Harvard Educational Publishing Group – förlag

In Systems for Instructional Improvement, Paul Cobb and his colleagues draw on their extensive research to propose a series of specific, empirically grounded recommendations that together constitute a theory of action for advancing instruction at scale. The authors outline the elements of a coherent instructional system; describe productive practices for school leaders in supporting teachers’ growth; and discuss the role of district leaders in developing school-level capacity for instructional improvement.Based on the findings of an eight-year research-practice partnership with four large urban districts investigating their efforts to enhance middle school math instruction, the authors seek to bridge the gap between the literature on improving teaching and learning and the literature on policy and leadership. They look at the entire education system and make recommendations on improvement efforts with a focus on student learning and teachers’ instructional vision. In particular, the authors offer insights on the interplay among various supports for teacher learning, including pullout professional development, coaching, collaborative inquiry, the most instructionally productive uses of principals’ time, and the tensions that tend to emerge at the district level. They provide a guide for district-level leaders in organizing their work to support significant teacher learning.Systems for Instructional Improvement provides an invaluable resource for school and district leaders, while outlining a clearly focused agenda for future research.

A comprehensive analysis of the astonishing changes that elevated the Chicago public school system from one of the worst in the nation to one of the most improved. How a City Learned to Improve Its Schools tells the story of the extraordinary thirty-year school reform effort that changed the landscape of public education in Chicago. Acclaimed educational researcher Anthony S. Bryk joins five coauthors involved in Chicago-based education reform, Sharon Greenberg, Albert Bertani, Penny Sebring, Steven E. Tozer, and Timothy Knowles, to illuminate the many factors that led to the ultimate success of Chicago Public Schools.Beginning in 1987, Bryk and team lay out the civic context for reform, outlining the systemic challenges such as segregation, institutional racism, and income and resource disparities that reformers grappled with as well as the social conflicts they faced. Next, they analyze continuous improvement to teaching and learning, including the recruitment and retention of high-quality educators and leadership, a transformation validated by unprecedented increases in benchmarks such as graduation rates and college matriculation. This riveting account introduces key actors within the schools, city government, and business community, and the partnerships they forged. It also reveals the surprising yet essential role of Chicago's innovative information infrastructure in aligning disparate initiatives.In making clear how elements such as advocacy, expanded civic capacity, improvement research, and strong democracy contributed to large-scale progress in the system's 600-plus schools, the book highlights the greater lessons that the Chicago story offers for system improvement overall.

A call for community-based approaches to reducing the barriers that prevent regular attendance in K-12 schoolsIn Rethinking Chronic Absenteeism, Sarah Winchell Lenhoff and Jeremy Singer reframe chronic absenteeism as a symptom of a complex set of factors affecting the student, family, and community rather than simply an accountability metric for educators, schools, or districts. Lenhoff and Singer identify chronic absenteeism—often defined as missing 10 percent or more of instructional days—as an issue of social and economic inequality as much as an educational one, and they explore the role of K–12 schools and other organizations in solving this growing problem.The book is based on research conducted over eight years as part of a research-practice partnership with urban school systems in Detroit. Their results show the challenges of relying on school-based approaches to improve attendance, particularly in high absenteeism contexts where the causes of absenteeism are due to inequalities that are outside the scope of schools or districts to address.Lenhoff and Singer caution that school-based measures like punishments, parent fines, and even rewards can reinforce the social inequality that makes accessing school difficult. They stress that schools and districts should address factors within their purview: change the role of attendance-focused staff to act as navigators to help families remove barriers, improve school-home communication, help families access resources, and focus on building and sustaining positive relationships with students and families. The book also calls for broader societal change with recommendations for how policymakers, district and school leaders, and community partners can together adopt a more ecological approach to attendance.

A guide for educators seeking to strengthen their role as designers of meaningful learning experiences and stewards of ambitious, equitable practice in an increasingly AI-mediated worldAs artificial intelligence (AI) tools rapidly reshape K–12 classrooms, teachers, leaders, parents, and policymakers confront urgent questions: What counts as learning when machines can generate fluent essays, summarize complex texts, and simulate understanding? How do we distinguish between interactive learning—where students engage in productive struggle, reflection, and growth—and interpassive learning, an emerging phenomenon where cognitive effort is delegated to technology in ways that undercut student development?AI and Deeper Learning advances a research-based framework for responsible uses of AI in classrooms. Drawing on the work of John Dewey, Lev Vygotsky, and other scholars in the sociocultural tradition, Brent Michael Duckor and Carrie Holmberg revisit foundational debates about learner development, the nature of learning, and the purposes of education. Arguing that we are in the midst of a paradigm shift in teaching and learning, the authors offer new directions for addressing paradoxes of instruction with AI-focused practices.Through vivid classroom examples highlighting teacher dilemmas, the book introduces five pillars—Accuracy, Agency, Accessibility, Assessment, and Authenticity—as an integrated framework for guiding ethical, human-centered, and instructionally meaningful AI practice in schools. Across the chapters, readers encounter teachers and students confronting AI hallucinations, the erosion of student voice, automated versus authentic feedback, and the outsourcing of productive struggle in the learning process, among other tensions.The book's practical design principles encourage educators to use their pedagogical judgment and make principled decisions about whether, when, or how AI belongs in the learning process. It provides guiding questions, reflective exercises, and resources that help K–12 teachers, professional learning communities, and teacher educators design instruction that cultivates deeper learning and ambitious teaching in AI-mediated classrooms.

