and critically important-field. The only book that addresses both the theoretical and the practical aspects of the subject, Technology for the School Librarian is organized into 13 chapters describing the most vital topics in technology for school librarians. Within these chapters, school librarians (whether practicing or prospective) will be introduced to the practical aspects of technology in the school library and presented with a theoretical framework that will allow them to continue their research and learning. Case studies facilitate understanding, as do the study questions included with each chapter. Lists features that should be included in a school library web page Provides a chronology tracing the development of technology in school libraries Offers an illustration of network topologies Includes questions for research/further study in each chapter

In Where Teachers Thrive, Susan Moore Johnson outlines a powerful argument about the importance of the school as an organization in nurturing high-quality teaching. Based on case studies conducted in fourteen high-poverty, urban schools, the book examines why some schools failed to make progress, while others achieved remarkable results. It explores the challenges that administrators and teachers faced and describes what worked, what didn't work, and why. Johnson draws on vivid portraits of schools to highlight an array of school-based systems and practices that support teachers' professional growth and effectiveness. These include a rich and interactive hiring process; team-based curriculum planning and assessment; and informative feedback and ongoing professional learning. Critical to all of these is the role of the principal as an essential agent in a school's success. Although these elements may vary from school to school, Johnson argues that together these systems provide a comprehensive, mutually reinforcing set of well-orchestrated strategies that can help schools deliver results that exceed the sum of teachers' individual efforts. Since 2000, policy makers and education officials have diligently sought to improve schools by improving the quality of individual teachers. However, even if those teachers are skilled and committed, the schools where they work are all too often disjointed, dysfunctional organizations that serve no one well. Where Teachers Thrive explains clearly how educators within a school can join together to adopt systems of practice that ensure growth and success by all teachers and their students.

This is the first biography in English of an uncommon American, Dr. David Murray, a professor of mathematics at Rutgers University, who was appointed by the Japanese government as Superintendent of Education in the Empire of Japan in 1873. The founding of the Gakusei-the first public school system launched in Japan-marks the beginning of modern education in Japan, accommodating all children of elementary school age. Murray's unwavering commitment to its success renders him a pioneer in the spread of Western education to the Far East, and an advocate for the future of Japan in the modern world. Benjamin Duke has compiled this comprehensive biography of David Murray to showcase Murray's work, both in helping the samurai students in their studies at Rutgers, and in his unprecedented role in early Japanese-American relations. This fascinating story uncovers a little-known link between Rutgers University and Japan, and it is the only book to conclude that Rutgers made a greater contribution to the development of modern education in the early Meiji Era than any other non-Japanese college or university in the world.