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Rethinking College Admissions probes the many facets of higher education admissions and translates research-backed insights into actionable strategies for innovative, equitable admissions practices.Edited by scholars OiYan A. Poon and Michael N. Bastedo, this collection gives readers an evidence-based understanding of postsecondary admissions practices and structures, exploring many factors that affect college access and educational equity in the United States. These collected essays from leading experts present boundary-pushing applied research on admissions, with implications for policy, practice, and leadership.The volume considers admissions issues from three angles. In the opening essays, contributors offer critical analyses of current admissions approaches in higher education, delineating the delicate balance of equity-building efforts and legal pressures. The contributors offer reflections on whether and how admissions systems further inclusion or inequality. They examine topics such as race-conscious admissions, holistic review without standardized test scores, and student test preparation. The volume's next part discusses the many different ways in which admissions work can be done, outlines ethical hazards, and considers potential areas for organizational change. The final essays provide inroads and examples for developing reciprocal relationships in research and practice for the future. They discuss promising approaches for advancing campus diversity, such as admissions lotteries, direct enrollment, and institutional promise programs for high-achieving students from low-income communities.A must-read for practitioners, policy makers, and anyone interested in gaining a better understanding of postsecondary admissions structures, including K–12 educators and counselors, advocacy groups, and students, this work supports data-informed approaches to higher education admissions.

Co-Creating Equitable Teaching and Learning invites readers to help forge a more inclusive and accessible college education by incorporating student voices via pedagogical partnerships.Alison Cook-Sather, a pioneer of this co-creative approach, draws on more than twenty years of experience developing student–teacher partnerships in higher education to offer a wise and generous work that speaks to both students and educators. As her research underscores, a co-creative learning environment, in which relationships and communication between students and teachers are prioritized, benefits the educational experience on many levels.Cook-Sather demonstrates how pedagogical partnerships give students the tools to advocate for their own learning while giving educators the feedback they need to improve classroom experiences. She shows how the co-creative model helps to bring about inclusive spaces and equitable teaching practices that better foster student success, especially among underrepresented and minority student populations.Offering actionable guidance, Cook-Sather advocates enacting the following four principles to structure student voice into higher education: embracing a commitment to equity and justice; providing structure rather than prescriptions for engagement; making rather than taking up space; and developing a partnership mindset. She grounds these principles in examples of practices drawn from an undergraduate education course; a faculty development program; and cross-disciplinary, cross-constituency institutional dialogues.This work calls for readers to reimagine the higher education structure and to cultivate an environment in which all stakeholders can work together to advance inclusivity, accessibility, and equity. As the author argues, co-creation can be a catalyst for change throughout the system.

The Instructional Leadership Cycle introduces a multifaceted model for continuous school and system improvement, founded on an adaptable set of professional practices for K–12 leaders.Daniel Allen draws on a breadth of education system experience, spanning from classroom to top office, to outline a flexible framework—the Instructional Leadership Cycle—that supports school leaders in advancing equitable, high-quality instruction. In this comprehensive and deeply practical work, Allen mentors leaders through the framework's cycles of implementation, analysis, reflection, and improvement, which are anchored in the rhythms of the annual school calendar.As Allen counsels readers on the application of the Instructional Leadership Cycle, he also explains the genesis of the framework, which has been successfully implemented in more than sixty California schools, resulting in dramatic annual student achievement gains. With ample real-world examples, Allen demonstrates how leaders can move beyond strategic planning to fulfill the promise of organizational change. Incorporating elements of universal design for learning, multi-tiered systems of support, and key performance indicators, Allen's approach encourages leaders to develop an instructional vision for their institution and then set it in motion. The work shows how the process circles back to a few key tenets: ensure that all educators have access to a common set of tools to use in support of instructional improvement, effectively measure progress with school data analysis, and leverage organizational learning.This clear-sighted work guides equity-focused school leaders to reliably bring about instructional transformation, moving toward positive learning outcomes for all students.