When their children were young, several parents interviewed for this book were told, “you can’t expect much from your child.” As they got older, the kids themselves often heard the same thing: that as children with disabilities, academic success would be elusive, if not impossible, for them.How Did You Get Here? clearly refutes these common, destructive assumptions. It chronicles the educational experiences—from early childhood through college—of sixteen students with disabilities and their paths to personal and academic success at Harvard University. Th e book explores common themes in their lives—including educational strategies, technologies, and undaunted intellectual ambitions—as well as the crucial roles played by parents, teachers, and other professionals. Above all, it provides a clear and candid account—in the voices of the students themselves—of what it takes to grapple eff ectively with the many challenges facing young people with disabilities.A compelling and practical book, How Did You Get Here? offers clear accounts not only of the challenges and biases facing young disabled students, but also of the opportunities they found, and created, on the way to academic and personal success.

cTransformative Teachers offers an insightful look at the growing movement of civic-minded educators who are using twenty-first-century participatory practices and connected technologies to organize change from the ground up. Kira J. Baker-Doyle highlights the collaborative, grassroots tactics that activist teachers are implementing to transform their profession and pursue greater social justice and equity in education. The author provides a framework and practical suggestions for charting the path to transformative teacher leadership as well as suggestions for how others, including administrators and outside organizations, can support them. In addition, the book profiles fifteen transformative teachers who are changing the face of education, features three case studies of organizational allies (Edcamps, the Philadelphia Education Fund, and the Connected Learning Alliance), and includes insights from a wide range of educational leaders. A guide to the norms and practices of innovative educators, Transformative Teachers offers a clear and compelling vision of the potential for grassroots change in education.

This practical and forward-focused book presents a framework that uses social infrastructure to produce effective and inclusive professional development options in education.Although technology has increased our capacity for social networking both in the digital space and face-to-face, Kira J. Baker-Doyle contends that most professional development opportunities for educators are still fundamentally asocial. She calls for the adoption of humanizing network practices to create meaningful continuing education experiences that leverage the collective knowledge, expertise, and social capital of educators to spark educational change.Baker-Doyle shows how the critical network literacy (CNL) framework overlays critical theory, multiliteracies theory, and social network theory in a way that encourages critical reflection and collaboration among participants. She draws from sources including empirical studies of teacher educators and teacher activists, meta-analytical studies of social network research in education, and professional experience with collective organizing efforts, to detail the many benefits of cultivating CNL in educational spaces. Baker-Doyle provides evidence of how the framework’s practices and protocols can increase transparency, improve representation, and incorporate affirmation and restoration discourse. Her work demonstrates how CNL helps create environments that honor teachers’ social identities, their social networks, and the broader social context in which they work.This thought-provoking book is filled with exercises that reinforce social competencies, questions that prompt dialogue and understanding, and real-world examples that underscore the framework's relevance to key educational practices. The generous guidance offered in Critical Network Literacy can be used as a launching point to promote innovation and leadership in teaching.

In Value-Added Measures in Education, economist and education researcher Douglas N. Harris takes on one of the most hotly debated topics in education. Drawing on his extensive work with schools and districts, he sets out to help educators and policy makers understand this innovative approach to assessment. Written in straightforward language and illustrated with actual student achievement data, this essential volume shows how value-added measurement can help schools make better use of their data and discusses the strengths and limitations of this approach.

