The ultimate new teacher's guide to surviving and thriving in the classroom, Smart from the Start is the springboard to help you establish and improve your practice in meaningful ways.Teachers have a wide range of responsibilities—not all of which can be addressed in teacher preparation programs—and for new and returning educators especially, it can be daunting to think about all that is required throughout the school year. This book provides more than 100 easy-to-incorporate tools spread across six major points of concern: * Beginning of the year: set up your classroom and establish rules and procedures. * Classroom management: establish a healthy learning environment. * Instructional planning: lead high-quality lessons and anticipate students' diverse needs. * Student engagement: motivate students and maintain their quality of learning. * Assessment: align assessment with curriculum and instruction and build rubrics and tests. * Teacher well-being: find the joy in teaching and take care of yourself. Your first few years of teaching don't have to be formidable or confusing. James H. Stronge, Jessica M. Straessle, and Xianxuan Xu have synthesized decades of research to identify and carefully consider the attributes of the job that especially relate to new teachers. With Smart from the Start, you can take your first steps into teaching with confidence and create a classroom environment that will benefit your students.

What does it take to be a good school principal? No two principals work exactly the same way, but research shows that effective principals focus on a core set of factors critical to fostering success among all students.In this second edition of Qualities of Effective Principals, James H. Stronge and Xianxuan Xu delineate these factors and show principals how to successfully balance the needs and priorities of their schools while continuously developing and refining their leadership skills. Throughout the book, the authors provide practical tools and extensive research that will help principals * Assess, exhibit, and harness instructional leadership to meet a school's goals. * Foster and sustain an effective school climate for learning. * Select, support, and retain high-quality teachers and staff. * Manage school resources effectively and efficiently. * Create, maintain, and strengthen internal and external community relationships. * Define their role in student achievement. This book also includes practical skills checklists, along with quality indicators and red flags for effective leadership. Qualities of Effective Principals, 2nd Edition, is an excellent resource for both experienced and new principals committed to developing and leading strong schools that help all students succeed.

Research surrounding teacher quality and teacher effectiveness has continued to grow and become even more prominent as teaching has become more professionalized globally and countries have invested more comprehensively in teacher education, certification, and professional development. To better understand teacher effectiveness, it is important to have a global viewpoint to truly understand how beliefs and practices vary in each country and can lead to different characterizations of what makes an effective teacher. This includes both cross-cultural commonalities and unique differences in conceptualization of teacher effectiveness and practices. With this comprehensive, international understanding of teacher effectiveness, a better understanding of best practices, teacher models, philosophies, and more will be developed. International Beliefs and Practices That Characterize Teacher Effectiveness identifies, shares, and explores the predominant conceptual understandings of beliefs and practices that characterize effective teachers in different countries. This book provides international and cross-cultural perspectives on teacher effectiveness and examines the prominent philosophies of teaching and pedagogical practices that characterize teachers in selected countries. Each chapter includes a background, such as history and undergirding philosophy within each country, effective teacher models, prominent applications of teacher effectiveness practices, and special or unique features of teaching in the specific countries mentioned. This book is essential for practicing educators in various countries, teacher educators, faculty, and students within schools and colleges, researchers in international comparative studies, organizations engaged in international education, and administrators, practitioners, and academicians interested in how teacher effectiveness is characterized in different countries and regions across the world.

Superintendent evaluation is a unique process that is often neglected but critical in this era of accountability. This invaluable guide provides an overview of the entire process, including: crafting board policy, criteria for good policy, and prototype policy. It identifies the unique challenges posed by the evaluation process and describes a three-tiered model of evaluation. This model is anchored in the professional standards for superintendency established by the American Association of School Administrators (AASA), the National School Boards Association (NSBA) Key Work of School Boards, the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) Standards, and the National Technology Standards for School Administrators. Numerous sample forms are included to assist school districts in creating a customized evaluation protocol to enhance performance. Suggestions on next steps for the reader conclude the book and additional resources are described in the annotated bibliography. This handbook will be of interest to superintendents, school board members, and professionals involved in the development and support of superintendents.

`This is a good and needed book. I would buy it, and recommend it to a wide range of educators.' -Kenneth D. Peterson, Professor, Portland State University `The authors have amassed a tremendous amount of information and assembled it into a very readable book that is an excellent resource.' -Randel Beaver, Superintendent, Archer City School District, TX Attract and retain the highest-quality teachers through competitive compensation programs! While many working in the teaching profession cite intangible rewards as reasons for staying in the profession, concrete rewards such as salary, benefits, and working conditions are inextricably linked to recruiting, motivating, and retaining highly-qualified teachers. This timely text examines the fundamental link between teacher pay and teacher quality as well as the extent to which it is aligned with student achievement. Existing compensation models are reviewed in order to provide a practical, research-based approach for developing a comprehensive, best-practice teacher compensation system. School administrators can use these synthesized, innovative findings to: Determine the most practical compensation model for achieving their school's objectives Examine different pay options used across the country Connect their school's compensation program to organizational goals Discover how to attract and retain high-quality teachers

