Achievement Matters: Getting Your Child The Best Education Possible

Achievement Matters: Getting Your Child The Best Education Possible
Author: Hugh B. Price
Publisher: Kensington Books
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2014-06-01
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1617734578

"Inspiring stories, practical tips and expert advice." —Ebony "Inspiring stories and practical tips urge parents and caregivers to unlock their children's potential." —Library Journal "A much-needed resource that will enable parents to become partners in their children's academic success. Read it and tell others to read it." —Marian Wright Edelman, Founder, Children's Defense Fund There's a crisis in our classrooms. In school districts across the country, children of color earn sub-par test scores, and are frequently relegated to less challenging classes. Low achievement will doom our children to a future far beneath their capabilities—unless we do something about it. In this updated edition of Achievement Matters, Hugh B. Price, the former President of the National Urban League, shows you how to help your child succeed, and make America's public schools accountable. A vital resource for parents and caregivers, here are practical tips for improving children's literacy and achievement levels while instilling a lifelong enthusiasm for education. Price explains how to make sure your child isn't missing out on essential courses, recommends proven techniques for cutting through bureaucracy to create an environment conducive to learning, and shares insightful personal stories. From using the latest technology to providing after-school and summer programs to give our youth direction and keep them away from drugs and violence, this book offers real tools for making a powerful, positive impact and guiding your child to the brightest possible future. "A noteworthy effort to improve parental involvement, student motivation, and institutional accountability." —Kweisi Mfume, former President and CEO, NAACP 66,870 Words

Achievement Matters

Achievement Matters
Author: Hugh B. Price
Publisher: Dafina Books
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2003
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780758201201

Presents tips and strategies for African American parents that reveal how to attain higher educational standards in the schools.

Why Race and Culture Matter in Schools

Why Race and Culture Matter in Schools
Author: Tyrone C. Howard
Publisher: Teachers College Press
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2010-04-19
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0807750719

While race and culture remain important variables in how young people experience schools, they are often misunderstood by educators and school personnel. Building on three studies that investigated schools successful in closing the achievement gap, Tyrone Howard shows how adopting greater awareness and comprehensive understanding of race and culture can improve educational outcomes. Important reading for anyone who is genuinely committed to promoting educational equity and excellence for all children, this accessible book: Outlines the changing racial, ethnic, and cultural demographics in U.S. schools. Calls for educators to pay serious attention to how race and culture play out in school settings. Presents empirical data from schools that have improved achievement outcomes for racially and culturally diverse students. Focuses on ways in which educators can partner with parents and communities.

Afterschool Matters

Afterschool Matters
Author: Sara L. Hill
Publisher: Corwin Press
Total Pages: 145
Release: 2007-10-08
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1452293457

"Exemplifies good teaching that might occur anywhere—not just after school. The author presents sound educational endeavors that respond sensitively and inventively to children′s interests, needs, and predilections but extend their knowledge, skills, and understanding into new domains." —From the Foreword by Glynda A. Hull "Tackles the issue of the place of afterschool programs in raising student achievement and warns that it is unwise to solely create another layer of school. Afterschool programs also have to have an element of FUN." —Paul Young, Executive Director West After School Center, Inc. Create an out-of-school time program that bridges enrichment activities and academics! School leaders and afterschool specialists recognize that successful afterschool programs rely on achieving a balance between academic and enrichment activities. With contributions from researchers and practitioners in the field of out-of-school time, Afterschool Matters provides concrete models that demonstrate how to help youth who are struggling academically and how to support them in their overall development. Editor Sara Hill brings together a range of projects grounded in student interests to enhance multiple student competencies. Embracing the social, artistic, civic, emotional, and intellectual growth of students, this volume: Aligns learning standards with youth development principles Provides quality program models from experts in the field Addresses the challenges and successes in designing and sustaining afterschool activities Supported by The Robert Bowne Foundation, a leading funder of afterschool programs, this guidebook can help you create, revise, or improve your local program.

Teaching what Matters Most

Teaching what Matters Most
Author: Richard W. Strong
Publisher: ASCD
Total Pages: 148
Release: 2001
Genre: Education
ISBN:

Identifies four classroom standards designed to improve student performance on state tests and allow schools and teachers some creative leeway, including rigor, thought, diversity, and authenticity, each with an explanation and related teaching and assessment strategies.

Parenting to a Degree

Parenting to a Degree
Author: Laura T. Hamilton
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2016-04-29
Genre: Education
ISBN: 022618367X

Helicopter parents—the kind that continue to hover even in college—are one of the most ridiculed figures of twenty-first-century parenting, criticized for creating entitled young adults who boomerang back home. But do involved parents really damage their children and burden universities? In this book, sociologist Laura T. Hamilton illuminates the lives of young women and their families to ask just what role parents play during the crucial college years. Hamilton vividly captures the parenting approaches of mothers and fathers from all walks of life—from a CFO for a Fortune 500 company to a waitress at a roadside diner. As she shows, parents are guided by different visions of the ideal college experience, built around classed notions of women’s work/family plans and the ideal age to “grow up.” Some are intensively involved and hold adulthood at bay to cultivate specific traits: professional helicopters, for instance, help develop the skills and credentials that will advance their daughters’ careers, while pink helicopters emphasize appearance, charm, and social ties in the hopes that women will secure a wealthy mate. In sharp contrast, bystander parents—whose influence is often limited by economic concerns—are relegated to the sidelines of their daughter’s lives. Finally, paramedic parents—who can come from a wide range of class backgrounds—sit in the middle, intervening in emergencies but otherwise valuing self-sufficiency above all. Analyzing the effects of each of these approaches with clarity and depth, Hamilton ultimately argues that successfully navigating many colleges and universities without involved parents is nearly impossible, and that schools themselves are increasingly dependent on active parents for a wide array of tasks, with intended and unintended consequences. Altogether, Parenting to a Degree offers an incisive look into the new—and sometimes problematic—relationship between students, parents, and universities.