Winner of the 2024 AERA Outstanding Book Award Not Paved for Us chronicles a fifty-year period in Philadelphia education, and offers a critical look at how school reform efforts do and do not transform outcomes for Black students and educators. This illuminating book offers an extensive, expert analysis of a school system that bears the legacy, hallmarks, and consequences that lie at the intersection of race and education. Urban education scholar Camika Royal deftly analyzes decades of efforts aimed at improving school performance within the School District of Philadelphia (SDP), in a brisk survey spanning every SDP superintendency from the 1960s through 2017. Royal interrogates the history of education and educational reforms, recounting city, state, and federal interventions. She covers SDP's connections with the Common School Movement and the advent of the Philadelphia Freedom Schools, and she addresses federal policy shifts, from school desegregation to the No Child Left Behind and Every Student Succeeds Acts. Her survey provides sociopolitical context and rich groundwork for a nuanced examination of why many large urban districts struggle to implement reforms with fidelity and in ways that advance Black students academically and holistically. In a bracing critique, Royal bears witness to the ways in which positive public school reform has been obstructed: through racism and racial capitalism, but also via liberal ideals, neoliberal practices, and austerity tactics. Royal shows how, despite the well-intended actions of larger entities, the weight of school reform, here as in other large urban districts, has been borne by educators striving to meet the extensive needs of their students, families, and communities with only the slightest material, financial, and human resources. She draws on the experiences of Black educators and community members and documents their contributions.Not Paved for Us highlights the experiences of Black educators as they navigate the racial and cultural politics of urban school reform. Ultimately, Royal names, dissects, and challenges the presence of racism in school reform policies and practices while calling for an antiracist future.

AACTE 2023 Gloria J. Ladson-Billings Outstanding Book Award​Jim Crow's Pink Slip exposes the decades-long repercussions of a too-little-known result of resistance to the Brown v. Board of Education decision: the systematic dismissal of Black educators from public schools. In 1954, the Supreme Court's Brown decision ended segregated schooling in the United States, but regrettably, as documented in congressional testimony and transcripts, it also ended the careers of a generation of highly qualified and credentialed Black teachers and principals. In the Deep South and northern border states over the decades following Brown, Black schools were illegally closed and Black educators were displaced en masse. As educational policy and leadership expert Leslie T. Fenwick deftly demonstrates, the effects of these changes stand contrary to the democratic ideals of an integrated society and equal educational opportunity for all students.Jim Crow's Pink Slip provides a trenchant account of how tremendous the loss to the US educational system was and continues to be. Despite efforts of the NAACP and other civil rights organizations, congressional hearings during the Nixon administration, and antiracist activism of the 21st century, the problems fomented after Brown persist. The book draws the line from the past injustices to problems that the educational system grapples with today: not simply the underrepresentation of Black teachers and principals, but also salary reductions, teacher shortages, and systemic inequality. By engaging with the complicated legacy of the Brown decision, Fenwick illuminates a crucial chapter in education history. She also offers policy prescriptions aimed at correcting the course of US education, supporting educators, and improving workforce quality and diversity.

2022 Phillip E. Frandson Award for Literature, University Professional and Continuing Education Association (UPCEA)Paul LeBlanc has reimagined higher education, with a focus on the most fundamental of functions: student learning. In Students First, he advocates for an entire higher education ecosystem in which students have the flexibility to gain, assess, and certify their knowledge on their own terms and timelines. In a perceptive analysis, LeBlanc provides a clear-eyed view of how and why higher education is failing to reach and serve a great many potential students. He then deftly explores how reform can address systemic inequities, improve college affordability, and broaden accessibility. Through case studies, he highlights alternative delivery models such as online, distance, and just-in-time learning, and he envisions a learning environment that values competencies rather than credit hours. LeBlanc describes how these innovations and others will allow colleges and universities to help close the skills gap and respond to a rapidly evolving, technology-driven job market. Although a college education remains one of the great drivers of socioeconomic mobility, today's higher education industry has built financial, logistical, and practical barriers that keep out the very students who are most in need of opportunity. Students First makes a persuasive case that realigning US educational priorities will enable larger populations of graduates to enjoy a return on investment in the form of good pay, meaningful work, and a stable future. As the book emphasizes, such change is imperative, for in better serving its students, higher education will better serve society.

