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Literature on school reform tends to concentrate on the initiation and implementation of reform. This work seeks to provide change agents, policy makers, and students of educational change with advice on the sustaining of change and the scaling up of change to more systemic reform.
"The most talked-about education book this semester." —New York Times From the author of Coming Apart, and based on a series of controversial Wall Street Journal op-eds, this landmark manifesto gives voice to what everyone knows about talent, ability, and intelligence but no one wants to admit. With four truths as his framework, Charles Murray, the bestselling coauthor of The Bell Curve, sweeps away the hypocrisy, wishful thinking, and upside-down priorities that grip America’s educational establishment. •Ability varies. Children differ in their ability to learn, but America’s educational system does its best to ignore this. •Half of the children are below average. Many children cannot learn more than rudimentary reading and math. Yet decades of policies have required schools to divert resources to unattainable goals. •Too many people are going to college. Only a fraction of students struggling to get a degree can profit from education at the college level. •America’s future depends on how we educate the academically gifted. It is time to start thinking about the kind of education needed by the young people who will run the country.
More than ever, we need inspired and inspiring teachers and school leaders. Yet their status and morale have never been lower.Restoring the pride, focus and community perception of our educators is now a national imperative that involves cultivating a positive account of teaching expertise in every Australian school.The future of a respected teaching workforce lies in a brave, new frontier of work. It starts with applying the principles of Restorative Practices to the contemporary school context - creatively and practically.It's about doing teaching as we've never done it before.Restorative teaching that restores our teachers is a noble, worthy and overdue cause. The time is now, and the place is your school.In this book, you will find the case for change and some inconvenient truths about our avoidance of meaningful transformation within our schools. You'll also find a roadmap to a teaching future that narrows the gap between your purpose and your practice.
Schools across the U.S. look very different today than they did a generation ago. Police officers, drug-sniffing dogs, surveillance cameras, and high suspension rates have become commonplace. The Real School Safety Problem uncovers the unintended but far-reaching effects of harsh school discipline climates. Evidence shows that current school security practices may do more harm than good by broadly affecting the entire family, encouraging less civic participation in adulthood, and garnering future financial costs in the form of high rates of arrests, incarceration, and unemployment. This text presents a blueprint for reform that emphasizes problem-solving and accountability while encouraging the need to implement smarter school policies.Ê
Charles J. Sykes offers fifty life lessons not included in the self-esteem-laden, reality-light curriculum of most schools. Here are truths about what kids will encounter in the world post-schooling, and ideas for how parents can reclaim lost ground---not with pep talks and touchy-feely negotiations, but with honesty and respect. Sykes's rules are frank, funny, and tough minded, including: #1 Life is not fair. Get used to it. #7 If you think your teacher is tough, wait until you get a boss. He doesn't have tenure, so he tends to be a bit edgier. When you screw up, he's not going to ask you how you FEEL about it. #15 Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping. They called it "opportunity." #42 Change the oil. #43 Don't let the success of others depress you. #48 Tell yourself the story of your life. Have a point. Each rule is explored with wise, pithy examples that parents, grandparents, and teachers can use to help children help themselves succeed---in school and out of it. A few rules kids won't learn in school: #9 Your school may have done away with winners and losers. Life hasn't. #14 Looking like a slut does not empower you. #29 Learn to deal with hypocrisy. #32 Television is not real life. #38 Look people in the eye when you meet them. #47 You are not perfect, and you don't have to be. #50 Enjoy this while you can.
In this book Mr. Temes, who is president of the Great Books Foundation, sets out a straightforward prescription for our schools which centers on the life of the individual teacher and rejects the billion-dollar school reform.
In this insightful look at school reform, Robert Evans examines the real-life hurdles to implementing innovation and explains how the best-intended efforts can be stalled by educators who too often feel burdened and conflicted by the change process. He provides a new model of leadership along with practical management strategies for building a framework of cooperation between leaders of change and the people they depend upon to implement it.
Throughout the world there is a perceived shortage of educational leaders. Most investigations look at the issue as a problem of mathematical misalignment. This book looks at the roots of the ′succession challenge′ internationally and more specifically through the eyes of present and potential leaders to suggest how enlightened approaches to succession management can ensure a steady supply of high quality educational leaders. The author focuses on specific areas such as: - Basic issues of leadership succession - demographic and generational roots of the succession crisis - patterns of succession management and their implications - successful succession practices from around the world Dean Fink is a best selling author of numerous books including Leadership for Mortals. He is a widely travelled and popular consultant and presenter. Dean is a former teacher, school principal and senior official in Ontario, Canada.
INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER "Wise and addictive... The Gifted School is the juiciest novel I've read in ages... a suspenseful, laugh-out-loud page-turner and an incisive inspection of privilege, race and class." –J. Courtney Sullivan, author of Friends and Strangers, in The New York Times Smart and juicy, a compulsively readable novel about a previously happy group of friends and parents that is nearly destroyed by their own competitiveness when an exclusive school for gifted children opens in the community, from the author of The Displacements This deliciously sharp novel captures the relentless ambitions and fears that animate parents and their children in modern America, exploring the conflicts between achievement and potential, talent and privilege. Set in the fictional town of Crystal, Colorado, The Gifted School is a keenly entertaining novel that observes the drama within a community of friends and parents as good intentions and high ambitions collide in a pile-up with long-held secrets and lies. Seen through the lens of four families who've been a part of one another's lives since their kids were born over a decade ago, the story reveals not only the lengths that some adults are willing to go to get ahead, but the effect on the group's children, sibling relationships, marriages, and careers, as simmering resentments come to a boil and long-buried, explosive secrets surface and detonate. It's a humorous, keenly observed, timely take on ambitious parents, willful kids, and the pursuit of prestige, no matter the cost.
