How Stakeholders Can Support Teacher Quality compiles the proceedings from the Milken Family Foundation's National Education Conference (NEC), which took place in Washington, D.C., in May 2006. Each year, the NEC brings together practitioners, policymakers and private sector representatives to focus on critical issues in education. This work expands on the ideas and themes discussed in the first three volumes in this series on education policy: The first volume-Talented Teachers: The Essential Force for Improving Student Achievement-examined the importance of teacher quality. As the second in the series, Improving Student Achievement: Reforms that Work, introduced reform ideas and programs that positively impact both teacher quality and student work. The Challenges of School Reform: Implementation, Impact and Sustainability deepened these discussions by exploring the answers to questions regarding ensuring the longevity and sustained success of effective school reform. How Stakeholders Can Support Teacher Quality examines the roles of teachers, the education sector, the government sector and the private sector in enhancing teacher quality. From the building level to the federal level, panelists sought to provide insight from their individual and collective endeavors to improve the quality of today's teaching force to significantly impact the future.

Improving Student Achievement: Reforms that Work expands on the first volume in the Milken Family Foundation series on education policy, ""Talented Teachers: The Essential Force for Improving Student Achievement."" The series explains to policymakers, parents, business leaders, and teachers the importance of teacher quality in increasing student achievement. This volume is based primarily on the proceedings from the 2004 Milken National Education Conference (NEC), which was held in Washington, D.C., in May 2004. Reform of any kind is an arduous process. It requires forward thinking, hard work, collaboration, and commitment on the part of teachers, administrators, policy leaders, and other supporters of the endeavor. Education reform in particular can be especially difficult due to the many ingrained features of our current K-12 system; however, it is vital to learn from our past mistakes and break the cycle of failed efforts in order to fix the system that is the lifeblood of our country's future success. These proceedings provide insights into some of those past efforts as well as some of the current initiatives that provide optimism and hope in schools across the country. From these examples, we recognize that it is imperative that we improve student achievement by embracing reforms that work.

This book, The Challenges of School Reform: Impact, Implementation, and Sustainability, explores why reforms todate have failed to live up to expectations, and it discusses promising practices and strategies for sustaining increased student achievement. This work expands on the ideas and themes discussed in the first two volumes in this series on education policy: The first book-Talented Teachers: The Essential Force for Improving Student Achievement-examines the importance of teacher quality. Years of research have repeatedly confirmed what we inferred to be true-outside of the home environment, the quality of a student's teacher has the strongest impact on learning. After talented teachers were found to be a powerful component for bettering education, the second book-Improving Student Achievement: Reforms that Work-introduces reform ideas and programs that positively impact both teacher quality and student work. Now, The Challenges of School Reform: Implementation, Impact, and Sustainability deepens these discussions by exploring the answers to questions regarding ensuring the longevity and sustained success of effective school reform.

This book explains to policymakers, parents, business leaders, and teachers themselves the importance of talented teachers in increasing student achievement. It is based on the proceedings from the 2003 Milken National Education Conference (NEC), which was held in Los Angeles in May 2003. In the early 1980s, Lowell Milken, chairman and co-founder of the Milken Family Foundation, created an awards program to acknowledge educators' crucial contributions to our national well-being. His belief was--and is--that one way to attract, retain, and motivate talented people to the teaching profession is to recognize and reward outstanding educators' achievements, enhance their resources and expand their professional influence and growth. For almost two decades the program, which is the largest teacher recognition program in the nation, has rewarded thousands of exemplary kindergarten through 12th-grade teachers, principals, counselors, librarians, and other specialists--each with an unrestricted financial prize of USD25,000. This book provides readers with the opportunity to hear what experts in the educational community think about the myriad issues involved in improving the quality of all teachers in our nation's classrooms.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the debate over the determining factors of and key influences on employment growth and labor market training, job creation, education, and related policies in the United States.

We have heard from scholars, policymakers, and business leaders about how to improve our schools, but those who actually work in K-12 education rarely have a chance to speak out. This volume addresses that imbalance by providing the views of teachers and administrators who have been recognized for exemplary contributions to their profession. The ideas presented in this book originated at a conference held in March 1991, where keynote addresses were presented by former Secretary of Education William Bennett and Harvard professor Arthur Levine on the topic What do we want our graduates to be like?. Following are reactions to this question from four state superintendents and from teachers. Then there are a series of chapters that focus on different approaches to preparing students for their futures: moral and ethical development; meeting the needs of diverse student populations; attracting, preparing, and retaining high-quality teachers; school structure and restructuring; assessing effective school processes; and business or university collaborations with schools.

Instead of abstract or theoretical solutions, this valuable book emphasizes practical approaches with proven results.

This important new book assembles internationally prominent school-of-education faculty and researchers to provide valuable perspectives on the school reform or excellence movement. "From the CampuS" addresses timely issues in education in a scholarly yet easy-to-read style. The contributors represent a wide variety of disciplines including comparative and international education, history, sociology, political science, curriculum theory, testing and evaluation, school administration, special education and more. They confront the most controversial issues in education of our time; equity and excellence, at-risk children, the education of language-minority students, the governance of education, parental choice, and the importance of home, family, and elementary and preschool education.