Raising Achievement Pocketbook

Raising Achievement Pocketbook
Author: Caroline Bentley-Davies
Publisher: Management Pocketbooks
Total Pages: 132
Release: 2015-09-16
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1908284668

The drive in schools to ensure that all students reach their potential is fuelled by a wealth of data for tracking progress and revealing which groups and individuals are underachieving. The challenge for teachers is to find strategies that 'close the gap', allowing every pupil the best possible chance of success. With characteristic energy, Caroline Bentley-Davies shows how to strengthen learning and engagement, so boosting progress and attainment. After dispelling some commonly held beliefs about raising achievement, Caroline describes a 'climate for achievement'. Drawing on education research on feedback, metacognition and motivation, she brings theory to life with examples and case studies. Her section on exams and revision cleverly applies the theory of marginal gains and elsewhere she highlights the role of parents and peers and stresses the importance of great CPD. A thought-provoking read that could raise your game and improve student outcomes.

The End of Epistemology as We Know It

The End of Epistemology as We Know It
Author: Brian Talbot
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2024
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0197743633

Epistemology is the philosophical study of how we should form our beliefs. It is one of the central areas of philosophical inquiry and has been so for as long as there have been philosophers. The End of Epistemology As We Know It challenges the views and methodology of almost every epistemologist, both historical and contemporary. In a call for radical reform of how epistemology is practiced and a rethinking of conventional wisdom in this area, Brian Talbot puts forward new epistemic norms that differ significantly from the norms of mainstream epistemic theories.

Measure What Matters

Measure What Matters
Author: John Doerr
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2018-04-24
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 052553623X

#1 New York Times Bestseller Legendary venture capitalist John Doerr reveals how the goal-setting system of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) has helped tech giants from Intel to Google achieve explosive growth—and how it can help any organization thrive. In the fall of 1999, John Doerr met with the founders of a start-up whom he'd just given $12.5 million, the biggest investment of his career. Larry Page and Sergey Brin had amazing technology, entrepreneurial energy, and sky-high ambitions, but no real business plan. For Google to change the world (or even to survive), Page and Brin had to learn how to make tough choices on priorities while keeping their team on track. They'd have to know when to pull the plug on losing propositions, to fail fast. And they needed timely, relevant data to track their progress—to measure what mattered. Doerr taught them about a proven approach to operating excellence: Objectives and Key Results. He had first discovered OKRs in the 1970s as an engineer at Intel, where the legendary Andy Grove ("the greatest manager of his or any era") drove the best-run company Doerr had ever seen. Later, as a venture capitalist, Doerr shared Grove's brainchild with more than fifty companies. Wherever the process was faithfully practiced, it worked. In this goal-setting system, objectives define what we seek to achieve; key results are how those top-priority goals will be attained with specific, measurable actions within a set time frame. Everyone's goals, from entry level to CEO, are transparent to the entire organization. The benefits are profound. OKRs surface an organization's most important work. They focus effort and foster coordination. They keep employees on track. They link objectives across silos to unify and strengthen the entire company. Along the way, OKRs enhance workplace satisfaction and boost retention. In Measure What Matters, Doerr shares a broad range of first-person, behind-the-scenes case studies, with narrators including Bono and Bill Gates, to demonstrate the focus, agility, and explosive growth that OKRs have spurred at so many great organizations. This book will help a new generation of leaders capture the same magic.

How Schools Really Matter

How Schools Really Matter
Author: Douglas B. Downey
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2020-12-07
Genre: Education
ISBN: 022673336X

Most of us assume that public schools in America are unequal—that the quality of the education varies with the location of the school and that as a result, children learn more in the schools that serve mostly rich, white kids than in the schools serving mostly poor, black kids. But it turns out that this common assumption is misplaced. As Douglas B. Downey shows in How Schools Really Matter, achievement gaps have very little to do with what goes on in our schools. Not only do schools not exacerbate inequality in skills, they actually help to level the playing field. The real sources of achievement gaps are elsewhere. A close look at the testing data in seasonal patterns bears this out. It turns out that achievement gaps in reading skills between high- and low-income children are nearly entirely formed prior to kindergarten, and schools do more to reduce them than increase them. And when gaps do increase, they tend to do so during summers, not during school periods. So why do both liberal and conservative politicians strongly advocate for school reform, arguing that the poor quality of schools serving disadvantaged children is an important contributor to inequality? It’s because discussing the broader social and economic reforms necessary for really reducing inequality has become too challenging and polarizing—it’s just easier to talk about fixing schools. Of course, there are differences that schools can make, and Downey outlines the kinds of reforms that make sense given what we know about inequality outside of schools, including more school exposure, increased standardization, and better and fairer school and teacher measurements. ? How Schools Really Matter offers a firm rebuke to those who find nothing but fault in our schools, which are doing a much better than job than we give them credit for. It should also be a call to arms for educators and policymakers: the bottom line is that if we are serious about reducing inequality, we are going to have to fight some battles that are bigger than school reform—battles against the social inequality that is reflected within, rather than generated by—our public school system.