Trauma-Responsive Schooling outlines a novel approach to transforming American schools through student-centered, trauma-informed practices.The book chronicles the use of an innovative educational model, Trauma-Responsive Equitable Education (TREE), as part of a multiyear research project in two elementary schools in rural Maine. In this model, Lyn Mikel Brown, Catharine Biddle, and Mark Tappan endorse whole-school change, encouraging educators to upend traditional classroom power dynamics by listening foremost to student voices, validating student experiences, and promoting student agency.The authors provide complex real-life examples of student involvement in the creation and implementation of trauma-responsive and equitable practices. Their work offers readers concrete, actionable examples of such practices, which include supporting the whole child by promoting social and emotional learning (SEL) as well as academic achievement; providing access to basic needs such as food, clothing, and health care; and meeting the instructional requirements of dual-language learners.Many rural schools in the United States experience low student achievement and high absenteeism rates as their geographically isolated communities struggle with poverty, substance abuse, and other significant stressors. Yet, as the authors demonstrate, supportive learning environments, even in under-resourced rural schools, are able to mitigate adversity, stress, and trauma—and thus promote healing.This heartening work illustrates that, when educators and school leaders put student needs and interests at the core of school life, long-lasting change for all students is possible.

Sister Resisters advances a robust model of mentorship in support of young Black women on campus. The book offers a multifaceted approach to cross-racial mentoring in higher education that promises growth and change for both mentees and their mentors.Janie Victoria Ward and Tracy L. Robinson-Wood, experts in the developmental and identity challenges of young people of color, provide guidance for the faculty, advisors, and administrators (typically white women) who invest in the success of this historically underserved student group. Through case studies, student narratives, and research findings, the authors document the specific deterrents young Black women face daily on campus, from cultural pressures and class bias to racist and misogynistic microaggressions.Ward and Robinson-Wood call on campus mentors to increase their own cultural competencies so that they may better support, work with, and advocate for their student mentees. This Sister Resister mentorship model emphasizes the acquisition of cultural knowledge, the power of intersectionality, and the critical role of resistance in the lives of Black (and white) women as they navigate interpersonal and institutional bias and discrimination.Sister Resisters highlights the dual and interactive developmental processes that transpire in both halves of the mentor–mentee relationship. The book provides anti-racist, consciousness-raising self-assessments, and other growth-enhancing recommendations for women who endeavor to mentor as staunch supporters.Suggesting evidence-based strategies that promote healthy resistance to negative social and political experiences, Sister Resisters equips both mentors and mentees with thoughtfully designed, culturally informed skills that can further educational, racial, and gender equality on campus.

Civil Rights and Federal Higher Education offers a renewed vision for higher education policy making, presenting an incisive analysis of the connections between educational politics and educational inequality. With a view toward the future, the editors assert that the thoughtful application of evidence-based solutions to complex policy problems can help establish a more just and equitable system of higher education.Edited by Nicholas Hillman and Gary Orfield, the volume focuses on federal policy debates that have significant racial and socioeconomic implications, linking civil rights reforms to contemporary higher education policy issues. Through a mix of history and current events, the chapters highlight how policy has strayed from the Higher Education Act's intended trajectory of promoting and protecting civil rights. This drift, the editors show, has created far-reaching consequences for students of color, low-income students, and incarcerated students, in addition to the colleges that serve them.Deftly identifying the social justice dimensions of today's federal policies, the editors reveal how certain political influences have preserved the interests of powerful and historically advantaged stakeholders—often at the expense of those who are less powerful and most disadvantaged. With great insight, the book's contributors explore higher education issues such as enrollment at Minority Serving Institutions, for-profit college outcomes, and legal and academic perspectives on affirmative action.Perhaps more importantly, Civil Rights and Federal Higher Education provides guidance on what can be done to course correct. The book offers short- and long-term policy prescriptions and policy alternatives to help legislative staffers, policy analysts, and researchers plot a way forward.

