Defining the Good School

Defining the Good School
Author: Jeff Swensson
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 169
Release: 2020-02-21
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1475856229

The deck is stacked against educators and parents/caregivers looking for educational adequacy in contemporary US education. Too often, satisfactory quality in the good public school is identified based on opinion, the dubious value of standardized test results, and marketing ploys. Moreover, the contemporary purpose of US education and the definition of educational adequacy are wild cards that prevent most from playing a winning hand. Finding the good public school is left to chance. This book initiates a search to transform this state of affairs. All students deserve a comprehensive public education that invests in the original power of education, dynamic instruction, and principled reasoning. This discussion tackles the barriers—the eye of the beholder, the tyranny of either/or, and standardized testing—that hobble the capacities of educators and students. Once these barriers are removed, the determinants of comprehensive public education—power, policy, and instruction—emerge. From these discoveries implications are derived that indicate how comprehensive public educationengages educators and students with a transformed definition of educational adequacy. The good public school depends on this and a complete readjustment of the purpose of US public education. This search enables educators and parents/caregivers to identify and establish the good public school without taking any chances.

What Makes a Good School?

What Makes a Good School?
Author: Chris Bonner
Publisher: UNSW Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2012
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1742241417

How much of what you hear about schools can you trust? Can you believe the marketing hype about unsurpassed facilities, genius teachers and stellar academic achievement? Do you listen to neighbourhood gossip about your local school? Are government statistics the answer? School choice has become one of the most agonising issues of parenthood. Chris Bonnor and Jane Caro have no magic formula, and agree that complex factors come together to make a good school. But drawing on their own experiences and knowledge as school principal, parents and advocates they give parents the tools to do homework about schools themselves. They compare talk about schools – public, Catholic, private, selective, comprehensive – against the reality. They examine how good schools respond to the recurring crises in the lives of kids. They help navigate NAPLAN tests and the My School website. And they place their analysis squarely in the middle of the national discussion about education. Schools have to be good for students, for parents and for the nation. What Makes a Good School? will help you to cover all bases.

The Good High School

The Good High School
Author: Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot
Publisher:
Total Pages: 414
Release: 1983
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0465026966

An award winning book by the noted Harvard educator which examines six schools that have earned reputations for excellence.

Good Schools, Effective Schools

Good Schools, Effective Schools
Author: Harold Silver
Publisher: Burns & Oates
Total Pages: 186
Release: 1994
Genre: Education
ISBN:

"This book examines the changes, and reasons for the changes, in ways in which schools have been judged to be 'good' or 'effective'. A major focus is the development from the 1970s of a research-based movement in Britain, the United States and elsewhere that has explored school effectiveness and improvement. The author traces the development of the American and British research, and the ways in which it affected American school policy and practice - and failed to do so in competition with national policies that aimed at a national curriculum, assessment and related changes." "In order to consider the nature of this effective schools research and movement, the book sets them against a background of nineteenth- and twentieth-century judgements of what, in Britain, has constituted a good school. It traces the power of inspectors, examinations, governments, managers and others to make judgements and to define the criteria for making judgements, and ways in which research also became influential. This book is therefore an important piece of recent history, using mainly Britain and the United States to explain and illustrate the changes, and focusing on concepts of central importance in current schools policy and practice internationally."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

"I Love Learning; I Hate School"

Author: Susan D. Blum
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2016-01-13
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1501703404

Frustrated by her students’ performance, her relationships with them, and her own daughter’s problems in school, Susan D. Blum, a professor of anthropology, set out to understand why her students found their educational experience at a top-tier institution so profoundly difficult and unsatisfying. Through her research and in conversations with her students, she discovered a troubling mismatch between the goals of the university and the needs of students. In "I Love Learning; I Hate School," Blum tells two intertwined but inseparable stories: the results of her research into how students learn contrasted with the way conventional education works, and the personal narrative of how she herself was transformed by this understanding. Blum concludes that the dominant forms of higher education do not match the myriad forms of learning that help students—people in general—master meaningful and worthwhile skills and knowledge. Students are capable of learning huge amounts, but the ways higher education is structured often leads them to fail to learn. More than that, it leads to ill effects. In this critique of higher education, infused with anthropological insights, Blum explains why so much is going wrong and offers suggestions for how to bring classroom learning more in line with appropriate forms of engagement. She challenges our system of education and argues for a "reintegration of learning with life."

