As subsequent chapters point out, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) requires states to provide assistance to districts in improving the schools within their purview. Of course, the U.S. Constitution and federal laws leave the control of education largely to the states, and states have long provided support to school districts. In return for federal monies, however, NCLB requires states to provide such help under the statewide systems of support (SSOS) provision of the Act. The purposes of this Handbook are to survey the research related to statewide systems of support, to present the experience and insights of educational leaders in how such support can best be conducted, and to derive actionable principles for improving schools. It is intended for use not only by the staff of the U.S. Department of Education-sponsored Regional Centers that serve state department staff but also by the staff of school districts and schools. Also sponsored by the U.S.Department of Education, the Center on Innovation & Improvement (CII) previously developed the Handbook on Restructuring and Substantial School Improvement (Walberg, 2007) that became the basis of CII's technical assistance to Regional Centers on this topic. CII made available for downloading Power Point presentations and web-based seminars (""webinars"") based on the previous Handbook. CII's intended audiences widely employed the previous Handbook on Restructuring and Substantial School Improvement and auxiliary materials and found them useful in their technical assistance efforts to disseminate and encourage evidence-based ideas for restructuring and improving schools. With advice from the U.S. Department of Education, scholarly experts, and experienced educators in the Regional Centers, state departments of education, and school districts, the CII staff concluded that what it envisioned as the present Handbook would be similarly useful.

As suggested by the title, the purpose of this Handbook on Restructuring and Substantial School Improvement is to provide principles for restructuring and substantially improving schools. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, the Center on Innovation & Improvement (CII) engaged leading experts on restructuring and school improvement to prepare modules for this handbook to assist states, districts, and schools in establishing policies, procedures, and support to successfully restructure schools. The Handbook is organized into three sections. The topic of the Handbook's modules - restructuring with a focus on the district as the impetus for dramatic improvement - is relatively new in the nation's education history. For this reason, the module authors were selected because they are highly experienced experts in their fields and can be counted on to judiciously weigh the less than definitive evidence and to state useful guiding principles.

A study of successful reading instruction. The articles cover topics such as the use of computer technology for reading instruction, and engagement and motivation in reading instruction. They are divided into two sections: Reading Research and Assessment and Reading Instruction and Practice.

This volume, however, is not primarily concerned with what students should learn, nor even how they should learn. Rather it concerns how we can discover the best means and conditions for teaching them in school, at home, and in society. Expressed more explicitly, we seek to find out how students can learn efficiently or productively as much as possible within a given amount of time and resources. As in agriculture, medicine, public health, and modern industries, we can turn to rigorous science as one of the best sources for informing ourselves. Thus, the purpose of this book was to seek first-class authorities with a variety of views who could help answer this question. The intended audiences are not only scholars in a variety of academic disciplines but also research consumers, including educators, policymakers, parents, and citizens who seek principles to critically separate valid from invalid claims for the efficacy and efficiency of education products, personnel, and policies. Initial versions of the chapters were discussed at a national invitational conference sponsored by the Laboratory for Student Success (LSS), the mid-Atlantic regional educational laboratory, at Temple University Center for Research in Human Development and Education. LSS operates under a contract with the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences.

Covering such issues as teaching quality, the interface between public and private schooling, and measuring school efficiency, this text addresses the improvement of educational productivity in the USA.

Preventing Youth Problems provides information needed to prevent five of the most common, costly, and dangerous problems of adolescence: anti-social behavior, tobacco use, alcohol and drug abuse, and sexual behavior that risks disease and unwanted pregnancy. Over the past thirty years, scientific research on children and adolescents identified the major conditions influencing each of these problems.
Each of the chapters in this volume provides a concise summary of what is known about one of these five problem behaviors. Each chapter covers the following essential points:

- Incidence, prevalence, and cost of the problem, vital for gauging the importance of preventing the problem and for making the case for such efforts in public discussion of priorities;
- Biological and environmental influences which increase or decrease the likelihood of these problems; and,
- Principles, programs and policies that have been shown to reduce the incidence of each problem, information that can help in prevention of these behaviors.

This book is concerned with the sweeping changes that took place in public assistance programs at the end of the 20th century and the way in which the original and reformed versions of these programs relate to the well-being of children and their families. It is a valuable reference for practitioners and policymakers who are concerned with children and child-related issues, psychologists, sociologists, social workers, social program administrators, and students in psychology, social work, sociology, political science, and education.

