What The Academy Taught Us: Improving Schools from the Bottom Up in a Top-Down Transformation Era

What The Academy Taught Us: Improving Schools from the Bottom Up in a Top-Down Transformation Era

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  • Author: Eric Kalenze
  • Publisher: John Catt
  • ISBN: 1398384054
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 311

Early in the 2000s, a high-school principal in Minnesota, Dr. Bob Perdaems, faced a complex challenge. The demographics of his school were shifting, political tensions in the surrounding communities were rising, and, thanks to the No Child Left Behind Act's new testing and accountability requirements, his school's performance was soon to be scrutinized more intensely and more publicly than ever before. While he had several visions of how his school could continuously improve through these realities, however, he had no additional budget to bring his ideas to life.Undaunted, Dr. Bob set to creating school improvements the best way he knew how--and that, of course, he could afford: he prioritized his school's areas for growth, found teachers who would lend minds and hands, and gathered them to look at the blueprints. What the Academy Taught Us is a book about the collaborative school-improvement culture Dr. Bob created in his Minnesota high school: the principles that initiated it, the collective effort that kept it running, and the lasting effects it had on its teachers and students. The book also brilliantly explores how bottom-up approaches like Dr. Bob's fare in the current era, which seeks to transform schools through more top-down and 'disruptive' means. Ultimately, What the Academy Taught Us offers today's educators a way forward. While largely viewing the difficult work of school improvement through the prism of a single school, it presents abundant recommendations about how schools everywhere can build effective and continuous improvement from the bottom up.


In Search of Deeper Learning

In Search of Deeper Learning

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  • Author: Jal Mehta
  • Publisher: Harvard University Press
  • ISBN: 0674988396
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 465

"The best book on high school dynamics I have ever read."--Jay Mathews, Washington Post An award-winning professor and an accomplished educator take us beyond the hype of reform and inside some of America's most innovative classrooms to show what is working--and what isn't--in our schools. What would it take to transform industrial-era schools into modern organizations capable of supporting deep learning for all? Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine's quest to answer this question took them inside some of America's most innovative schools and classrooms--places where educators are rethinking both what and how students should learn. The story they tell is alternately discouraging and hopeful. Drawing on hundreds of hours of observations and interviews at thirty different schools, Mehta and Fine reveal that deeper learning is more often the exception than the rule. And yet they find pockets of powerful learning at almost every school, often in electives and extracurriculars as well as in a few mold-breaking academic courses. These spaces achieve depth, the authors argue, because they emphasize purpose and choice, cultivate community, and draw on powerful traditions of apprenticeship. These outliers suggest that it is difficult but possible for schools and classrooms to achieve the integrations that support deep learning: rigor with joy, precision with play, mastery with identity and creativity. This boldly humanistic book offers a rich account of what education can be. The first panoramic study of American public high schools since the 1980s, In Search of Deeper Learning lays out a new vision for American education--one that will set the agenda for schools of the future.


Helping Children Learn Mathematics

Helping Children Learn Mathematics

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  • Author: National Research Council
  • Publisher: National Academies Press
  • ISBN: 0309131987
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 53

Results from national and international assessments indicate that school children in the United States are not learning mathematics well enough. Many students cannot correctly apply computational algorithms to solve problems. Their understanding and use of decimals and fractions are especially weak. Indeed, helping all children succeed in mathematics is an imperative national goal. However, for our youth to succeed, we need to change how we're teaching this discipline. Helping Children Learn Mathematics provides comprehensive and reliable information that will guide efforts to improve school mathematics from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade. The authors explain the five strands of mathematical proficiency and discuss the major changes that need to be made in mathematics instruction, instructional materials, assessments, teacher education, and the broader educational system and answers some of the frequently asked questions when it comes to mathematics instruction. The book concludes by providing recommended actions for parents and caregivers, teachers, administrators, and policy makers, stressing the importance that everyone work together to ensure a mathematically literate society.


