Achievement For All

All children deserve a good education, where barriers to learning are addressed and teachers have the knowledge and support to raise their aspirations and achievement. The Achievement for All programme is a tried-and-tested whole-school strategy for raising the aspirations and attainment of the most vulnerable learners in any school setting (0-19), including those with special educational needs, disabilities and English as an additional language. A two-year pilot demonstrated unprecedented impact for pupils with SEND, who progressed faster on average than all pupils nationally in English and M.

Thoroughly updated to reflect the challenges of diversity in today’s schools, this new edition of Achievement and Inclusion in Schools shows how high levels of inclusion can be entirely compatible with high levels of achievement and that combining the two is not only possible but also essential if all students are to have the opportunity to participate fully in education. Each chapter has been fully revised to reflect an understanding of inclusion as being concerned with the learning and participation of everyone in a changing education policy context. Based on new case study research, this edition sets out to answer the following questions: Are there strategies which can raise the achievement of all students, while safeguarding the inclusion of others who are more vulnerable? How can schools ensure high levels of inclusion as well as high levels of achievement for everyone? How might research into these matters be carried out? With new case studies in this second edition that reflect the devolution of education policy in the four countries of the UK, this book addresses concerns about how schools can respond to differences between learners without marginalising some of them. It offers guidance to practitioners as well as those undertaking research on this important topic.

What if you had a collaborative process of looking at student data that could pinpoint student gaps in learning and suggest effective strategies to close those gaps? What if you knew not only what you should start doing to enhance student learning, but also what you should stop doing because it hasn't given you the hoped-for results? Enter Achievement Teams. This is not another program that's here today and gone tomorrow; it's a timeless approach that any school or district can replicate that focuses on the most significant variable in student achievement: teaching. In Achievement Teams, Steve Ventura and Michelle Ventura offer a framework based on John Hattie's Visible Learning research that makes teacher collaboration more efficient, rigorous, satisfying, and effective. Think of it as a systematic treasure hunt for best practices using real data on your students. The authors walk you through the Achievement Teams four-step meeting protocol: * In Step 1, teams focus on the evidence from a pre-assessment to provide specific feedback to students and teachers about concepts and skills that students did and did not learn. * In Step 2, teams use that evidence to establish SMART goals for both teachers and students. * In Step 3, teams summarize the collected data and make inferences around students' mastery levels. * In Step 4, teachers select high-impact strategies directly targeted to student needs. A post-assessment reveals what did and didn't work. The authors provide a plethora of resources along the way, including reflection activities to extend your thinking and a variety of helpful downloadable templates designed to facilitate the work. If you're a teacher or leader who is interested in maximizing student achievement, this book is for you.

Despite the best efforts of educators, our nation's schools are dangerously obsolete. Instead of teaching students to be critical thinkers and problem-solvers, we are asking them to memorize facts for multiple choice tests. This problem isn't limited to low-income school districts: even our top schools aren't teaching or testing the skills that matter most in the global knowledge economy. Our teens leave school equipped to work only in the kinds of jobs that are fast disappearing from the American economy. Meanwhile, young adults in India and China are competing with our students for the most sought-after careers around the world. Education expert Tony Wagner has conducted scores of interviews with business leaders and observed hundreds of classes in some of the nation's most highly regarded public schools. He discovered a profound disconnect between what potential employers are looking for in young people today (critical thinking skills, creativity, and effective communication) and what our schools are providing (passive learning environments and uninspired lesson plans that focus on test preparation and reward memorization). He explains how every American can work to overhaul our education system, and he shows us examples of dramatically different schools that teach all students new skills. In addition, through interviews with college graduates and people who work with them, Wagner discovers how teachers, parents, and employers can motivate the &"net"; generation to excellence. An education manifesto for the twenty-first century, The Global Achievement Gap is provocative and inspiring. It is essential reading for parents, educators, business leaders, policy-makers, and anyone interested in seeing our young people succeed as employees and citizens. For additional information about the author and the book, please go to a href="http://www.schoolchange.org"www.schoolchange.org

