America S Schools At A Turning Point

The education of America's children is critical to our nation and local communities, but sweeping reforms have left teachers demoralized, children frustrated, and families disenfranchised. America's Schools at a Turning Point: And how we THE PEOPLE can help shape their future is a wake-up call. Author Corky O'Callaghan explains how families and educators can empower their communities to effectively address the growing challenges now facing our public schools and help determine the future of education reform. Ultimately, this is a story about working together and restoring faith and confidence in the American dream.

100 Turning Points in American History is the first in a series of books about the critical decisions, events, inventions, and discoveries that shaped our nation, our world, and our civilization. Each volume presents the stories of 100 decisions/events/ breakthroughs in chronological order and includes, as a special feature, a list of the “Top Ten” ranked in order of impact, with a discussion justifying the ranking. Each decision/event/breakthrough includes sidebar features (“boxes”) highlighting relevant key personalities. Each volume is illustrated with (public domain) photos, images and maps.

This seminal volume, written by the principal author of the original report (Anthony W. Jackson) along with one of the main leaders in implementing its principles (Gayle A. Davis): Synthesizes crucial lessons learned from educators attempting to improve middle grades education across the country over the past decade.Bridges the gap between education researchers and practitioners by translating a wealth of recent research into practical guidance for front-line educators.Signals a new generation of thinking about middle grades education by emphasizing that, in addition to structural changes in classrooms and schools, educators must also make substantial, far-reaching changes in curriculum, student assessment, and instruction in order to improve student learning.Directly confronts critical questions such as how heterogeneously grouped (i.e., untracked) students can be successfully educated, why middle grades teachers must be specially licensed to teach young adolescents, and why middle grades instruction must include instruction in reading Carnegie Corporation’s landmark 1989 report, Turning Points: Preparing American Youth for the 21st Century, focused national attention on the long-neglected needs of adolescent youth. In the following decade, hundreds of middle grades schools implemented Turning Points principles and many others adopted similar and complementary measures. Based on these experiences, Turning Points 2000 refines the ideas contained in the original report by blending the wisdom of both the latest research and the best practice. “If [the authors’] deep understanding of what's needed and what works for adolescents were shared by every policy maker and educator, we would indeed see a major trans-formation in the education of our young. This book is a must-read for everyone who works with children and youth. For that matter, it's essential for everyone who cares about the health of our young people and our society....” —Linda Darling-Hammond, Stanford University “Turning Points 2000 provides a perfect blend of practical guidance and grand vision, looking with hope toward a day when the developmental needs of all children are met. The authors skillfully bridge the gap between research and practice as they share strategies for families, communities, and institutions to collaboratively prepare adolescents for life success.” —Dr. James P. Comer, Maurice Falk Professor of Child Psychiatry,Yale Child Study Center

This sociological collection advances the argument that the concept of a "turning point" expands our understanding of life experiences from a descriptive to a deeper and more abstract level of analysis. It addresses the conceptual issue of what distinguishes turning points from life transitions in general and raises crucial questions about the application of turning points as a biographical research method. Biography and turning points in Europe and America is all the more distinctive and significant due to its broad empirical database. The anthology includes authors from ten different countries, providing a number of contexts for thinking about how turning points relate to constructions of meaning shaped by globalization and by cultural and structural meanings unique to each country. The book will be useful across a wide range of social sciences and particularly valuable for researchers needing a stronger theoretical base for biographical work.

Offering a unique approach to studying one of the most eventful eras in American history, this volume looks at a dozen key events of the 1960s and 1970s and considers the possible paths history might have taken if the outcomes had been different. This volume in the Turning Points—Actual and Alternative Histories series looks at a tumultuous recent era in American history, a time when pivotal, often tragic, world-changing events seemed to be happening at an alarming rate. America in Revolt during the 1960s and 1970s looks at 12 significant events, from the assassination of John F. Kennedy to the passage of the Civil Rights Act, from the student killings at Kent State to Richard Nixon's resignation. Drawing on the concepts of alternative history, the book portrays each event as it happened, then considers some plausible alternative scenarios of how history would have been different if these events had not occurred. It is a uniquely thought provoking way of exploring an explosive era, whose aftershocks continue to shape the American experience today.

The history of American evangelicalism is perhaps best understood by examining its turning points - those moments when it took on a new scope, challenge, or influence. The Great Awakening, the rise of fundamentalism and Pentecostalism, the emergence of Billy Graham?all these developments and many more have given shape to one of the most dynamic movements in American religious history. Taken together, these turning points serve as a clear and helpful roadmap for understanding how evangelicalism has become what it is today. Each chapter in this book has been written by one of the world's top experts in American religious history, and together they form a single narrative of evangelicalism's remarkable development. Here is an engaging, balanced, coherent history of American evangelicalism from its origins as a small movement to its status as a central player in the American religious story. - from publisher.

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