Improving Schools to Promote Learning is a concise and common-sense examination of all the moving parts that drive student learning. The book ties together the research, policies, and practices relative to the state, district, school, classroom, and family, and explains their effects on student learning. The author covers an array of topics, including technology, charter schools, turnaround initiatives, and instruction in specific subject areas. Herbert J. Walberg's book continues the work of previous publications from the Center on Innovation & Improvement (Handbook on Restructuring and Substantial School Improvement and Handbook on the Statewide Systems of Support) that connect research to practice at various levels of the education system. The book is accessible to a wide audience, including educators, school board members, parents, and policy makers. Walberg includes action steps in every chapter, providing practical recommendations for improved student achievement. The author also offers select references for additional material on the best research and most effective practices.

For the first time, this book brings together three controversial topics: homogeneous grouping of students within classrooms by ability or achievement criteria, tracking of students into courses of study by the same criteria, and retention of students in their present grade so that they repeat a year's work instead of being promoted. The editors solicited syntheses of research on these topics from outstanding scholars with a variety of views. Initial versions of the chapters were discussed at a national invitational conference sponsored by the Laboratory for Student Success, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Educational Laboratory, at Temple University Center for Research in Human Development and Education (CRHDE) through a contract with the former Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), now the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) of the U.S. Department of Education. At the conference, the chapter authors benefited from discussions with one another, other scholars, policymakers, educators, and parents. Their recommendations are reported in the last chapter.

Introduction and Overview, Susan J. Paik, University of San Francisco. Part I: Educational Productivity and Achievement. Using an Educational Productivity Model to Construct Process Models for Mathematics Achievement and Attitudes Among Ethnic Minorities, John Thomas, College of Lake County, Illinois.

This book provides effective strategies that can be used to improve academic achievement and well-being of minority students. It examines, collectively, three cultural groups on themes related to diverse families, immigration issues, and teaching and learning. The book conceptualizes opportunities and challenges in working with minority children in the context of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. It is a must-have reference for anyone who works with children.

The contributors to this volume include scholars and financial analysts. Their data, means of analysis and policy insights should be a useful source for future research and educational improvements. Going beyond mere juxtaposition, the editors show how chief ideas represented in the chapters relate to one another and have developed over the last few decades.

The Handbook of Special and Remedial Education: Research and Practice is an update of the four-volume Handbook series, which provided a comprehensive summary of the well-confirmed knowledge in the field of special education available through the mid-1980's. The need for an updated second edition grew out of the extensive activity in research, policy developments, and related changes in practices over the past decade. The new single volume gives first priority to a review of the knowledge base, as derived from recent research and practices in schools and related agencies. It notes discrepancies between the state of the art and the state of practice. These disparities are further linked to brief discussions of policy issues and needed research, revisions in training programs, and organizational arrangements in the field.

This edition is segmented into three major sections. The six chapters within "Learning Rates: Issues of Concern and Prospects for Improvement" range from a discussion of early education for disabled children and those at risk, to educational resilience. The six chapters under "Distinct Disabilities" cover such topics as visual, hearing, and language impairments. Finally, the four chapters in "Associated Conditions and Resources" discuss funding, parents and advocacy systems, staff preparation, and emerging school/community linkages.

Leading scholars in the fields of history and law have assembled an enormous amount of empirical data on the outcomes of school desegregation and conclude that the policies of the past--mandatory reassignment and strict racial quotas--had too few benefits and too many costs to make them viable alternatives for the future. Chapter topics include the history of school desegregation, the development of the law, the desegregation effectiveness of remedies, ability grouping and classroom desegregation, racial disparities in school discipline, intergroup relations, the attitudes and opinions of adults in desegregated school districts, and the outlook for the future.

The authors conclude that one of the biggest successes of school desegregation is that there is almost universal acceptance of the principle that racial discrimination is immoral. But school desegregation has had some important failures as well, most importantly, the failure to improve the academic achievement of black students and race relations between black and white students in desegregated schools. There have also been some serious costs--white flight and protest voting--associated with forced busing and the use of strict racial quotas. The concluding chapter argues that the solution to racial disparities in achievement, and to racial separation, lies in compensatory education for low achieving, poor children and school choice programs that do not use racial criteria but provide financial assistance to low-income families.

Hardbound. This volume is the seventh in an annual series of works on educational productivity centered on how more can be accomplished in education without consuming additional human, economic, and social resources. In Evaluation Research for Educational Productivity a key question addressed by the authors is: How do current developments in evaluation research enhance our capacity to come to conclusions useful to policy makers and program professionals? Reynolds and Walberg have brought together exemplary contributions from leading scholars who describe their evaluation approaches in education and reflect on their research methods and lessons learned from what went right and wrong in real world efforts. This volume will be most useful to program administrators and policy makers.

