Achieving Success for Kids is a clarion call to action that explains why we need to save America's children and return our nation and our schools to the core values, beliefs, and principles upon which our nation was founded. In this book, Tim L. Adsit presents a bold, visionary blueprint for change and success in achieving and exceeding international standards in American schools within the next two to four years, restoring America and its educational system to their rightful place of prominence and leadership in the world.

Very high rates of family fragmentation in the United States are subtracting from what very large numbers of students are learning in school and forever holding them back in many other ways. This in turn is damaging the country economically by making us less primed for innovation while also making millions of Americans less competitive in an increasingly demanding worldwide marketplace. All of which is leading - and can only lead - to deepening class divisions in a nation which has never viewed itself or operated in such splintered ways. What can be done to reverse these severely destructive trends, starting with reducing the enormous number of children forced to grow up with only one parent living under the same roof? What educational reforms are most likely to help under such demanding circumstances? And as dangerous as the situation is, why do leaders in education and other fields persist, for both understandable and less-worthy reasons, in dancing around profoundly important questions of family breakdown to the point of contortion and ultimately failure?

Education beyond the Mesas is the fascinating story of how generations of Hopi schoolchildren from northeastern Arizona "turned the power" by using compulsory federal education to affirm their way of life and better their community. Sherman Institute in Riverside, California, one of the largest off-reservation boarding schools in the United States, followed other federally funded boarding schools of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in promoting the assimilation of indigenous people into mainstream America. Many Hopi schoolchildren, deeply conversant in Hopi values and traditional education before being sent to Sherman Institute, resisted this program of acculturation. Immersed in learning about another world, generations of Hopi children drew on their culture to skillfully navigate a system designed to change them irrevocably. In fact, not only did the Hopi children strengthen their commitment to their families and communities while away in the "land of oranges," they used their new skills, fluency in English, and knowledge of politics and economics to help their people when they eventually returned home. Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert draws on interviews, archival records, and his own experiences growing up in the Hopi community to offer a powerful account of a quiet, enduring triumph.

People who live in poverty consider life in different ways than those who have adequate basic resources. Many educators tend to see the world through their middle-class worldview. Because of this, they do not understand these significant and often rational differences. They may misinterpret behavior they see and ascribe negative connotations to how their students are reacting. Their assumptions can affect the quality of both the teaching and the learning that happens. Most teachers have real passion for educating their students but their experiences limit how they relate to the challenges some of their students face daily. Understanding Poverty in the Classroom: * Identifies perceptual differences * Teaches strategies to address the special needs of children from poverty * Encourages teachers to learn about the neighborhoods where their students live and what to look for in those areas * Confronts myths about poverty and reinforces learning with specific illustrations This resource is interactive with exercises that increase the reader's learning and provides specific tools to improve the educational process for teachers, students, and parents.

Over the course of ten years, this extensive qualitative study focused on the academic resilience phenomenon. The research delves into the educational resilience experiences of fifty low socioeconomic students of color from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds. In addition to chronicling specific protective factors and processes active in the students' lives, several symbiotic relationships between groups of protective factors are documented and explored. A Resilience Cycle theory, which was chronicled in previous works of the authors, is used as a framework to view essential elements of the students' academic success. Ultimately, the data and findings are used to propose practical suggestions for promoting academic resilience in at-risk youth nationwide. Furthermore, because one author specializes in education and the other in psychology, both of these disciplines are brought to bear on this crucial and understudied topic.

Understanding Teenage Girls: Culture, Identity and Schooling focuses on a range of social phenomenon that impact the lives of adolescent females of color. The authors highlight the daily challenges that African-American, Chicana, and Puerto Rican teenage girls face with respect to peer and family influences, media stereotyping, body image, community violence, pregnancy, and education. The authors also emphasize the incredible resiliency that young women possess in countering many of the social barriers confronting them. This work attempts to communicate the often hushed voices of girls of color, for the purpose of understanding their views on life experiences and how they negotiate social and cultural mores. In company with their perspectives are the authors' analyses guided by their years of teaching and mentoring experiences, as well as contemporary research literature from the fields of education, counseling, psychology, nursing, and anthropology. Practical strategies are also offered for those professionals assisting adolescent girls of color in and outside of schools.