“This volume combines specific recommendations, observations, and takeaways filled with candor, humor, and uplifting stories for one of education's most challenging roles.”—FROM THE FOREWORDAn indispensable manual for the most demanding position in higher education, The College President Handbook supports campus leaders in becoming powerful and effective stewards of their institutions.This comprehensive guidebook offers clear counsel in the form of candid essays by highly regarded current and former college and university presidents from across the nation. It pairs their expert appraisals with research and data to examine the critical issues that define the role today.The book's contributors acknowledge the broad skill set that presidents, and their executive teams, must cultivate in order to achieve success. Beginning with a macro view, the contributors address the universal questions of vision that each higher education leader must consider critically and understand strategically: Why be a president? How should campus leadership engage with our board of trustees? What tone should our actions communicate to stakeholders?The book's chapters offer concrete tactical advice in a range of key leadership areas and emphasize essential career skills such as managing financial resources and strategic planning. The contributors speak to student-facing concerns as well as institutional interests, and discuss personal issues specific to the office, such as weathering controversy, attaining work–life balance, and planning for post-presidential life.Drawing on the unique expertise of peers and predecessors, this work will prove to be a core resource for anyone who is or aspires to become a president or chancellor in higher education.

With a visionary approach to school improvement, Equity-Based Leadership proposes a framework to support system leaders seeking to organize change and achieve more equitable education.In this ambitious yet pragmatic work, Joshua P. Starr makes the case that intentional and attentive district leadership can bring about continuous improvement in schools. When district reforms are conceived with social justice in mind, Starr explains, schools move toward fulfilling the longstanding promise of equitable education in America.Starr asserts that the essential goal of good system leadership lies in designing, implementing, and sustaining comprehensive strategies for school reform, in collaboration with school leaders, educators, and community shareholders. Drawing on his own experiences and those of other distinguished superintendents, he offers core practices that system leaders can use to ensure that the mission of their district is upheld throughout any change process and that precious time and funding are used judiciously.Recognizing that there is no single path to transformation, Starr sets forth a flexible, customizable agenda for district reform that concentrates on six elements, or entry points. Starr's first entry point is curriculum content, as teaching and learning are the fundamental goals of a school system. But he goes further to advocate for a deep dive into the organization and alignment of the system itself, via deliberate support of shared values; explicit and transparent decision-making; resource allocation in line with vision and need; talent management to achieve new levels of educator performance; and nourishment of school culture.Additionally, Starr brings together a wide range of real-world examples, evidence-based practices, and sensible advice to guide district leaders in aligning their systems around a coherent equity strategy.This bold new approach to transforming educational systems confidently guides the higher-level decision-making of leaders—not only superintendents but also school board members, cabinet members, and central office administrators—within the context of district-wide efforts to make education better for all students.

Clinical Simulations as Signature Pedagogy explores the use of live-actor simulations as an engaging training tool to better prepare educational professionals for school-wide challenges. In this volume, editors Benjamin H. Dotger and Kelly Chandler-Olcott present a persuasive overview of this effective method of professional development and show how it resonates with other practice-based initiatives.Through original case studies, the book's contributors demonstrate how live-actor simulations serve as valuable assets in the training of teachers, school counselors, and school leaders. They show how simulations provide a safe shared-learning environment that closely approximates authentic problems of practice while reducing the complexity of the instructional context in manageable ways. The contributors point out how the method standardizes training, ensuring that all candidates have comparable opportunities to practice and master key skills and habits of mind, among other advantages.Each case study showcases a distinct way in which educational simulations have been used to address common issues confronting educators, such as educational equity, community building, and cultural responsiveness. In addition, the cases highlight subject-specific concerns, from fostering inclusivity in physical education to presenting differing approaches to mathematical problems, for which live-actor simulations provide a dynamic learning context.Ultimately, this book illustrates why clinical simulations have emerged as a powerful pedagogical tool that holds promise for the professional preparation and continuing education of educators, counselors, and school leaders.

