Amid today's heightened attention on student achievement, school boards find their responsibilities intensified and transformed. In this age of accountability, all school boards need to consider how best to maintain a focus on student achievement and promote it through district and school policies. The Essential School Board Book answers this challenge in direct and practical terms. It highlights effective practices that are common to high-functioning boards around the country-boards that are working successfully with their superintendents and communities to improve teaching and learning. In a highly readable and accessible fashion, the book summarizes research linking school board practices to student achievement. It features stories of sixteen diverse boards around the country-elected and appointed; rural, urban, and suburban-and the policies and procedures they have employed to enhance student achievement. Also included is a resource section for those investigating successful school board policies and practices in more depth.

Organized around the four key areas outlined in the U. S. Department of Education's Race to the Top program, Strategic Priorities for School Improvement presents a collection of seminal articles on standards and assessment; using data to improve learning; recruiting and retaining great teachers and leaders; and turning around failing schools. Contributors include Karin Chenoweth, Stacey Childress, Elizabeth A. City, Rachel E. Curtis, Richard F. Elmore, Susan Moore Johnson, Ellen Moir, Richard J. Murnane, W. James Popham, Robert Rothman, Alexander Russo, D. Brent Stephens, and Nancy Walser.

Nobody stays in school because of Algebra 2." This educator's chance remark captures an essential truth: what keeps students in school-or fails to-is rarely the content that they are taught. Only when students feel engaged both socially and academically can schools and teachers lay the groundwork to motivate achievement. This volume, the fifth in the Harvard Education Letter Spotlight series, brings together fifteen seminal articles that examine research and practice on these complex and interrelated issues.

Organized around the four key areas outlined in the U. S. Department of Education's Race to the Top program, this volume presents a collection of seminal articles on standards and assessment; using data to improve learning; recruiting and retaining great teachers and leaders; and turning around failing schools.

Nobody stays in school because of Algebra 2." This educator's chance remark captures an essential truth: what keeps students in school-or fails to-is rarely the content that they are taught. Only when students feel engaged both socially and academically can schools and teachers lay the groundwork to motivate achievement. This volume, the fifth in the Harvard Education Letter Spotlight series, brings together fifteen seminal articles that examine research and practice on these complex and interrelated issues.