Better Schools

We all know teachers who, in the face of insurmountable district and school level challenges, inspire underserved students to succeed. These teachers are more than good ? they are ‘stars’. Haberman maintains that school districts still gamble when selecting teachers as an overwhelming number are not stars and are unprepared or underprepared to work effectively with marginalized students. Haberman explains that teacher selection is more important than teacher training. The ability to identify educators with the necessary social justice or relational characteristics may lead to an increase in academic achievement among learners as well as lower teacher attrition. Consequently, all those who are interested in building America’s teaching force with stars –including human resource managers for K?12 school districts, administrators, teachers, teacher advocates, teacher education faculty and graduate students ? will benefit from this book. Better Teachers, Better Schools is a must read for two main reasons. First, the achievement gap between 16 million children in poverty and their mainstream counterparts is continuing to become even wider. Many urban students are constantly subjected to educational barriers, which limits their future opportunities. These learners deserve teachers that know more than content, but who can build relationships in order to leverage learning with greater outcomes. Second, Haberman was one of the most prolific producers of teachers to date. He reminds us that quality school systems, built on the back of quality teachers, benefit our society. Better Teachers, Better Schools offers a refreshing take on what it means to be a star teacher by sharing some of Haberman’s most requested writings as well as new narratives and research that corroborate his star theory. The contributions in this volume give us a window into Haberman’s seven relational dispositions of star teachers; or teachers’ ideology put into behavior. Also, each chapter contains learning outcomes and reflection questions for discussion.

"Almost overnight a virus has brought into question America's nearly 200-year-old government-run K-12 school-system-and prompted an urgent search for alternatives. But where should we turn to find them? Enter James Tooley's Really Good Schools. A distinguished scholar of education and the world's foremost expert on private, low-cost innovative education, Tooley takes readers to some of the world's most impoverished communities located in some of the world's most dangerous places-including India and such war-torn countries as Sierra Leone, Liberia, and South Sudan. There, in places where education "experts" fear to tread, Tooley finds thriving private schools that government, multinational NGOs, and even international charity officials deny exist. Why? Because the very existence of low-cost, high-quality private schools shatters the prevailing myth in the U.S., U.K., and western Europe that, absent government, affordable, high-quality schools for the poor could not exist. But they do. And they are ubiquitous and in high demand. Founded by unheralded, local educational entrepreneurs, these schools are proving that self-organized education is not just possible but flourishing-often enrolling far more students than "free" government schools do at prices within reach of even the most impoverished families"--

Building Better Schools with Evidence-based Policy: Adaptable Policy for Teachers and School Leaders provides an extensive set of free-to-use policies for building better schools. The policies included in this book cover a broad range of popular topics for schools that are not readily accessible, and each policy is built on theory, driven by research, and created by experts. Each policy is based on substantial evidence, and this is ensured through the inclusion of contributors who are active and highly reputable in their respective field. Most schools are obliged to write and maintain policy, and not all school leaders have the required skills, time, or expertise to do this effectively. Building Better Schools with Evidence-based Policy: Adaptable Policy for Teachers and School Leaders is a time-saving resource for schools. It aims to address the reported research-to-practice gap in education by delivering accessible evidence-based practice in a ready-to-use adaptable format. All policies within this book are designed to be adapted and tailored to the unique diversity and needs of each school as reflected by the context and the people that make up the school community. This book is relevant to every person who works in a school – worldwide. Users of this book can rest assured that each policy has been carefully formulated from the current understandings of best practice. This is a practical innovation and an example of how schools can use research evidence in their day-to-day practices. "The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license."

Schlechty shows both educators and parents how to envision reform and design quality educational systems. He explains how the visioning process must be rooted in real shared beliefs, how mission statements must unpack visions into concrete goals that are connected to action, and how the results of reform can be usefully assessed. Drawing on the author's vast experience in the day-to-day work of implementing school reform, Inventing Better Schools offers new approaches for setting standards and ensuring accountability--and includes samples of actual mission statements and strategic plans of successful school districts.

Nearly the whole of America’s partisan politics centers on a single question: Can markets solve our social problems? And for years this question has played out ferociously in the debates about how we should educate our children. From the growth of vouchers and charter schools to the implementation of No Child Left Behind, policy makers have increasingly turned to market-based models to help improve our schools, believing that private institutions—because they are competitively driven—are better than public ones. With The Public School Advantage, Christopher A. and Sarah Theule Lubienski offer powerful evidence to undercut this belief, showing that public schools in fact outperform private ones. For decades research showing that students at private schools perform better than students at public ones has been used to promote the benefits of the private sector in education, including vouchers and charter schools—but much of these data are now nearly half a century old. Drawing on two recent, large-scale, and nationally representative databases, the Lubienskis show that any benefit seen in private school performance now is more than explained by demographics. Private schools have higher scores not because they are better institutions but because their students largely come from more privileged backgrounds that offer greater educational support. After correcting for demographics, the Lubienskis go on to show that gains in student achievement at public schools are at least as great and often greater than those at private ones. Even more surprising, they show that the very mechanism that market-based reformers champion—autonomy—may be the crucial factor that prevents private schools from performing better. Alternatively, those practices that these reformers castigate, such as teacher certification and professional reforms of curriculum and instruction, turn out to have a significant effect on school improvement. Despite our politics, we all agree on the fundamental fact: education deserves our utmost care. The Public School Advantage offers exactly that. By examining schools within the diversity of populations in which they actually operate, it provides not ideologies but facts. And the facts say it clearly: education is better off when provided for the public by the public.

