Polling Students For School Improvement And Reform

People generally acknowledge the superiority of adolescents in using technology tools needed for learning in the future. The purpose of this book is to describe an online polling strategy that allows adolescents to make known how they view conditions of learning at their school. A school improvement model illustrates how to combine results of student polling with stakeholders' perceptions in the scheme of school reform. Student polling differs from other strategies because the target for gathering data is a single school. This deliberately narrow base for sampling student opinion ensures poll results have local relevance that can motivate stakeholder involvement and guide their response. Over 14,000 secondary students have completed polls examined in the text. These ten polls include: career exploration, time management, selective attention and distraction, motivation for Internet learning, tutoring, peer support, cheating, frustration, cyberbullying, and school stress. Students are the stakeholders with the most to gain or lose in efforts to keep American education competitive. Accordingly, their views should be sought as part of decision making about reform. When student opinion and adult observation are considered, an intergenerational perspective can emerge that more accurately portrays institutional strengths and limitations. School principals, superintendents, and state department of education leaders are invited to consider a collaborative project with the authors. Software offers administrators rapid feedback on whole school results. Finding out how special education, gifted and talented, and second language acquisition students view their conditions of learning gives additional insight about school improvement.

The purpose of this book is to help secondary school principals and college faculty fulfill their key role for continuous improvement planning of educational practices and safety at their institution. Rapid social and technological advances have motivated the consideration of student voice in schools across the United States. By merging student voice and educator expertise, an intergenerational perspective can emerge that more accurately portrays the strengths and limitations of a school. Strom and Strom began their research on student voice by partnering with adolescents and principals from several schools to identify topics they saw as appropriate for polling to improve schools. This effort led to the development of ten polls on school stress, career exploration, time management, attention and distraction, tutoring, peer support, school cheating, frustration, cyberbullying, and Internet learning. Every poll contains 15 to 20 multiple-choice items. The process model for polling includes a step-by-step procedure that educational leaders can use to plan and implement school improvement. Different methods of data analysis and ways to report overall evidence-based school results are presented by age, gender, grade and ethnicity. Student polling is distinctive from other assessment strategies because the target for data gathering is a single school, without comparison to other schools. This narrow base to assess student voice ensures poll results are anonymous and have local relevance to guide stakeholder responses. The results of polling can provide data-based evidence that can be used for continuous education improvement planning. An additional benefit is to separately assess students in special education, gifted and talented programs, and second language acquisition learners. Our web site at learningpolls.org is intended to further inform educational leaders and invite their collaboration.

Big cities have mostly failed in their efforts to reform public schools. This book shows why, and offers a framework for achieving future success. Fullan and Boyle, internationally renowned thinkers on school change, demonstrate that while the educational challenges of big cities can be overwhelming, they are not insurmountable. They identify six essential "push" and "pull" actions that can enable big school systems to improve student achievement. Leaders need to push to challenge the staus quo, convey a high sense of urgency, and have the courage needed to intervene. But they need to also pull together to create a commonly owned strategy, develop a profesisonal power of capital, and attend to sustainability. Examining three major cities, New York, Toronto, and London, through the decade of 2002 - 2012. this book weaves case studies with careful analysis and recommendations to hone in on which policies and strategies generate quality implementation that in turn raise the bar for all students and reduce the gap for the disadvantaged. Big-City School Reforms offers invaluable advice to those leading the next phase of school reform in cities around the world.