Sponsored by the National Center on School Choice, a research consortium headed by Vanderbilt University, this volume examines the growth and outcomes of the charter school movement. Starting in 1992-93 when the nations first charter school was opened in Minneapolis, the movement has now spread to 40 states and the District of Columbia and by 2005-06 enrolled 1,040,536 students in 3,613 charter schools. The purpose of this volume is to help monitor this fast-growing movement by compiling, organizing and making available some of the most rigorous and policy-relevant research on K-12 charter schools. Key features of this important new book include:

Expertise The National Center on School Choice includes internationally known scholars from the following institutions: Harvard University, Brown University, Stanford University, Brookings Institution, National Bureau of Economic Research and Northwest Evaluation Association.

Cross-Disciplinary Thevolume brings together material from related disciplines and methodologies that are associated with the individual and systemic effects of charter schools.

Coherent Structure Each section begins with a lengthy introduction that summarizes the themes and major findings of that section. A summarizing chapter by Mark Schneider, the Commissioner of the National Center on Educational Statistics, concludes the book.

This volume is appropriate researchers, instructors and graduate students in educationpolicy programs and in political science and economics, as well as in-service administrators, policy makers, and providers.

Sponsored by the National Center on School Choice, a research consortium headed by Vanderbilt University, this volume examines the growth and outcomes of the charter school movement. Starting in 1992-93 when the nations first charter school was opened in Minneapolis, the movement has now spread to 40 states and the District of Columbia and by 2005-06 enrolled 1,040,536 students in 3,613 charter schools. The purpose of this volume is to help monitor this fast-growing movement by compiling, organizing and making available some of the most rigorous and policy-relevant research on K-12 charter schools. Key features of this important new book include:

Expertise The National Center on School Choice includes internationally known scholars from the following institutions: Harvard University, Brown University, Stanford University, Brookings Institution, National Bureau of Economic Research and Northwest Evaluation Association.

Cross-Disciplinary Thevolume brings together material from related disciplines and methodologies that are associated with the individual and systemic effects of charter schools.

Coherent Structure Each section begins with a lengthy introduction that summarizes the themes and major findings of that section. A summarizing chapter by Mark Schneider, the Commissioner of the National Center on Educational Statistics, concludes the book.

This volume is appropriate researchers, instructors and graduate students in educationpolicy programs and in political science and economics, as well as in-service administrators, policy makers, and providers.

This book addresses one of the most urgent questions in American society today, one that is currently in the spotlight and hotly debated on all sides: Who shall rule the schools--parents or educators?
"School Choice or Best Systems: What Improves Education?" presents an overview of research and practical applications of innovative--even radical--school reforms being implemented across the United States. These fall along a continuum ranging from parental choice to best systems. At the one extreme are schools of choice, which allow parents to choose and even govern schools for their children. These include charter schools, traditional private and parochial schools, schools that are privately governed but publicly funded through vouchers, and those that are funded by private scholarships provided by both corporations and wealthy individuals. At the other extreme are centralized state or district systems, based on reform initiatives and new systems of education that have been developed in response to views of citizens and legislators that schools can do much better. These schools, which specify uniform goals, policies, and programs for each school, are highly innovative systems based on research or representing advanced thinking about what works, and have attracted wide interest.
Important questions related to schools of choice and best systems are addressed: How can we choose among schools of choice and best systems? Among the various approaches within each of these alternatives? How can we understand their guiding principles and operational practices? What results do they produce? How can we evaluate their claims? In choosing among the alternatives, how should issues of student achievement, accountability, costs, feasibility, and equity be factored in?
This volume brings together leading researchers and education leaders who have carried out the latest studies and advances in the field, providing a forum for them to set forth the arguments and evidence that will be most helpful in making choices for tomorrow's schools. It does not provide a single right answer--values and preferences differ across parents, schools, districts, and states. However, there are benefits for all from seeing the rigorous research, challenging thinking, and alternate points of view this volume presents.

This fourth volume of the Handbook of Special Education: Research and Practice deals with the nature and nurture of gifted and talented youth, issues affecting students with severe disabilities and children and youth at risk. Section one focuses on gifted and talented youth, their identification, practices to accelerate and enrich their learning, their socio-emotional adjustment, and special categories of gifted students. New federal legislation in the US, changing views about intelligence, and growing concern over quality of education, make this section timely and important. Section two concerns students with severe disabilities with topics ranging from how they can be served in regular school and community settings to the transition to work and living in the community. In section three the theme is children and youth at risk from poverty, limited linguistic competence, limited cognitive mastery, and family problems. The chapters highlight what action can be taken to solve the educational problems associated with these risks. Special attention is paid to the problems of education in the inner-city.