One of the great challenges now facing education reformers in the United States is how to devise a consistent and intelligent framework for instruction that will work across the nation’s notoriously fragmented and politically conflicted school systems. Various programs have tried to do that, but only a few have succeeded. Improvement by Design looks at three different programs, seeking to understand why two of them—America’s Choice and Success for All—worked, and why the third—Accelerated Schools Project—did not. The authors identify four critical puzzles that the successful programs were able to solve: design, implementation, improvement, and sustainability. Pinpointing the specific solutions that clearly improved instruction, they identify the key elements that all successful reform programs share. Offering urgently needed guidance for state and local school systems as they attempt to respond to future reform proposals, Improvement by Design gets America one step closer to truly successful education systems.

How You Create A Legendary School Starting Tomorrow Have you ever wondered, Why didn

As a field, education has largely failed to learn from experience. Time after time, promising education reforms fall short of their goals and are abandoned as other promising ideas take their place. In Learning to Improve, the authors argue for a new approach. Rather than “implementing fast and learning slow,” they believe educators should adopt a more rigorous approach to improvement that allows the field to “learn fast to implement well.” Using ideas borrowed from improvement science, the authors show how a process of disciplined inquiry can be combined with the use of networks to identify, adapt, and successfully scale up promising interventions in education. Organized around six core principles, the book shows how “networked improvement communities” can bring together researchers and practitioners to accelerate learning in key areas of education. Examples include efforts to address the high rates of failure among students in community college remedial math courses and strategies for improving feedback to novice teachers. Learning to Improve offers a new paradigm for research and development in education that promises to be a powerful driver of improvement for the nation’s schools and colleges.

What would a school look like if it was designed with mental health in mind? Too many public schools look and feel like prisons, designed out of fear of vandalism and truancy. But we know that nurturing environments are better for learning. Access to nature, big classroom windows, and open campuses consistently reduce stress, anxiety, disorderly conduct, and crime, and improve academic performance. Backed by decades of research, Schools That Heal showcases clear and compelling ways--from furniture to classroom improvements to whole campus renovations--to make supportive learning environments for our children and teenagers. With invaluable advice for school administrators, public health experts, teachers, and parents Schools That Heal is a call to action and a practical resource to create nurturing and inspiring schools for all children.

Being a member of the Board of Trustees for a private school is certainly an honor. You are asked to take into your care a school--to ensure that each student's education fulfills the school's mission, and that all students are nurtured and developed to their benefit. You must carry out that care by providing support-resources-to the School Head. Your relationship to the school-as with all Trustees--determines whether your school will be successful in the long term.Being a Board member is also somewhat puzzling. If you're like many Trustees, you're not sure how it happened. Maybe you were approached at a social event. Maybe another Board member had talked to you a while ago about it on the phone; you may even have forgotten the conversation. Maybe you were serving on a committee and this seemed the next logical step. You've become a private school Trustee.Now what?This book is based on more than four decades of working with the Boards of hundreds of private schools. Independent School Management (ISM) has honed its research and recommendations over those years to provide the best possible service to our schools. We hope you'll find the following theory and advice valuable as you better prepare your Board to plan for your school's future. Chapters include: * The Role of the Trustee* The Board's Foundation and Strategic Structures* Understanding Private School Finances* Strategic Planning and Strategic Financial Planning* The ISM Stability Markers* Purpose and Outcome Statements* ISM Success Predictors* Recruiting and Orienting Board Members* The Board Committees* Board Meetings and Other Functions* Board-School Head Relationships* The Board's Role in Fundraising* Strategic Board Assessment* A Sample Board Commitment and Trustee HandbookIndependent School Management (ISM) is a family owned company dedicated to the advancement of private school management. ISM reaches over 7,000 private-independent schools, and serves over 200,000 students annually with advice, assistance, and creative solutions. Administrators in private schools of all types and sizes turn to ISM for advice and assistance on an array of management challenges, including student recruitment and retention, fundraising, strategic and long-range planning, Board-Head relations, personnel, plant expansion, mergers, leadership training, and creative insurance solutions.This book is based on more than four decades of working with the Boards of hundreds of private schools. We've honed our research and recommendations over those years to provide the best possible service to our schools. We hope you'll find the following theory and advice valuable as you better prepare your Board to plan for your school's future