Good Strategy/Bad Strategy

Good Strategy/Bad Strategy
Author: Richard Rumelt
Publisher: Profile Books
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2011-06-09
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 184765746X

When Richard Rumelt's Good Strategy/Bad Strategy was published in 2011, it immediately struck a chord, calling out as bad strategy the mish-mash of pop culture, motivational slogans and business buzz speak so often and misleadingly masquerading as the real thing. Since then, his original and pragmatic ideas have won fans around the world and continue to help readers to recognise and avoid the elements of bad strategy and adopt good, action-oriented strategies that honestly acknowledge the challenges being faced and offer straightforward approaches to overcoming them. Strategy should not be equated with ambition, leadership, vision or planning; rather, it is coherent action backed by an argument. For Rumelt, the heart of good strategy is insight into the hidden power in any situation, and into an appropriate response - whether launching a new product, fighting a war or putting a man on the moon. Drawing on examples of the good and the bad from across all sectors and all ages, he shows how this insight can be cultivated with a wide variety of tools that lead to better thinking and better strategy, strategy that cuts through the hype and gets results.

What Should Schools Teach?

What Should Schools Teach?
Author: Alka Sehgal Cuthbert
Publisher: UCL Press
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2021-01-07
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1787358747

The design of school curriculums involves deep thought about the nature of knowledge and its value to learners and society. It is a serious responsibility that raises a number of questions. What is knowledge for? What knowledge is important for children to learn? How do we decide what knowledge matters in each school subject? And how far should the knowledge we teach in school be related to academic disciplinary knowledge? These and many other questions are taken up in What Should Schools Teach? The blurring of distinctions between pedagogy and curriculum, and between experience and knowledge, has served up a confusing message for teachers about the part that each plays in the education of children. Schools teach through subjects, but there is little consensus about what constitutes a subject and what they are for. This book aims to dispel confusion through a robust rationale for what schools should teach that offers key understanding to teachers of the relationship between knowledge (what to teach) and their own pedagogy (how to teach), and how both need to be informed by values of intellectual freedom and autonomy. This second edition includes new chapters on Chemistry, Drama, Music and Religious Education, and an updated chapter on Biology. A revised introduction reflects on emerging discourse around decolonizing the curriculum, and on the relationship between the knowledge that children encounter at school and in their homes.

Chasing Success and Confronting Failure in American Public Schools

Chasing Success and Confronting Failure in American Public Schools
Author: Larry Cuban
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2020
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9781682534540

"The history of American education is rife with calls for school reform and efforts to turn so-called "failing" schools into "successful" ones. Cuban argues that, in the history of American education, standards of success and failure-as well as the reform efforts issuing from them-have been neither stable nor consistent"--

Ordinary Hazards

Ordinary Hazards
Author: Nikki Grimes
Publisher: Astra Publishing House
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2022-03-01
Genre: Young Adult Nonfiction
ISBN: 1635925622

Michael L. Printz Honor Book Robert F. Sibert Informational Honor Book Boston Globe/Horn Book Nonfiction Honor Book Arnold Adoff Poetry Award for Teens Six Starred Reviews—★Booklist ★BCCB ★The Horn Book ★Publishers Weekly ★School Library Connection ★Shelf Awareness A Booklist Best Book for Youth * A BCCB Blue Ribbon * A Horn Book Fanfare Book * A Shelf Awareness Best Children's Book * Recommended on NPR's "Morning Edition" by Kwame Alexander "This powerful story, told with the music of poetry and the blade of truth, will help your heart grow."–Laurie Halse Anderson, author of Speak and Shout "[A] testimony and a triumph."–Jason Reynolds, author of Long Way Down In her own voice, acclaimed author and poet Nikki Grimes explores the truth of a harrowing childhood in a compelling and moving memoir in verse. Growing up with a mother suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and a mostly absent father, Nikki Grimes found herself terrorized by babysitters, shunted from foster family to foster family, and preyed upon by those she trusted. At the age of six, she poured her pain onto a piece of paper late one night - and discovered the magic and impact of writing. For many years, Nikki's notebooks were her most enduing companions. In this accessible and inspiring memoir that will resonate with young readers and adults alike, Nikki shows how the power of those words helped her conquer the hazards - ordinary and extraordinary - of her life.

Developing Rural School Leaders

Developing Rural School Leaders
Author: Hans W. Klar
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2020-03-19
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0429875975

Developing Rural School Leaders combines a focus on rural education and school leadership development to illustrate how the teaching and learning conditions in rural schools can be enhanced through transformative leadership coaching. By unpacking literature related to rural school leadership development and using case studies to authentically illustrate the complexities involved in rural school leadership development, this book explores how leaders can develop their abilities to increase data-informed instructional decision making, create a culture that supports teaching and learning, and develop other leaders. Ultimately, this important book concludes with an exploration of the opportunities and challenges of developing rural school leaders.