In the latter half of the twentieth century, tens of thousands of Native American families moved to cities across the United States, some via the government relocation program and some on their own. In the cities, they encountered new forms of work, entertainment, housing, and education. In this study, Stephen Kent Amerman focuses on the educational experiences of Native students in urban schools in Phoenix, Arizona, a city with one of the largest urban Indian communities in the nation. The educational experiences of Native students in Phoenix varied over time and even in different parts of the city, but interactions with other ethnic groups and the experience of being a minority for the first time presented distinctive challenges and opportunities for Native students. Using oral histories as well as written records, Amerman examines how Phoenix schools tried to educate and assimilate Native students alongside Hispanic, Asian, black, and white students and how Native children, their parents, and the Indian community at large responded to this new urban education and the question of their cultural identity. Reconciling these pressures was a struggle, but many found resourceful responses, charting paths that enabled them to acquire an urban education while still remaining Indian.

Focused on providing readers with the knowledge and skills to maximize the educational opportunities for children raised in low socio-economic conditions, Culturally Proficient Approaches to Conditions of Poverty provides a context for helping teachers and school leaders understand school equity issues that are related to social class. The authors frame this timely subject within the lens of cultural proficiency-a perspective that emphasizes how one works with people different from one's self in a non-judgmental, pro-social manner to help ensure effective practices. This strengths-based approach contrasts with previous deficit models that have targeted what isn't working and what doesn't exist for the child, rather than building on children's strengths, regardless of their socio-economic status.

This book chronicles 5th and 6th grade writers - children of gang members, drug users, poor people, and non-documented and documented immigrants - in a rural school in the southwest US coming into their voices, cultivating those voices, and using those voices in a variety of venues, beginning with the classroom community and spreading outward.

At the heart of this book is the cultivation of tension between official and unofficial portraits of these students. Official portraits are composed of demographic data, socioeconomic data, and test results. Unofficial counterportraits offer different views of children, schools, and communities. The big ideas of official and unofficial portraits are presented, then each chapter offers data (the children s and teachers processes and products) and facets of the theoretical construct of counterportraits, as a response to official portraits. The counterportraits are built slowly in order to base them in evidence and to articulate their complexity.

Many teachers and soon-to-be teachers facing the dilemmas and complexities of teaching in diverse classrooms have serious questions about how to honor students lives outside of school, making school more relevant. This book offers evidence to present to the public, legislators, and the press as a way of talking back to official portraits, demonstrating that officially failing schools are not really failing - evidence that is crucial for the survival of public schools.

Indigenous people have often been confronted with education systems that ignore their cultural and historical perspectives. Largely unsuccessful projects of assimilation have been the predominant outcome of indigenous communities' encounters with state schools, as many indigenous students fail to conform to mainstream cultural norms. This insightful volume is an important contribution to our understanding of indigenous empowerment through education. The contributors to this volume work in the fields of education, social development and community empowerment among indigenous communities around the world. Their essays create a new foundation for implementing specialized indigenous/minority education worldwide, and engage the simultaneous projects of cultural preservation and social integration. This work will be vital for scholars in Native American studies, ethnic studies, and education.

This important book explores the diverse answers to questions posed about the educational achievement of African American males. Leading scholars in the field of Urban Education share their unique approaches to this serious issue, delving into a discussion that covers the following areas: - academic; - sociological; - socio-economic; - emotional; - cultural; - cognitive; - teacher-student interaction; - access to educational opportunity outside of the classroom. Offering unique contributions to both the literature and practice, Fashola et al pave a way toward achieving high-quality education for African American males.

Understanding Gay and Lesbian Youth assists the classroom teacher, school counselor, and administrator in relating to gay and lesbian youth and creating accepting and supportive learning climates. David Campos begins with a discussion of the current state of affairs regarding gay and lesbian youth in schools, including a discourse on the developmental milestones, and provides practical strategies for working effectively with these students. The text, concise, yet comprehensive, features: _

This important book explores the diverse answers to questions posed about the educational achievement of African American males. Leading scholars in the field of Urban Education share their unique approaches to this serious issue, delving into a discussion that covers the following areas: - academic; - sociological; - socio-economic; - emotional; - cultural; - cognitive; - teacher-student interaction; - access to educational opportunity outside of the classroom. Offering unique contributions to both the literature and practice, Fashola et al pave a way toward achieving high-quality education for African American males.

Much has been theorized about the positive correlation between formal education and the change in women's social and legal status. In 2000, however, a United Nations report on gender discrimination indicated that bias was overwhelmingly due to socialization, or informal learning, as expressed through cultural values, norms, and traditions. Governments investigated in the UN report cited cultural relativity, such as harmful laws and customs, as a major element of concern. In a study on women and higher education in modern Lebanon one finds the Lebanese case mimics international trends in the unwillingness to confront and reinterpret strict and rigid ideologies, which limit the transformation of female educational progress into change in women's societal roles. Women, Education, and Socialization in Modern Lebanon provides a historical background for these socio/political influences on the Lebanese educational system.