This lively and provocative book introduces this burgeoning field for readers concerned with K-12 education in the United States--and with efforts to reform and improve it. Entrepreneurship has emerged in recent years as an unprecedented and influential force in U.S. K-12 education. Yet the topic has received surprisingly little serious or systematic attention. Educational Entrepreneurship aims to fill this gap. This timely volume addresses a number of central questions: What is educational entrepreneurship and what does it look like? Who are the educational entrepreneurs and what motivates them? What tools do entrepreneurs need to be successful? What policies or practices enable or impede entrepreneurship? What would it mean to open up the education sector to more entrepreneurial activity? An interesting and admirable range of contributors offers clusters of articles on the nature of educational entrepreneurship; the political, policy, and legal contexts that face educational entrepreneurs; various models of entrepreneurial activity; the role of for-profit organizations in K-12 education; and possible future directions for educational entrepreneurs.

2007 Notable Education Book, American School Board Journal This straightforward and inspiring book takes readers into schools where educators believe—and prove—that all children, even those considered “hard-to-teach,” can learn to high standards. Their teachers and principals refuse to write them off and instead show how thoughtful instruction, high expectations, stubborn commitment, and careful consideration of each child’s needs can result in remarkable improvements in student achievement.

A comprehensive study that is also practical and realistic, New Directions in Special Education outlines principles for decisionmaking about special education at every level—from the family to the classroom, school, and district—and for state and federal policy.With this volume, leading scholar and disability advocate Thomas Hehir opens a new round of debate on the future of special education. Extending the conceptual framework developed in his seminal 2002 article in the Harvard Educational Review, "Eliminating Ableism in Education," Hehir examines the ways that cultural attitudes about disability systematically distort the education of children with special needs and uses this analysis to lay out a fresh approach to special education policy and practice.Hehir traces the roots of "ableism"—the pervasive devaluation of people with disabilities—and shows how negative attitudes continue to shape debates in the field. He assesses recent trends in special education policy, particularly the shift of emphasis from compliance to outcomes, and discusses in depth the successes and limitations of the inclusion movement. He also investigates the impact of standards-based reforms on children with disabilities and critically examines the promise of Universal Design for Learning.

Moderating the Debate is a major statement on education research, policy, and reform that will be required reading for everyone with a stake in improving America's schools. This eloquent book examines the complex—and often problematic—relations between education research, policy, and practice, and proposes ways to improve those relationships in the interest of meaningful education reform. Based on the Burton and Inglis Lectures, which Michael Feuer delivered at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 2004 and 2005, the book begins with an examination of how recent developments in cognitive science have fundamentally changed the way we understand human decisionmaking and rational judgment. It then proceeds to a consideration of how the lessons of cognitive science might inform a more rational—and reasonable—approach to education research, policy, and reform. Moving deftly and with great insight through the worlds of education research and policymaking, Feuer offers practical solutions to the impasses and disconnections that have chronically thwarted workable, sustained education reform.

This timely and comprehensive volume will spur and strengthen public debate over the role of teachers unions in education reform for years to come. Collective bargaining shapes the way public schools are organized, financed, staffed, and operated. Understanding collective bargaining in education and its impact on the day-to-day life of schools is critical to designing and implementing reforms that will successfully raise student achievement. But when it comes to public discussion of school reform, teachers unions are the proverbial elephant in the room. Despite the tremendous influence of teachers unions, there has not been a significant research-based book examining the role of collective bargaining in education in more than two decades. As a result, there is little basis for a constructive, empirically grounded dialogue about the role of teachers unions in education today.

Leading for Equity tells the compelling story of the Montgomery County (Maryland) Public Schools and its transformation—in less than a decade—into a system committed to breaking the links between race and class and academic achievement. In chapters organized around six core themes, the authors lay out the essential elements of MCPS’s success. They identify key lessons other districts can draw from MCPS’s experience and offer a framework for applying them. A dramatic departure from “business as usual,” MCPS has won nationwide attention as a compelling model for tackling the achievement and opportunity issues that confront our nation as a whole.

Based on a four-year study, Manga High explores the convergence of literacy, creativity, social development, and personal identity in one of New York City’s largest high schools. Since 2004, students at Martin Luther King, Jr., High School in Manhattan have been creating manga—Japanese comic books. They write the stories, design the characters, and publish their works in print and on the Internet. These students—African-American and Latino teenagers—are more than interested in the art and medium of manga. They have become completely engrossed in Japanese language, culture, and society. Manga High is highlighted by reproductions and content analysis of students’ original art and writing. An appendix includes guidelines for educators on starting a comic book club.

How It’s Being Done offers much-needed help to educators, providing detailed accounts of the ways in which unexpected schools—those with high-poverty and high-minority student populations—have dramatically boosted student achievement. How It’s Being Done builds on Karin Chenoweth’s widely hailed earlier volume, “It’s Being Done,” providing specific information about how such schools have exceeded expectations and met with unprecedented levels of success.