Grasp

Grasp

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  • Author: Sanjay Sarma
  • Publisher: Anchor
  • ISBN: 038554183X
  • Category : Science
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 351

How do we learn? And how can we learn better? In this groundbreaking look at the science of learning, Sanjay Sarma, head of Open Learning at MIT, shows how we can harness this knowledge to discover our true potential. Drawing from his own experience as an educator as well as the work of researchers and innovators at MIT and beyond, in Grasp, Sarma explores the history of modern education, tracing the way in which traditional classroom methods—lecture, homework, test, repeat—became the norm and showing why things needs to change. The book takes readers across multiple frontiers, from fundamental neuroscience to cognitive psychology and beyond, as it considers the future of learning. It introduces scientists who study forgetting, exposing it not as a simple failure of memory but as a critical weapon in our learning arsenal. It examines the role curiosity plays in promoting a state of “readiness to learn” in the brain (and its troublesome twin, “unreadiness to learn”). And it reveals how such ideas are being put into practice in the real world, such as at unorthodox new programs like Ad Astra, located on the SpaceX campus. Along the way, Grasp debunks long-held views such as the noxious idea of “learning styles,” equipping readers with practical tools for absorbing and retaining information across a lifetime of learning.


Leading in a Culture of Change

Leading in a Culture of Change

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  • Author: Michael Fullan
  • Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
  • ISBN: 0787987662
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 263

"At the very time the need for effective leadership is reaching critical proportions, Michael Fullan's Leading in a Culture of Change provides powerful insights for moving forward. We look forward to sharing it with our grantees." --Tom Vander Ark, executive director, Education, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation "Fullan articulates clearly the core values and practices of leadership required at all levels of the organization. Using specific examples, he convinces us that the key change principles are equally critical for leadership in business and education organizations." --John Evans, chairman, Torstar Corporation "In Leading in a Culture of Change, Michael Fullan deftly combines his expertise in school reform with the latest insights in organizational change and leadership. The result is a compelling and insightful exposition on how leaders in any setting can bring about lasting, positive, systemic change in their organizations." --John Alexander, president, Center for Creative Leadership "Michael Fullan's work is remarkable. He masterfully captures how leaders can significantly improve their learning and performance, even in the uncontrollable, chaotic circumstances in which they practice. A tour de force." --Anthony Alvarado, chancellor of instruction, San Diego City Schools "Too often schools and businesses are seen as separate and foreign places. Michael Fullan blends the best of knowledge from each into an exemplary template for improving leadership in both." --Terrence E. Deal, coauthor of Leading with Soul Business, nonprofit, and public sector leaders are facing new and daunting challenges--rapid-paced developments in technology, sudden shifts in the marketplace, and crisis and contention in the public arena. If they are to survive in this chaotic environment, leaders must develop the skills they need to lead effectively no matter how fast the world around them is changing. Leading in a Culture of Change offers new and seasoned leaders' insights into the dynamics of change and presents a unique and imaginative approach for navigating the intricacies of the change process. Michael Fullan--an internationally acclaimed expert in organizational change--shows how leaders in all types of organizations can accomplish their goals and become exceptional leaders. He draws on the most current ideas and theories on the topic of effective leadership, incorporates case examples of large scale transformation, and reveals a remarkable convergence of powerful themes or, as he calls them, the five core competencies. By integrating the five core competencies--attending to a broader moral purpose, keeping on top of the change process, cultivating relationships, sharing knowledge, and setting a vision and context for creating coherence in organizations--leaders will be empowered to deal with complex change. They will be transformed into exceptional leaders who consistently mobilize their compatriots to do important and difficult work under conditions of constant change.


The Death and Life of the Great American School System

The Death and Life of the Great American School System

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  • Author: Diane Ravitch
  • Publisher: Basic Books (AZ)
  • ISBN: 0465014917
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 298

Discusses how school choice, misapplied standards of accountability, the No Child Left Behind mandate, and the use of a corporate model have all led to a decline in public education and presents arguments for a return to strong neighborhood schools and quality teaching.


Education Is Upside-Down

Education Is Upside-Down

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  • Author: Eric Kalenze
  • Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
  • ISBN: 1475809956
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 201

Education Is Upside Down cuts through adjustments being made at technical levels of educational practice and accountability, challenging ideals and philosophies that have powered American Education for most of the last century. This book explains how and why long-standing approaches generate flawed instructional practices, flawed systemic reform efforts, and a fundamental misalignment between the educational institution and the society it is missioned to serve. Education Is Upside Down urges readers wishing to improve American Education to more carefully consider the institution’s central mission, challenge long-accepted truths of practice, and question current reform efforts and actions. In full, Education Is Upside Down resists the practitioner-vs.-reformer blame game, seeking ultimately to carefully untangle—not tighten by yanking on any single strand—the long-complicated knot of American Education.