Every teacher seeks to be an effective teacher. Every teacher wants to have a positive, remarkable, and lasting influence on students' lives. But what makes for an effective teacher? What role does teacher preparation play in teacher effectiveness? What do effective teachers do during planning, instruction, and assessment? How do they create a learning environment that engages and supports students? And how do effective teachers interact with their students to promote the best opportunities and results for all? In Qualities of Effective Teachers, 3rd edition, James H. Stronge explores these questions and more as he synthesizes the literature on teacher effectiveness. The result? A research-based framework for effective teaching that addresses: Professional knowledge. Instructional planning. Instructional delivery. Assessment. Learning environment. Professionalism. Stronge also examines characteristics of effective teachers of at-risk students and high-ability students. To bridge the gap between research and practice, he includes checklists of skills and positive qualities associated with effective teacher performance as well as red flags that indicate that teachers may not be reaching their full potential in the classroom. This resource is for any educator interested in improving teaching. It offers research-based advice for teachers who wish to improve their own performance, as well guidance for teacher leaders and supervisors, school administrators and department heads, staff development specialists, teacher and administrator educators, human resource specialists, and education policymakers and their staffs. Anyone who has a vested interest in students and their success can gain valuable insight and practical tools to ensure positive outcomes for all students. New to the 3rd edition: Introduction of the Framework for Effective Teaching and its six domains-professional knowledge; instructional planning; instructional delivery; assessment; learning environment; professionalism. Chapter vignettes updated to illustrate the domains of the Framework for Effective Teaching. Updated reference charts at the end of chapters, keyed to the subdomains of the Framework for Effective Teaching and expanded to include references for 21 century teachers. Twenty-nine sidebars interspersed throughout chapters that provide state-of-the-art supplementary text on effective teaching practices and research findings. Updated Teacher Skills Assessment Checklist, keyed to the domains of the Framework for Effective Teaching. Updated Part 2 presents positive qualities and red flags associated with effective teachers, keyed to the domains of the Framework for Effective Teaching. More than 1,000 entries in the References.

For years, students in the United States have lagged behind students in many other countries on such measures of achievement as the PISA and TIMSS assessments. In an increasingly globalized world, such a gap is worrisome. Armed with statistics, examples, and cautionary tales from Scandinavia to Japan, James H. Stronge and Xianxuan Xu have written a book that can help educators better prepare students and close that gap. In What Makes a World-Class School and How We Can Get There, you will find: Careful analysis of recent international assessment results-what they mean and what can be done to improve them. In-depth profiles of high-achieving education systems around the globe-their histories, their lessons learned, and what they can teach educators and policymakers in the United States. Strategies for aligning successful educational approaches from international systems to U.S. schools-which strategies to use, in which subjects, and with which students. Transformative ideas for cultivating a truly world-class system of schooling-both simple and complex ways to raise the bar for all students, no matter what their background. Educators in every country must ensure that their students are as prepared as possible to lead a future generation of citizens. This thought-provoking and copiously researched book provides educators with a blueprint for radical improvement based on the hard-learned experiences of their peers around the world.

In Linking Teacher Evaluation and Student Learning, researchers Pamela D. Tucker and James H. Stronge show that including measures of student achievement in teacher evaluations can help schools focus their efforts to meet higher standards. You'll see how four school systems have built such measures into their evaluation programs in these distinct ways: Documenting how desired learning outcomes translated into actual student learning. Tracking progress on key content standards. Setting annual quantifiable goals for students' academic progress. Analyzing changes in students' achievement test scores. The authors explore the strengths of each approach, offer insights from teachers and administrators, and describe practical ways to incorporate similar measures of student learning into your own evaluation program. Detailed appendixes provide hands-on tools and resources to help you adapt these approaches to your school's particular needs. For any school that is working to meet higher standards, linking teacher evaluation to measures of student learning is a powerful way to refocus professional development and improve student achievement.

This invaluable resource demonstrates how to foster the development of highly qualified teachers through designing and implementing a solid teacher evaluation system. The connection between teacher evaluation fostering school improvement and the development of highly qualified teachers is receiving more attention than ever before. Just as there is a rational connection between school improvement and teacher performance, there is a necessary and rational connection between supporting and growing highly qualified teachers through effective evaluations and improving relationships in the school. In this updated edition, top-selling author James H. Stronge and his colleagues synthesize current teacher evaluation research and blend it with practice, highlighting how to: o design a sound teacher evaluation system o assess teacher performance thoroughly and accurately o implement a successful teacher evaluation system o incorporate student performance data, teaching portfolios, and classroom observation into evaluation By aligning teaching performance and improvement goals with your school's mission, this text demonstrates how you can effectively encourage teachers to achieve a high standard of instruction at all levels.

`This is a good and needed book. I would buy it, and recommend it to a wide range of educators.' -Kenneth D. Peterson, Professor, Portland State University `The authors have amassed a tremendous amount of information and assembled it into a very readable book that is an excellent resource.' -Randel Beaver, Superintendent, Archer City School District, TX Attract and retain the highest-quality teachers through competitive compensation programs! While many working in the teaching profession cite intangible rewards as reasons for staying in the profession, concrete rewards such as salary, benefits, and working conditions are inextricably linked to recruiting, motivating, and retaining highly-qualified teachers. This timely text examines the fundamental link between teacher pay and teacher quality as well as the extent to which it is aligned with student achievement. Existing compensation models are reviewed in order to provide a practical, research-based approach for developing a comprehensive, best-practice teacher compensation system. School administrators can use these synthesized, innovative findings to: Determine the most practical compensation model for achieving their school's objectives Examine different pay options used across the country Connect their school's compensation program to organizational goals Discover how to attract and retain high-quality teachers