Real Leaders, Real Schools tells the stories of five urban public school principals who led their schools through profound and transformative changes. In each of these cases, their efforts resulted in dramatic improvements in student achievement—improvements that occurred within the current environment of high-stakes tests. The revealing and often gripping narratives that form the heart of this remarkable book offer unprecedented insights into the meaning and practice of effective school leadership. The stories themselves are often inspiring but they are never idealized. All of these principals met with frustrations as well as successes, setbacks as well as breakthroughs. All regularly reassessed their policies and practices, and all acknowledged—and learned from—their errors along the way. Yet all believed in their staffs and their students, and all found innovative ways to transform and improve their schools. These are true stories of successful leadership against enormous odds. They provide countless lessons for today’s school leaders and all who are committed to education reform.

From the Courtroom to the Classroom examines recent developments pertaining to school desegregation in the United States. As the editors note, it comes at a time marked by a “general downplaying of race and ethnicity as criteria for the allocation of public resources, as well as a weakening of the political forces that support busing to achieve racial integration.” The book fills a growing need for a full-scale assessment of this recent history and its effect on schools, children, and communities.

Organized around the four key areas outlined in the U. S. Department of Education’s Race to the Top program, Strategic Priorities for School Improvement presents a collection of seminal articles on standards and assessment; using data to improve learning; recruiting and retaining great teachers and leaders; and turning around failing schools. Contributors include Karin Chenoweth, Stacey Childress, Elizabeth A. City, Rachel E. Curtis, Richard F. Elmore, Susan Moore Johnson, Ellen Moir, Richard J. Murnane, W. James Popham, Robert Rothman, Alexander Russo, D. Brent Stephens, and Nancy Walser.

The authors survey the current afterschool landscape and bring to light important issues and practices within the field, explore the challenges and opportunities facing afterschool education programs, and point to future directions for these burgeoning educational ventures. Afterschool education has grown in recent years into a vast and diverse enterprise. In the United States, young people spend almost a third of their organized time (including school hours) in afterschool and summer programs. Yet there is little clear and conclusive research on afterschool programs—research that would help guide the practice of existing afterschool programs and establish guidelines for the creation of new programs. An indispensable guide for practitioners, administrators, policy makers, and parents, Afterschool Education will serve as the cornerstone for all future accounts of and proposals for this crucial educational field.

Over the past 20 years, alternative certification for teachers has emerged as a major avenue of teacher preparation. The proliferation of new pathways has spurred heated debate over how best to recruit, prepare, and support qualified teachers. Alternative Routes to Teaching provides a thorough and dispassionate review of the research evidence on alternative certification. It takes readers beyond the simple dichotomies that have characterized the debate over alternative certification, encourages them to look carefully at the trade-offs implicit in any route into teaching, and suggests ways to “marry” the proven strengths of both traditional and alternative approaches.

How can we systemically improve the quality of classroom instruction and the learning and achievement of students? In an era when isolated examples of excellence are not good enough, we need systems that support improvement and excellence for all. This book describes how systems can effectively engage in this complex, challenging, and crucial work. The authors explore three core competencies of high-performing school systems: (1) understanding what the work is—a deep understanding of the core business of facilitating learning, a vision of what that looks like, and an awareness of where the system is in relation to that vision; (2) knowing how to do the work—a theory of action for improving instruction, a focus on key strategies, and effective alignment of resources; and (3) building the individual and organizational “habits of mind” that foster continuous improvement. Each chapter includes examples that illustrate key concepts in action, questions to spur self-assessment in key areas of competence, and tools and resources for building capacity at different levels and stages of development.

2009 Notable Education Book, American School Board Journal The Essential School Board Book highlights effective practices that are common to high-functioning boards around the country—boards that are working successfully with their superintendents and communities to improve teaching and learning. Amid today’s heightened attention on student achievement, school boards find their responsibilities intensified and transformed. In this age of accountability, all school boards need to consider how best to maintain a focus on student achievement and promote it through district and school policies. In a highly readable and accessible fashion, the book summarizes research linking school board practices to student achievement. It features stories of sixteen diverse boards around the country—elected and appointed; rural, urban, and suburban—and the policies and procedures they have employed to enhance student achievement. Also included is a resource section for those investigating successful school board policies and practices in more depth.

Adolescent development research and theory have tremendous potential to inform the work of high school teachers, counselors, and administrators. Understanding Youth bridges the gap between adolescent development theory and practice. Nakkula and Toshalis explore how factors such as social class, peer and adult relationships, gender norms, and the media help to shape adolescents’ sense of themselves and their future expectations and aspirations.

