Autumn has arrived, and at Granite City Elementary School everyone is gearing up for the biggest and best event of the year, the Harvest Festival. The whole school is excited about the games, the contests, the food, and most of all the costumes! Everyone except Lucy. She doesn't like dressing up, and has no desire to be a fairy princess or rock star, even for one day. But Lucy is excited about the new science unit Miss Flippo has started: the states of matter. Lucy and her friends understand solids and liquids. They're easy. But gasses are more difficult to grasp. When the class goes on a field trip to an orchard and Stewart Swinefest eats too many apples, and gets a serious stomachache, Lucy suddenly understands that even if you can't see gasses they can fill space and expand, and even make you move. And with Stewart feeling better, she has a really great idea for her Harvest Festival costume, too. The second book in a new chapter book series from IRA Children's Book Award-winner, Michelle Houts, Solids, Liquids, Guess Who's Got Gas draws on STEM themes and is aligned with curriculum guidelines to bring a love of science to young readers, inspiring them to start their own labs and explore their world.

From IRA Children's Book Award-winner, Michelle Houts, Lucy Saves Some Squirrels draws on STEM themes and is aligned with curriculum guidelines to bring a love of science to young readers, inspiring them to start their own labs and explore their world. On Lucy's first day of second grade, she's excited to meet her new teacher, Miss Flippo, and find out everything's she's going to learn about this year in school. And when Miss Flippo tells the class that they're going to have their very own science lab, complete with lab coats and goggles, Lucy can't wait to start exploring. But one thing is troubling her. The tree that sat outside her first-grade classroom all year is gone. Where are the squirrels going to live? Inspired by her classroom lab, Lucy starts her own research mission to find out what happened to the tree, and then to lobby for the school to plant a new one. With the help of her cousin, Cora, and their new classmates, Lucy discovers that science is everywhere you look, and a lab can be anywhere you look.

"A beautifully crafted friendship tale that’s just right for storytime." --Kirkus A tender and emotive picture book about a scarecrow who befriends the young girl who reads to him day after day until one day he's left wondering where she is. The perfect Fall book for kids! A scarecrow stood in the garden. Tall, proud, and smiling. Every day a girl brought her favorite books to the garden and she read to him. He heard tales of courage and of hope. And when she said, "The End," the scarecrow always felt a little bit taller and braver. Year after year, she came and she read to him. Until one spring, two different hands picked him up from the garden shed and placed him in the garden. He waited, but she didn't come to read to him. With poignant words from award-winning author Michelle Houts and lush illustrations by Pura Belpré Honor winner Sara Palacios, Hopefully the Scarecrow is a tender distillation of the enduring power of friendship and a heartwarming look at the ways stories connect us. Perfect for fans of The Scarecrow by Beth Ferry and The Fan Bros. Praise for Hopefully the Scarecrow: "A simply told, emotionally satisfying picture book." --Booklist

Over the last century, global inequality has developed and continues to develop in unexpected and disturbing patterns. In this important new book, Therborn and his colleagues connect current world inequality to different national constellations of class and power and transnational processes. Ranging from the US and post-Communist Russia to France and China, and spanning social mobility, labor markets, working-class cultures and global science, this volume is a major contribution to our understanding of contemporary world politics and development. Contributors include Louis Chauvel, Michael Hout, Arne Kalleberg, Markku Kivinen, Michele Lamont, Huang Ping, Elisa Preis, Denny Vagero and Peter Weingart.

As debate rages over the widening and destructive gap between the rich and the rest of Americans, Claude Fischer and his colleagues present a comprehensive new treatment of inequality in America. They challenge arguments that expanding inequality is the natural, perhaps necessary, accompaniment of economic growth. They refute the claims of the incendiary bestseller "The Bell Curve" (1994) through a clear, rigorous re-analysis of the very data its authors, Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, used to contend that inherited differences in intelligence explain inequality. "Inequality by Design" offers a powerful alternative explanation, stressing that economic fortune depends more on social circumstances than on IQ, which is itself a product of society. More critical yet, patterns of inequality must be explained by looking beyond the attributes of individuals to the structure of society. Social policies set the "rules of the game" within which individual abilities and efforts matter. And recent policies have, on the whole, widened the gap between the rich and the rest of Americans since the 1970s.

Not only does the wealth of individuals' parents shape their chances for a good life, so do national policies ranging from labor laws to investments in education to tax deductions. The authors explore the ways that America--the most economically unequal society in the industrialized world--unevenly distributes rewards through regulation of the market, taxes, and government spending. It attacks the myth that inequality fosters economic growth, that reducing economic inequality requires enormous welfare expenditures, and that there is little we can do to alter the extent of inequality. It also attacks the injurious myth of innate racial inequality, presenting powerful evidence that racial differences in achievement are the consequences, not the causes, of social inequality. By refusing to blame inequality on an unchangeable human nature and an inexorable market--an excuse that leads to resignation and passivity--"Inequality by Design" shows how we can advance policies that widen opportunity for all.