The One World Schoolhouse

The One World Schoolhouse

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  • Author: Salman Khan
  • Publisher: Twelve
  • ISBN: 145550839X
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 155

A free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere: this is the goal of the Khan Academy, a passion project that grew from an ex-engineer and hedge funder's online tutoring sessions with his niece, who was struggling with algebra, into a worldwide phenomenon. Today millions of students, parents, and teachers use the Khan Academy's free videos and software, which have expanded to encompass nearly every conceivable subject; and Academy techniques are being employed with exciting results in a growing number of classrooms around the globe. Like many innovators, Khan rethinks existing assumptions and imagines what education could be if freed from them. And his core idea-liberating teachers from lecturing and state-mandated calendars and opening up class time for truly human interaction-has become his life's passion. Schools seek his advice about connecting to students in a digital age, and people of all ages and backgrounds flock to the site to utilize this fresh approach to learning. In The One World Schoolhouse, Khan presents his radical vision for the future of education, as well as his own remarkable story, for the first time. In these pages, you will discover, among other things: How both students and teachers are being bound by a broken top-down model invented in Prussia two centuries ago Why technology will make classrooms more human and teachers more important How and why we can afford to pay educators the same as other professionals/DIV How we can bring creativity and true human interactivity back to learning/DIV Why we should be very optimistic about the future of learning. Parents and politicians routinely bemoan the state of our education system. Statistics suggest we've fallen behind the rest of the world in literacy, math, and sciences. With a shrewd reading of history, Khan explains how this crisis presented itself, and why a return to "mastery learning," abandoned in the twentieth century and ingeniously revived by tools like the Khan Academy, could offer the best opportunity to level the playing field, and to give all of our children a world-class education now. More than just a solution, The One World Schoolhouse serves as a call for free, universal, global education, and an explanation of how Khan's simple yet revolutionary thinking can help achieve this inspiring goal.


Reign of Error

Reign of Error

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  • Author: Diane Ravitch
  • Publisher: Vintage
  • ISBN: 0385350899
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 417

From one of the foremost authorities on education in the United States, former U.S. assistant secretary of education, “whistle-blower extraordinaire” (The Wall Street Journal), author of the best-selling The Death and Life of the Great American School System (“Important and riveting”—Library Journal), The Language Police (“Impassioned . . . Fiercely argued . . . Every bit as alarming as it is illuminating”—The New York Times), and other notable books on education history and policy—an incisive, comprehensive look at today’s American school system that argues against those who claim it is broken and beyond repair; an impassioned but reasoned call to stop the privatization movement that is draining students and funding from our public schools. ​In Reign of Error, Diane Ravitch argues that the crisis in American education is not a crisis of academic achievement but a concerted effort to destroy public schools in this country. She makes clear that, contrary to the claims being made, public school test scores and graduation rates are the highest they’ve ever been, and dropout rates are at their lowest point. ​She argues that federal programs such as George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind and Barack Obama’s Race to the Top set unreasonable targets for American students, punish schools, and result in teachers being fired if their students underperform, unfairly branding those educators as failures. She warns that major foundations, individual billionaires, and Wall Street hedge fund managers are encouraging the privatization of public education, some for idealistic reasons, others for profit. Many who work with equity funds are eyeing public education as an emerging market for investors. ​Reign of Error begins where The Death and Life of the Great American School System left off, providing a deeper argument against privatization and for public education, and in a chapter-by-chapter breakdown, putting forth a plan for what can be done to preserve and improve it. She makes clear what is right about U.S. education, how policy makers are failing to address the root causes of educational failure, and how we can fix it. ​For Ravitch, public school education is about knowledge, about learning, about developing character, and about creating citizens for our society. It’s about helping to inspire independent thinkers, not just honing job skills or preparing people for college. Public school education is essential to our democracy, and its aim, since the founding of this country, has been to educate citizens who will help carry democracy into the future.


Learning to Think Spatially

Learning to Think Spatially

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  • Author: National Research Council
  • Publisher: National Academies Press
  • ISBN: 0309092086
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 333

Learning to Think Spatially examines how spatial thinking might be incorporated into existing standards-based instruction across the school curriculum. Spatial thinking must be recognized as a fundamental part of Kâ€"12 education and as an integrator and a facilitator for problem solving across the curriculum. With advances in computing technologies and the increasing availability of geospatial data, spatial thinking will play a significant role in the information-based economy of the twenty-first century. Using appropriately designed support systems tailored to the Kâ€"12 context, spatial thinking can be taught formally to all students. A geographic information system (GIS) offers one example of a high-technology support system that can enable students and teachers to practice and apply spatial thinking in many areas of the curriculum.