This book broadens the scope of the debate over school reform to include concerns that the current enthusiasm for excellence will erode earlier gains for equality, and that the reform movement is not paying enough attention to at-risk and disadvantaged children. The contributors examine the need for radical restructuring of schools in order to combine excellence with equality. "From the CampuS" offers insight, values, and pedagogical expertise from education scholars enabling the reader to be well-informed in the school reform debate. Parents, school board members, policy makers, school administrators, teachers, and education students will find "From the CampuS" a source of stimulating ideas as well as a valuable resource.

This clear, accessible volume provides a comprehensive overview of the ongoing debate over the determining factors of and key influences on employment growth and labor market training, education, and related policies in the United States. Drawing on the work of distinguished labor economists, the chapters tackle questions posed by job and skill demands in the "new high-tech economy" and explore sources of employment growth; productivity growth and its implications for future employment; government mandates, labor costs, and employment; and labor force demographics, income inequality, and returns to human capital. These topics are central concerns for government, which must judge every prospective policy proposal by its effects on employment growth. Washington keeps at least one eye firmly on the jobs picture, and public officials at every level are constantly aware of the issues surrounding American job security. The jobs issue reaches beyond this focus on the unemployment rate and on total employment, including the rate at which employment is seen as growing, the growth of real wages, the security of employment, returns to human capital, uncertainty about the education and training best suited for a world of rapidly changing economic conditions, and the distribution of the gains from growth across economic classes and population groups.

Originally this book was meant only to recommend a way to pay for placing modern technology into all of our country's public schools. As we began to formulate that financing plan, however, we realized the task was not as straightforward as we had thought. We were struck by the vehement opposition to our basic premise-the importance of using technology in education-voiced by most relevant constituencies: educators, taxpayers, and especially many businesses.

This book, The Challenges of School Reform: Impact, Implementation, and Sustainability, explores why reforms todate have failed to live up to expectations, and it discusses promising practices and strategies for sustaining increased student achievement. This work expands on the ideas and themes discussed in the first two volumes in this series on education policy: The first book-Talented Teachers: The Essential Force for Improving Student Achievement-examines the importance of teacher quality. Years of research have repeatedly confirmed what we inferred to be true-outside of the home environment, the quality of a student's teacher has the strongest impact on learning. After talented teachers were found to be a powerful component for bettering education, the second book-Improving Student Achievement: Reforms that Work-introduces reform ideas and programs that positively impact both teacher quality and student work. Now, The Challenges of School Reform: Implementation, Impact, and Sustainability deepens these discussions by exploring the answers to questions regarding ensuring the longevity and sustained success of effective school reform.

How Stakeholders Can Support Teacher Quality compiles the proceedings from the Milken Family Foundation's National Education Conference (NEC), which took place in Washington, D.C., in May 2006. Each year, the NEC brings together practitioners, policymakers and private sector representatives to focus on critical issues in education. This work expands on the ideas and themes discussed in the first three volumes in this series on education policy: The first volume-Talented Teachers: The Essential Force for Improving Student Achievement-examined the importance of teacher quality. As the second in the series, Improving Student Achievement: Reforms that Work, introduced reform ideas and programs that positively impact both teacher quality and student work. The Challenges of School Reform: Implementation, Impact and Sustainability deepened these discussions by exploring the answers to questions regarding ensuring the longevity and sustained success of effective school reform. How Stakeholders Can Support Teacher Quality examines the roles of teachers, the education sector, the government sector and the private sector in enhancing teacher quality. From the building level to the federal level, panelists sought to provide insight from their individual and collective endeavors to improve the quality of today's teaching force to significantly impact the future.

This book explains to policymakers, parents, business leaders, and teachers themselves the importance of talented teachers in increasing student achievement. It is based on the proceedings from the 2003 Milken National Education Conference (NEC), which was held in Los Angeles in May 2003. In the early 1980s, Lowell Milken, chairman and co-founder of the Milken Family Foundation, created an awards program to acknowledge educators' crucial contributions to our national well-being. His belief was--and is--that one way to attract, retain, and motivate talented people to the teaching profession is to recognize and reward outstanding educators' achievements, enhance their resources and expand their professional influence and growth. For almost two decades the program, which is the largest teacher recognition program in the nation, has rewarded thousands of exemplary kindergarten through 12th-grade teachers, principals, counselors, librarians, and other specialists--each with an unrestricted financial prize of USD25,000. This book provides readers with the opportunity to hear what experts in the educational community think about the myriad issues involved in improving the quality of all teachers in our nation's classrooms.

Improving Student Achievement: Reforms that Work expands on the first volume in the Milken Family Foundation series on education policy, ""Talented Teachers: The Essential Force for Improving Student Achievement."" The series explains to policymakers, parents, business leaders, and teachers the importance of teacher quality in increasing student achievement. This volume is based primarily on the proceedings from the 2004 Milken National Education Conference (NEC), which was held in Washington, D.C., in May 2004. Reform of any kind is an arduous process. It requires forward thinking, hard work, collaboration, and commitment on the part of teachers, administrators, policy leaders, and other supporters of the endeavor. Education reform in particular can be especially difficult due to the many ingrained features of our current K-12 system; however, it is vital to learn from our past mistakes and break the cycle of failed efforts in order to fix the system that is the lifeblood of our country's future success. These proceedings provide insights into some of those past efforts as well as some of the current initiatives that provide optimism and hope in schools across the country. From these examples, we recognize that it is imperative that we improve student achievement by embracing reforms that work.