This book is intended for prospective secondary teachers, university education and human development faculty and students, and in-service secondary school teachers. The text focuses on the current environment of adolescents. Physical growth, sexuality, nutrition, exercise, and substance abuse receive attention. Social development depends on consideration of advice given by peers and adults. Neuroscience insights are reported on information processing, attention and distraction. Detection of cheating, cyber abuse, and parental concerns are considered. Career exploration issues are discussed. Visual intelligence, creative thinking, and Internet learning are presented with ways to help students gauge risks, manage stress, and acquire resilience. Peers become the most prominent influence on social development during adolescence, and they recognize the Internet as their greatest resource for locating information. Teachers want to know how to unite these powerful sources of learning, peers and the Internet, to help adolescents acquire teamwork skills employers will expect of them. This goal is achieved by implementing Collaboration Integration Theory. Ten Cooperative Learning Exercises and Roles (CLEAR) at the end of chapters allow each student to choose one role per chapter. Insights gained from these roles are shared with teammates before work is submitted to the teacher. This approach enables students to select assignments, expands group learning, and makes everyone accountable for instruction. The adult teacher role becomes more creative as they design exercises and roles that differentiate team learning. Using Zoom or other platforms a teacher can observe or record cooperative team sharing. Involvement with CLEAR can enable prospective teachers to apply this system to empower their secondary students.

The purpose of this book is to help secondary school principals and college faculty fulfill their key role for continuous improvement planning of educational practices and safety at their institution. Rapid social and technological advances have motivated the consideration of student voice in schools across the United States. By merging student voice and educator expertise, an intergenerational perspective can emerge that more accurately portrays the strengths and limitations of a school. Strom and Strom began their research on student voice by partnering with adolescents and principals from several schools to identify topics they saw as appropriate for polling to improve schools. This effort led to the development of ten polls on school stress, career exploration, time management, attention and distraction, tutoring, peer support, school cheating, frustration, cyberbullying, and Internet learning. Every poll contains 15 to 20 multiple-choice items. The process model for polling includes a step-by-step procedure that educational leaders can use to plan and implement school improvement. Different methods of data analysis and ways to report overall evidence-based school results are presented by age, gender, grade and ethnicity. Student polling is distinctive from other assessment strategies because the target for data gathering is a single school, without comparison to other schools. This narrow base to assess student voice ensures poll results are anonymous and have local relevance to guide stakeholder responses. The results of polling can provide data-based evidence that can be used for continuous education improvement planning. An additional benefit is to separately assess students in special education, gifted and talented programs, and second language acquisition learners. Our web site at learningpolls.org is intended to further inform educational leaders and invite their collaboration.

Most Americans agree on the necessity of education reform, but there is little consensus about how this goal might be achieved. The rhetoric of standards and vouchers has occupied center stage, polarizing public opinion and affording little room for reflection on the intangible conditions that make for good schools. Trust in Schools engages this debate with a compelling examination of the importance of social relationships in the successful implementation of school reform. Over the course of three years, Bryk and Schneider, together with a diverse team of other researchers and school practitioners, studied reform in twelve Chicago elementary schools. Each school was undergoing extensive reorganization in response to the Chicago School Reform Act of 1988, which called for greater involvement of parents and local community leaders in their neighborhood schools. Drawing on years longitudinal survey and achievement data, as well as in-depth interviews with principals, teachers, parents, and local community leaders, the authors develop a thorough account of how effective social relationships—which they term relational trust—can serve as a prime resource for school improvement. Using case studies of the network of relationships that make up the school community, Bryk and Schneider examine how the myriad social exchanges that make up daily life in a school community generate, or fail to generate, a successful educational environment. The personal dynamics among teachers, students, and their parents, for example, influence whether students regularly attend school and sustain their efforts in the difficult task of learning. In schools characterized by high relational trust, educators were more likely to experiment with new practices and work together with parents to advance improvements. As a result, these schools were also more likely to demonstrate marked gains in student learning. In contrast, schools with weak trust relations saw virtually no improvement in their reading or mathematics scores. Trust in Schools demonstrates convincingly that the quality of social relationships operating in and around schools is central to their functioning, and strongly predicts positive student outcomes. This book offer insights into how trust can be built and sustained in school communities, and identifies some features of public school systems that can impede such development. Bryk and Schneider show how a broad base of trust across a school community can provide a critical resource as education professional and parents embark on major school reforms. A Volume in the American Sociological Association's Rose Series in Sociology

The Oxford Handbook of Lifelong Learning is a comprehensive and interdisciplinary examination of the theory and practice of lifelong learning, encompassing perspectives from human resources development, adult learning, psychology, career and vocational learning, management and executive development, cultural anthropology, the humanities, and gerontology.