"With a wonderful mix of theory and practice, this volume is for professionals and for lay people, indeed for anyone interested in the crucial questions related to educational leadership in this country. The authors are to be congratulated, and the readers will be grateful for their efforts."
Barry Munitz
President and CEO
JP Getty Trust

Foreword by Robert E. Slavin

"This book provides a unique source of information, experience, and evidence that is essential for any educator or policymaker involved in planning afterschool programs for children."
Robert E. Slavin, Codirector
Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed at Risk
Johns Hopkins University

Building Effective Afterschool Programs

Olatokunbo S. Fashola

Raise the caliber of your afterschool program with these exemplary models and get outstanding results!

Through a comprehensive review of various afterschool programs across the United States, respected authority on program effectiveness, Olatokunbo Fashola, sheds new light on "what works" to increase academic achievement during nonschool hours. Administrators, policymakers, teachers, and researchers can benefit from the examples of both the successes and the shortcomings encountered by their colleagues in the quest to create enhanced learning opportunities in safe and enriching environments.

This unique resource provides a practical overview of the research and best practices that can be easily adapted and applied in the development of highly effective afterschool programs. A complete discussion of the purposes, functions, methodologies, implementation, and evaluation of numerous programs is provided and organized for quick reference.

Special features of Building Effective Afterschool Programs include:

Exploration of critical factors necessary for success, such as planning, training, structure, and content
Step-by-step overview of how to create effective programs, from needs assessment to the effects of various types of programs on children
Straightforward guidance on how to evaluate the effectiveness of afterschool programs, including design models
Real-life examples that can be implemented to build afterschool programs with specific goals, including literacy improvement, enrichment of nonremedial skills, enhancement of volunteer tutoring programs, and cultural and character development through community-based programs
About the Author:

Olatokunbo S. Fashola is an Associate Research Scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed at Risk. She earned a Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and is co-author of Show Me the Evidence! Proven and Promising Programs for America?s Schools. The recipient of an award for research excellence from the American Federation of Teachers, she has received national recognition for her extensive work on afterschool programs.

Curriculum and Students in Classrooms: Everyday Urban Education in an Era of Standardization is a timely and thought-provoking work that attends to often-neglected aspects of schooling: the everyday interactions between curriculum, teachers, and students. Walter S. Gershon addresses the bridge between the curriculum and the students, the teachers, and their everyday pedagogical decisions. In doing so, this book explores the students' perspectives of their teachers, the language arts curriculum at an urban elementary school, and how the particular combination of curriculum and teaching work in tandem to narrow students' academic and social possibilities and reproduce racial, class, and gender inequities as normal. Recommended for scholars of education and curriculum studies.

Young people today know trouble from a host of sources: poverty, sexism and racism; the storms of a climate in turmoil; the loss of loved-ones to incarceration, addiction and suicide. This book is about the role that teachers can play in helping our young people transcend these troubles, honor the pain they feel, and channel their aggression in productive directions. But counseling and anti-bullying programs are not enough. The key is to open up the very content of the curriculum to the emotional life of the whole child.

A revealing look at the college freshman experience, from an insideras point of view
After fifteen years of teaching anthropology at a large university, Rebekah Nathan had become baffled by her own students. Their strange behavioraeating meals at their desks, not completing reading assignments, remaining silent through class discussionsamade her feel as if she were dealing with a completely foreign culture. So Nathan decided to do what anthropologists do when confused by a different culture: Go live with them. She enrolled as a freshman, moved into the dorm, ate in the dining hall, and took a full load of courses. And she came to understand that being a student is a pretty difficult job, too. Her discoveries about contemporary undergraduate culture are surprising and her observations are invaluable, making "My Freshman Year" essential reading for students, parents, faculty, and anyone interested in educational policy.

With conversations about sexual violence, consent, and bodily autonomy dominating national conversations it can be easy to get lost in the onslaught of well-intended but often poorly executed messages. Through an exploration of research, scholarly expertise, and practical real-world application we can better formulate an understanding of what consent is, how we create consent cultures, and where the path forward lies. This book is designed with both educators and parents in mind. The tools highlighted throughout help adults unlearn harmful narratives about consent, boundaries, and relationships so that they can begin their work internally through modeling and self-reflection. We then uncover what consent truly is and is not, how culture plays an integral role in interpersonal scripting, and how teaching consent as a life skill can look in and out of the classroom. By integrating the need for consent to be taught in schools and homes we build bridges between the spaces where children learn and create alliances in the often-daunting task of eradicating rape-culture. This book is perfect for those already comfortable and familiar with this topic as well as those newer to understanding consent as a paradigm. Starting with a strong historical and research-informed foundation the book builds into action-oriented guidelines for conversations, curriculum, and community activism. This blended approach creates a guidebook that is unlike anything else on the market today.