Assessing the Nation's Report Card examines the history of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and outlines plans for improving and modernizing the organization.Educational policy analyst Chester E. Finn, Jr. imparts a rare inside analysis of the evolution of the NAEP program at key moments in its history, and provides a firsthand perspective of crucial decisions and core goals that have helped shape it. The result is a revealing survey of the US's most influential source of data on K–12 achievement.Assessing the Nation's Report Card offers readers an in-depth understanding and appreciation of NAEP as well as an examination of its shortcomings, its controversies, and its current issues. The book explores why NAEP is considered the gold standard of educational assessments yet is much lesser known than other types of standardized testing.Finn underscores the promise of applying the results in addressing achievement gaps, boosting federal accountability, and driving education reform and policy. He also discloses how the data are collected and what the results can and cannot tell us.For more than 50 years, this ambitious federal testing program has informed the decisions of policy makers and educational leaders as they advocate for educational improvements in the US. Acknowledging the nation's evolving need for actionable information about students and schools, Finn provides an assured and rare overview of the existing program and proposes possibilities for the future.

Educating the Top 100 Percent assesses the decline of higher education funding and offers ambitious policy recommendations to restore the possibility of accessible, affordable education for all.Stephen G. Katsinas, Nathaniel J. Bray, and Martha J. Kanter probe the complex interplay of federal, state, and local policies and illustrate how government actions have, over time, contributed to the long-term slide of US educational attainment. Declining federal and state funding of public higher education has forced institutions to revise their financial models, passing costs directly through to students, to the detriment of prospective students—and the nation. Experts in education policy, the authors point out how the unintended consequences of today's funding model deny an ever-increasing portion of the population important educational and professional opportunities.By providing context for how we arrived at this financial conundrum and analyzing robust quantitative data from national sources, Katsinas and his colleagues offer pragmatic, sustainable, and stable policy options for educating all Americans. The authors provide innovative ideas, key lessons learned, and actionable proposals to fund public higher education. Their top-down federal and bottom-up local and state policy solutions aim to rectify plummeting high school-to-college continuation and college graduation rates. As a result, they present a vision of a brighter economic, cultural, and civic future for educating all Americans.Educating the Top 100 Percent demonstrates how stable, sustainable funding policies can scaffold a better public higher education system for all.

Adolescents at School brings together the perspectives of scholars, educators, and researchers to address the many issues that affect adolescents'emerging identities, especially in relation to students'experience of and engagement with school. The book offers current and preservice teachers a practical understanding of the concept of identity development, particularly as impacted by such factors as race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, ability/disability, immigration, and social class.This third edition includes new chapters on boys'emotional lives, risk and resilience in girls, the experiences of undocumented immigrant students, Muslim-American youth, and income inequality; features on “teaching while white”; and an extensively updated chapter on LGBTQ+ students. The book expands on the strengths and insights of the previous editions while also touching on issues highly relevant to contemporary youth such as social media, youth activism, and immigration.A practical and insightful volume, Adolescents at School points to ways to foster the success of every student in our schools and classrooms.

Rural Education in America provides a comprehensive framework for understanding the diversity and complexity of rural communities in the United States and for helping rural educators implement and evaluate successful place-based programs tailored for students and their families. Written by educators who grew up in rural America and returned there to raise their children, the book illustrates how efficacy is determined by the degrees to which instruction, interventions, and programs address the needs and strengths of each unique rural community.Geoff and Sky Marietta weave research, compelling case studies, and personal experience to illustrate effective approaches along the P-16 pipeline. Emphasizing the value and vitality of these communities, the authors advocate for solutions that fit the sociocultural and historical reality of the community, rather than strategies that fundamentally support out-migration. They also provide tools that can be used to evaluate rural educational initiatives and implement place-based strategies that are aligned with the strengths of a particular community.Rural Education in America includes examples from a range of geographic locations, including Eastern Washington, Montana, Ohio, northern Minnesota, North Carolina, Mississippi, Kentucky, and the Navajo Nation. Core chapters focus on critical issues for advancing rural education including early literacy, STEM education, and college completion while highlighting successful programs and partnerships in these areas. This book presents a vision of what rural education can be and how it can attend to the well-being of the people, places, and regions that it serves.

