Getting Schools To Work Better

Yifei Yan’s ambitious multi-method case study of government middle schools in Beijing and Delhi provides fresh insights into how educational accountability can be designed to work, in part and as a whole. Getting schools to work better is a challenge just about everywhere. Many policy experts prescribe measures for strengthening school accountability, either through government command and control or through alternative market and societal actors. In challenging this conventional wisdom, this book examines how China and India are tackling the challenge with a specific focus on supporting teachers along with traditional accountability-strengthening measures. The book draws implications from its case studies for how education systems can be designed towards the fulfilment of Sustainable Development Goal 4. It further develops the concept of "Accountability 3.0" to elucidate a novel and more holistic reconceptualisation of the appropriate means needed to fulfil multiple purposes of accountability, in which providing support to frontline workers is viewed as an integral component. This book will appeal to a wide spectrum of scholars and practitioners in the fields of comparative education, public administration, public policy and development studies, among others. It will be especially interesting to those from the developing world facing similar accountability challenges as described.

Have you ever dreamed of an entire school reading your book? Would you like to double (or more!) your writing income? With advice and insights that are adaptable to getting your book in front of audiences ranging from middle grade to high school to college, and even to corporations, this book is for you!

Teaching is a lifelong challenge, but the first few years in the classroom are typically a teacher's hardest. This expanded collection of writings and reflections offers practical guidance on how to navigate the school system, form rewarding relationships with colleagues, and connect in meaningful ways with students and families from all cultures and backgrounds.

Arguing against the tougher standards rhetoric that marks the current education debate, the author of No Contest and Punished by Rewards writes that such tactics squeeze the pleasure out of learning. Reprint.

Learn how 14 schools became exemplary using excellent planning processes and action steps for total school improvement. Building on their work in Harbors of Hope, the authors reveal seven lessons for success based on the correlates of effective schools. Equip yourself with viable, practical school improvement strategies that are supported by a solid research base.

“This book merits every American’s serious consideration” (Vice President Joe Biden): from the Secretary of Education under President Obama, an exposé of the status quo that helps maintain a broken system at the expense of our kids’ education, and threatens our nation’s future. “Education runs on lies. That’s probably not what you’d expect from a former Secretary of Education, but it’s the truth.” So opens Arne Duncan’s How Schools Work, although the title could just as easily be How American Schools Work for Some, Not for Others, and Only Now and Then for Kids. Drawing on nearly three decades in education—from his mother’s after-school program on Chicago’s South Side to his tenure as Secretary of Education in Washington, DC—How Schools Work follows Arne (as he insists you call him) as he takes on challenges at every turn: gangbangers in Chicago housing projects, parents who call him racist, teachers who insist they can’t help poor kids, unions that refuse to modernize, Tea Partiers who call him an autocrat, affluent white progressive moms who hate yearly tests, and even the NRA, which once labeled Arne the “most extreme anti-gun member of President Obama’s Cabinet.” Going to a child’s funeral every couple of weeks, as he did when he worked in Chicago, will do that to a person. How Schools Work exposes the lies that have caused American kids to fall behind their international peers, from early childhood all the way to college graduation rates. But it also identifies what really does make a school work. “As insightful as it is inspiring” (Washington Book Review), How Schools Work will embolden parents, teachers, voters, and even students to demand more of our public schools. If America is going to be great, then we can accept nothing less.

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.

Beginning with the fundamental and essential question, "How do we improve schools?" prominent education theorists and practitioners examine the imperative of education reform. They confront and analyze the pressing need for effective, systematic ways to improve education in order to ensure competent students and graduates, and they offer numerous innovative ideas and models for reform. The discussions in this book are the fruits of the 1992 Milken Family Foundation National Educator Awards Retreat. Committed to recognizing the contributions of educators, the annual conference advances professional development and celebrates—publicly—professional achievement. Addressed in this volume are such urgent and far-reaching issues as enrichment versus remedial strategies for at-risk students; educators' responses to extra-education demands; creative leadership among practitioners; and the crucial role of educator awards. Practitioners, policymakers, and anyone wanting to stay current with the state of American education will find this useful and valuable reading.