2010 Notable Education Book, American School Board Journal “Why is it,” writes noted assessment expert W. James Popham, “that today’s educators seem almost compelled to replicate their predecessors’ blunders?” Looking back over a career of more than fifty years in education, Popham identifies six key “unlearned lessons” in education and reflects on their impact on schools, teachers, and students. In an account enlivened by personal anecdotes and the unique perspective gained from long experience, he shows how each of these six mistakes has persisted over time, gives examples of encounters with these mistakes in the course of his professional career, and points the way toward straightforward solutions. This lucid and powerful book belongs on the bookshelf of anyone interested in the history of education and the intersection between assessment, policy, and instruction."

When Research Matters considers the complex and crucially important relationship between education research and policy. In examining how and under what conditions research affects education policy, the book focuses on a number of critical issues: the history of the federal role in education policy; the evolving nature of educational policy research; the role of research in debates about reading, NCLB, and “out-of-field” teaching; how research affects policy by shaping public opinion, judicial rulings, and the decisions of district and school leaders; and the incentives that help explain the behavior of researchers and policymakers.

Bringing together a mix of researchers and practitioners, With the Best of Intentions examines the major goals of recent philanthropic efforts and looks at some of the key lessons--for educators, philanthropists, policymakers, and community leaders--of philanthropic contributions to schools and school systems. From the Gates small school initiative to the Annenberg challenge to the Broad prize for urban education, philanthropic giving has played an increasingly prominent role in recent years in education reform efforts across the United States. Yet while we recognize that philanthropic organizations influence education in countless ways, we know strikingly little about the extent, dynamics, and results of their efforts. This lack of knowledge calls out for urgent attention of total K-12 spending, it has a disproportionate impact in shaping reform agendas and promoting cutting-edge efforts to improve schools and classrooms. With the Best of Intentions aims to fill this gap, offering lively perspectives on the role of philanthropy in K-12 education. It opens by surveying the current landscape in philanthropic giving to education, then examines the major goals of recent philanthropic efforts: building new schools, supporting troubled districts, promoting school choice, and advancing educational research and policy. The book concludes by looking at some of the major lessons--for educators, philanthropists, policymakers, and community leaders--of philanthropic contributions to schools and school systems. An informative and multifaceted volume, With the Best of Intentions is also full of debates and controversies. It will be of interest to scholars, policymakers, and education and community leaders--as well as to the philanthropic community itself.

The contributors to Race and Higher Education guide educators toward an understanding of how changes in the student population call for new approaches to classroom instruction, and address the need for new pedagogical practices in increasingly diverse college classrooms. Over the last few decades, U.S. colleges and universities have witnessed increasing diversity in their student bodies. Yet faculty members, operating on the notion that one pedagogy fits all students, continue to employ traditional modes of instruction. This adherence to outdated pedagogies has created potentially harmful learning environments for all students—and particularly for students of color. Race and Higher Education addresses this persistent problem, guiding educators toward a better understanding of how changes in the student population have resulted in the need for new approaches to classroom instruction. By including voices from inside classrooms along with analyses from scholarly researchers, this volume provides college and university teachers, administrators, students, and scholars with a critical instrument for improving higher education.

The Elusive Quest for Equality documents both the plight and the struggle of Chicano communities over the past 150 years, using the guiding themes of segregation, Americanization, and resistance in the history of education for Chicanos/Chicanas.The history of the Chicano community's quest for educational equality is long and rich. Since the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo formalized the conquest of half of Mexico's territory into what is now the U.S. Southwest, Chicanos have fought to claim what was promised them in the Treaty—the enjoyment of all the rights of U.S. citizens. In terms of education, they certainly have never had equal access, opportunity, or resources, despite legal victories. In this volume, some of the leading scholars analyze why the quest for equality in education has remained so elusive. They do so by documenting both the plight and the struggle of Chicano communities over the past 150 years, using the guiding themes of the role of language, segregation, Americanization, and resistance in the history of education for Chicanos/Chicanas."In the cover painting of this book, Manuel Hernandez Trujillo captures...the dualistic nature of the U.S. conquest of Northern Mexico, reflecting both the losses and opportunities represented in his camino de espinas (road of thorns). This tension between cynicism and optimism pervades the essays in this volume...something I see over and over again in discussions that focus on the significance of race in a democratic society. To what extent does the past determine our future, and to what degree do our own expectations of the future influence our interpretations of the past? It seems to me that these two interdependent questions continue to shape both our experience as Chicanos/Chicanas and our understanding of what it means to be Chicano/Chicana in the United States at the end of the twentieth century."Manuel N. GÓmez, Vice Chancellor, Student Services, University of California, Irvine, from the Foreword