This book is concerned with the sweeping changes that took place in public assistance programs at the end of the 20th century and the way in which the original and reformed versions of these programs relate to the well-being of children and their families. It is a valuable reference for practitioners and policymakers who are concerned with children and child-related issues, psychologists, sociologists, social workers, social program administrators, and students in psychology, social work, sociology, political science, and education.

Despite often simplistic, black-and-white portrayals of good and evil, children and adolescents face complicated moral issues that can raise more questions than answers. Becoming aware of what constitutes morality is only the first step in determining a course of action, identifying and avoiding problems, and building communities that nurture morality. Young people learn to define and respond to moral dilemmas by interacting with and observing numerous sources. They acquire knowledge from family members, teachers, church leaders, peers, and members of neighborhood organizations. Raising themes of cultural pluralism, responsibility, complexity, affectivity, and practicality, Nurturing Morality addresses such issues as: - Definitions of morality that link past and current debates, enabling a more thorough understanding of moral functioning. - Personal responsibilities and impediments to moral functioning. - How societal structures can facilitate or inhibit moral agency and development. - The importance of acknowledging the common good as well as individual accomplishments. - Nurturing morality through wisdom. Drawing from a wide range of independent research programs, Nurturing Morality makes clear that most forms of human interaction are laden with moral content. It highlights thorny and complex moral questions that cannot be resolved by simple adherence to moral rules. And on the basis of empirically grounded findings, contributors to this volume provide recommendations for how adults can offer valuable guidance to young people learning to negotiate life in a global society. For clinicians, researchers, and students, Nurturing Morality provides much-needed insight and advice on young people's moral development.

This book provides information needed to prevent five of the most common, costly, and dangerous problems of adolescence: anti-social behavior, tobacco use, alcohol and drug abuse, and sexual behavior that risks disease and unwanted pregnancy. It is an important resource for psychologists, sociologists, social workers, and educators, as well as for upper-level students in these areas.

This book provides effective strategies that can be used to improve academic achievement and well-being of minority students. It examines, collectively, three cultural groups on themes related to diverse families, immigration issues, and teaching and learning. The book conceptualizes opportunities and challenges in working with minority children in the context of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. It is a must-have reference for anyone who works with children.

While "city life" can be exciting, its problems can be challenging for families and children, particularly when they are members of minority groups. An interdisciplinary team of researchers examines the positive and problematic circumstances that confront children and youth living in cities and identifies the best researched-based solutions for improving or enhancing those circumstances. Divided into three parts--families, schools, and health--this impressive array of scholars explore such topics as: factors that have influenced inner-city life, including migration patterns and middle-class flights from cities and ghettos; the role of coping, resources, and skills in an urban familyÆs successful management of stress; community-university partnerships that offer workable solutions to urban children and their families; the features of homes, schools, and communities that promote academic success and healthy psychological development in adverse circumstances; barriers to urban schoolingùsuch as under funding, dangerous environments, and teacher overload--and promising avenues of reform for effective schools; strategies for preventing violence and substance abuse among city youth; the use of cultural competency training for health care providers so as to overcome the geographic, language, and ethnic barriers to the urban poorÆs access to this care; and the development and implementation of the collaborative programs across disciplines to better serve city children and their families. Clearly written so as to be more accessible to researchers, policymakers, and practitioners in the fields of developmental psychology, sociology, family studies, social work, counseling, human services, and nursing this book provides readers with the best interdisciplinary information available today on the problems with growing up in a city and ways to solve them.

Improving Schools to Promote Learning is a concise and common-sense examination of all the moving parts that drive student learning. The book ties together the research, policies, and practices relative to the state, district, school, classroom, and family, and explains their effects on student learning. The author covers an array of topics, including technology, charter schools, turnaround initiatives, and instruction in specific subject areas. Herbert J. Walberg's book continues the work of previous publications from the Center on Innovation & Improvement (Handbook on Restructuring and Substantial School Improvement and Handbook on the Statewide Systems of Support) that connect research to practice at various levels of the education system. The book is accessible to a wide audience, including educators, school board members, parents, and policy makers. Walberg includes action steps in every chapter, providing practical recommendations for improved student achievement. The author also offers select references for additional material on the best research and most effective practices.