This timely new book examines the impact of internationalization and diversity in higher education and provides practical guidance on how to manage an increasingly varied range of expectations and needs, and ensure that academic practice best serves the needs of all students across diverse learning spaces.

A volume in International Advances in Education: Global Initiatives for Equity and Social Justice Series Editors: Elinor L. Brown, University of Kentucky, Rhonda Craven, University of Western Sydney, and George McLean, Catholic Universities of America. International Advances in Education: Global Initiatives for Equity and Social Justice is an international research monograph series of scholarly works that primarily focus on empowering students (children, adolescents, and young adults) from diverse current circumstances and historic beliefs and traditions to become non-exploited/non-exploitive contributing members of the global community. The series draws on the research and innovative practices of investigators, academics, and community organizers around the globe that have contributed to the evidence base for developing sound educational policies, practices, and programs that optimize all students' potential. Each volume includes multidisciplinary theory, research, and practices that provide an enriched understanding of the drivers of human potential via education to assist others in exploring, adapting, and replicating innovative strategies that enable ALL students to realize their full potential. This volume provides the reader with promising policies and practices that promote social justice and educational opportunity for the many displaced populations (migrants, asylum-seekers, refugees, and immigrants) around the globe. The volume is divided into four sections that offer: (1) insights into the educational integration of displaced children in industrialized nations, (2) methods of creating pedagogies of harmony within school environments, (3) ways to nurture school success by acknowledging and respecting the cultural traditions of newcomers, and finally (4) strategies to forge pathways to educational equity. Overall, this volume contributes to the body of knowledge on equitable educational opportunities for displaced youth and will be a valuable resource for all who seek to enable the displaced a place at the political, economic, and social table of civil society.

Exclusion rates of black children in the UK and around the world continue to rise, highlighting that something is very wrong with the way their teaching and learning is supported in today's schools. Teachers often blame parents, parents blame teachers, and an unhappy downward spiral ensues.
Drawing on her extensive teaching experience, Lorna Cork explores the day-to-day needs and expectations of black parents and their children in education. She focuses on contemporary situations and uses real-life case studies to emphasize the human consequences of the true issues behind the statistics.
This topical text offers a detailed look at five key organizations that exist to support black parents. It examines their home-school interventions and discusses the central issues arising out of their efforts. The fascinating evidence offers fresh perspectives on home-school interventions, providing much needed advice and guidance to all those seeking to improve co-operation between black families, schools and communities, who all share the goal of supporting the learning and attainment of the black child. Above all constructive in tone, examples of good practice and strategies that have been tried and tested are all provided here, as well as suggestions for further reading and additional sources of support.
Any education professional; teacher, student teacher or staff at an LEA, in addition to anyone with a serious interest in race issues, is sure to find this essential reading.

Foreword by Robert E. Slavin

"This book provides a unique source of information, experience, and evidence that is essential for any educator or policymaker involved in planning afterschool programs for children."
Robert E. Slavin, Codirector
Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed at Risk
Johns Hopkins University

Building Effective Afterschool Programs

Olatokunbo S. Fashola

Raise the caliber of your afterschool program with these exemplary models and get outstanding results!

Through a comprehensive review of various afterschool programs across the United States, respected authority on program effectiveness, Olatokunbo Fashola, sheds new light on "what works" to increase academic achievement during nonschool hours. Administrators, policymakers, teachers, and researchers can benefit from the examples of both the successes and the shortcomings encountered by their colleagues in the quest to create enhanced learning opportunities in safe and enriching environments.

This unique resource provides a practical overview of the research and best practices that can be easily adapted and applied in the development of highly effective afterschool programs. A complete discussion of the purposes, functions, methodologies, implementation, and evaluation of numerous programs is provided and organized for quick reference.

Special features of Building Effective Afterschool Programs include:

Exploration of critical factors necessary for success, such as planning, training, structure, and content
Step-by-step overview of how to create effective programs, from needs assessment to the effects of various types of programs on children
Straightforward guidance on how to evaluate the effectiveness of afterschool programs, including design models
Real-life examples that can be implemented to build afterschool programs with specific goals, including literacy improvement, enrichment of nonremedial skills, enhancement of volunteer tutoring programs, and cultural and character development through community-based programs
About the Author:

Olatokunbo S. Fashola is an Associate Research Scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed at Risk. She earned a Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and is co-author of Show Me the Evidence! Proven and Promising Programs for America?s Schools. The recipient of an award for research excellence from the American Federation of Teachers, she has received national recognition for her extensive work on afterschool programs.