The organisation Achievement for All engaged in international projects in England, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, South Korea, the United States of America and Wales with the aim of raising the aspirations, access and achievements of vulnerable and disadvantaged children and young people. These projects were united in bringing Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) back into the classroom by focusing on the relationship between parents, leaders, teachers and wider professionals. Achievement for All in International Classrooms examines these projects, looking at the context of each and the research findings, before considering how this could enhance knowledge and understanding in other international settings. Sonia Blandford examines the policy implications needed to bring SEND into the classroom, understanding of the scale of the issue, moral purpose, belief, commitment, collaboration and determination, through evaluation, research and practice. She also considers what it takes to change practice, bringing Achievement for All and SEND into the classroom, looking in particular at the implications for: - Leadership - Teaching and learning - Parent and carer engagement - Wider outcomes and opportunities - Professional development for all staff Drawing on her wealth of experience and expertise, Blandford then makes recommendations on what it would take to introduce Achievement for All in policy to bring SEND into the classroom, with particular reference to changes at national, regional and school level, as well as parental and carer engagement and a desire to improve outcomes for all children and young people.

The International Guide to Student Achievement brings together and critically examines the major influences shaping student achievement today. There are many, often competing, claims about how to enhance student achievement, raising the questions of "What works?" and "What works best?" World-renowned bestselling authors, John Hattie and Eric M. Anderman have invited an international group of scholars to write brief, empirically-supported articles that examine predictors of academic achievement across a variety of topics and domains. Rather than telling people what to do in their schools and classrooms, this guide simply provides the first-ever compendium of research that summarizes what is known about the major influences shaping students’ academic achievement around the world. Readers can apply this knowledge base to their own school and classroom settings. The 150+ entries serve as intellectual building blocks to creatively mix into new or existing educational arrangements and aim for quick, easy reference. Chapter authors follow a common format that allows readers to more seamlessly compare and contrast information across entries, guiding readers to apply this knowledge to their own classrooms, their curriculums and teaching strategies, and their teacher training programs.

From the magisterial to the mundane, achievements play a role in the best kind of human life, and many people think that they are of such importance that they are worth pursuing at the expense of serious sacrifices. Yet for all that, no philosophers have devoted more than a few short passages to discerning what makes achievements valuable, or even what makes something an achievement to begin with. Gwen Bradford presents the first systematic account of what achievements are, and what it is about them that makes them worth doing. It turns out that more things count as achievements than we might have thought, and that what makes them valuable isn't something we usually think of as good. It turns out that difficulty, perhaps surprisingly, plays a central part in characterizing achievements and their value: achievements are worth the effort. But just what does it mean for something to be difficult, and why is it valuable? A thorough analysis of the nature of difficulty is given, and ultimately, the best account of the value of achievements taps into perfectionist axiology. But not just any perfectionist theory of value will do, and in this book we see a new perfectionist theory developed that succeeds in capturing the value of achievement better than its predecessors.

Thoroughly updated to reflect the challenges of diversity in today’s schools, this new edition of Achievement and Inclusion in Schools shows how high levels of inclusion can be entirely compatible with high levels of achievement and that combining the two is not only possible but also essential if all students are to have the opportunity to participate fully in education. Each chapter has been fully revised to reflect an understanding of inclusion as being concerned with the learning and participation of everyone in a changing education policy context. Based on new case study research, this edition sets out to answer the following questions: Are there strategies which can raise the achievement of all students, while safeguarding the inclusion of others who are more vulnerable? How can schools ensure high levels of inclusion as well as high levels of achievement for everyone? How might research into these matters be carried out? With new case studies in this second edition that reflect the devolution of education policy in the four countries of the UK, this book addresses concerns about how schools can respond to differences between learners without marginalising some of them. It offers guidance to practitioners as well as those undertaking research on this important topic.