It took her two tries, but in 1955, sixty-seven-year-old Emma "Grandma" Gatewood became the first woman to solo hike the entire length of the Appalachian Trail in one thru-hike. Gatewood has become a legend for those who hike the trail, and in her home state of Ohio, where she helped found the Buckeye Trail. In recent years, she has been the subject of a bestselling biography and a documentary film. In When Grandma Gatewood Took a Hike, Michelle Houts brings us the first children's book about her feat, which she accomplished without professional gear or even a tent. Houts chronicles the spirit of a seasoned outdoorswoman and mother of eleven whose grit and determination helped her to hike over two thousand miles. Erica Magnus's vibrant illustrations capture the wild animals, people from all walks of life, and unexpected challenges that this strong-willed woman encountered on the journey she initially called a "lark." Children ages 4-10 will delight in this narrative nonfiction work as they accompany Emma Gatewood on the adventure of a lifetime and witness her transformation from grandmother to hiking legend, becoming "Grandma" to all.

In recent years there have been increasing efforts to use accountability systems based on large-scale tests of students as a mechanism for improving student achievement. The federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is a prominent example of such an effort, but it is only the continuation of a steady trend toward greater test-based accountability in education that has been going on for decades. Over time, such accountability systems included ever-stronger incentives to motivate school administrators, teachers, and students to perform better.
Incentives and Test-Based Accountability in Education reviews and synthesizes relevant research from economics, psychology, education, and related fields about how incentives work in educational accountability systems. The book helps identify circumstances in which test-based incentives may have a positive or a negative impact on student learning and offers recommendations for how to improve current test-based accountability policies. The most important directions for further research are also highlighted.
For the first time, research and theory on incentives from the fields of economics, psychology, and educational measurement have all been pulled together and synthesized. Incentives and Test-Based Accountability in Education will inform people about the motivation of educators and students and inform policy discussions about NCLB and state accountability systems. Education researchers, K-12 school administrators and teachers, as well as graduate students studying education policy and educational measurement will use this book to learn more about the motivation of educators and students. Education policy makers at all levels of government will rely on this book to inform policy discussions about NCLB and state accountability systems.

Author Michelle Houts and illustrator Bagram Ibatoulline explore the magic of one of the seaside’s greatest wonders and the bonds that link us through time.

One summer, Thomas visits his grandmother at her seaside cottage. She gives him a magnifying glass that once belonged to his grandfather, and with it Thomas explores the beach. When his grandmother shows him a piece of sea glass, Thomas is transfixed. That night he dreams of an old shipyard and the breaking of a bottle. Could the very piece of sea glass on his nightstand have come from that bottle? For the rest of the summer, he searches for more sea glass and hopes to have dreams that will reveal more of the sea’s secrets...

A stunning ode to stories and the seaside, this picture book invites readers to imagine the ocean of possibility that lives in every small or forgotten treasure.

This is the first systematic study of patterns of social mobility in Ireland. It covers a recent period-the 1960s-when Ireland was undergoing rapid economic growth and modernization. The author thus was able to test the widely accepted hypothesis that growth weakens class barriers. To his surprise he found that it did not. Social mobility increased somewhat, but among mobile men the better jobs still went to those from advantaged social class origins. Despite economic development and demographic change, the underlying link between social origins and career destinations remained unchanged. In chapters on education, life cycle, religion, and farming, Michael Hout shows how inequality persists in contemporary Ireland. In the last chapter he reviews evidence from other countries and concludes that governments must take action against class barriers in education and employment practices if inequality is to be reduced. Economic growth creates jobs, he argues, but economic growth alone cannot allocate those jobs fairly.

When you look at a bird, do you see feathers and a beak? Or do you see circles and triangles? Artist Charley Harper spent his life reducing subjects to their simplest forms, their basic lines and shapes. This resulted in what he called minimal realism and the style that would become easily recognized as Charley Harper's. Art fans and nature lovers around the world fell in love with Harper's paintings, which often featured bright colors and intriguing nature subjects. Harper's love of painting and drawing led him from the hills of West Virginia to the bombed-out villages of Europe, to the streets of New York City, and to the halls of the Art Academy of Cincinnati. How did the farm boy who didn't know a single artist become one of America's most recognized midcentury modern painters? The answer is simple. He did it by counting the wings. Count the Wings is the first book for middle-grade readers about Harper's life and work. Author Michelle Houts worked closely with the Harper estate to include full-color illustrations, plentiful supplemental materials, and discussion questions that will intrigue and engage young readers. Count the Wings is part of our acclaimed Biographies for Young Readers series, which brings smart, expertly researched books about often overlooked but exceptional individuals to school-age readers.

Introduce kids to the great horned owl with this beautifully illustrated and accessible picture book. Perfect for preschool and kindergarten science curriculums. An owl swoops down to lay her egg in a coal yard-a dangerous spot for a fragile egg! Rescued by Walter, a bird expert with a big heart and a warm shirt pocket, the egg miraculously hatches and is aptly named Coal. Thus begins a tender story of rescue, rehabilitation, and most of all, friendship. After meticulously researching the facts, Michelle Houts tells Coal's story with warmth and humor. The connections between Coal and the people whose lives he touches are captured by Deb Hoeffner's illustrations, done in her unique style of soft realism. Backmatter answers children's questions with facts and photos of Great Horned Owls and Walter Crawford "The Man Who Saved Coal." Parents and teachers will appreciate literacy connections and STEM activities that extend the learning of the story. A perfect book for:parents and teachers needing homeschool supplies for kindergarten (or any grade!)anyone looking for owl books for kidsanyone looking for children's books to help instill an appreciation of our planet!

Explains the most widely used methods for analyzing cross-classified data on occupational origins and destinations. Hout reviews classic definitions, models, and sources of mobility data, as well as elementary operations for analyzing mobility tables. Tabular and graphic displays illustrate the discussion throughout.