2020 ASHE Council for the Advancement of Higher Education Programs (CAHEP) Barbara Townsend Lecture Award2021 Transfer Champion-Catalyst Award from the National Institute for the Study of Transfer Students (NISTS)2021 Outstanding Publication Award, AERA Division J Publication and ResearchOn My Own: The Challenge and Promise of Building Equitable STEM Transfer Pathways is the first book of its kind to provide a detailed, on-the-ground examination of the difficult paths—curricular, interpersonal, and institutional—that students must chart through community college. The book follows 1,670 two-year college students over four years as they begin STEM programs in the Midwest and documents their educational and life experiences as they moved toward, or away, from the prospect of transfer to a four-year institution. Their stories reveal that they were on their own, left to navigate the pathways to transfer without meaningful institutional support.The students pursued one of four pathways, or momentum trajectories: linear upward, detoured, deferred, or taking a break. The preexisting and lasting disparities in their access to education and financial resources, their experiences with teaching and advising, and the conundrum between support from and for family, among others, propelled them onto different trajectories in their quest for transfer. As this book makes painfully clear, the current state of transfer acts as a mechanism that perpetuates and worsens inequities in educational outcomes.As Xueli Wang argues, to cultivate an equitable STEM transfer pathway, culturally relevant and responsive supports that are accessible, welcoming, and validating must be put in place at the institutional level and appeal to the talent, motivation, and unique needs of historically marginalized students. In doing so, postsecondary institutions will be better positioned to fulfill their promise as an equitable pathway to bachelor's degrees and beyond.

Teaching Students About the World of Work argues that educational institutions—especially two-year and four-year public institutions serving low-income students—need to make the topic of employment a central element in their educational offerings. Indeed, the book demonstrates that a far greater emphasis on teaching students about the work world will be necessary if colleges are to give disadvantaged students a realistic chance for professional and economic success. The recommendation is a reconfiguration of postsecondary education that represents a paradigm shift in career preparation and learning.Editors Nancy Hoffman and Michael Lawrence Collins and their authors provide a rich and comprehensive view of both today's work world and the challenges facing many young people who are determined to find a place within it. The book offers detailed accounts of how several community colleges have put employment at the center of the curriculum; provides practical insights into the twenty-first century labor market and ways to improve the choices and outcomes for low-income job seekers; and explores the daunting structural barriers to securing successful and satisfying employment.Throughout all its chapters, the book highlights increasing inequalities—in both opportunities and outcomes—within our society. In order to redress those disparities, it argues, postsecondary educators will need to offer enhanced insights and sophistication to disadvantaged young people preparing to enter and navigate the work world. An urgent but unfailingly reasonable book for our times, Teaching Students About the World of Work will be required reading for educators determined to create practical opportunities for young people in search of good employment and better lives.

In The Teacher Insurgency, Leo Casey addresses how the unexpected wave of recent teacher strikes has had a dramatic impact on American public education, teacher unions, and the larger labor movement. Casey explains how this uprising was not only born out of opposition to government policies that underfunded public schools and deprofessionalized teaching, but was also rooted in deep-seated changes in the economic climate, social movements, and, most importantly, educational politics. With an eye to maintaining the momentum of the insurgency, the author examines four key strategic questions that have arisen from the strikes: the relationship of mobilization to organizing; the relationship between protests and direct action; the conditions under which teacher strikes are most likely to be successful; and the importance of “bargaining for the common good.” More broadly, Casey examines how to organize teachers for collective action, focusing on four discourses of teaching: teaching as nurturance; as professionalism; as labor and craft; and as a vocation of democratic intellectual work.

In Challenging the One Best System, a team of leading education scholars offers a rich comparative analysis of the set of urban education governance reforms collectively known as the “portfolio management model.” They investigate the degree to which this model—a system of schools operating under different types of governance and with different degrees of autonomy—challenges the standard structure of district governance famously characterized by David Tyack as “the one best system.”The authors examine the design and enactment of the portfolio management model in three major cities: New Orleans, Los Angeles, and Denver. They identify the five interlocking mechanisms at the core of the model—planning and oversight, choice, autonomy, human capital, and school supports—and show how these are implemented differently in each city. Using rich qualitative data from extensive interviews, the authors trace the internal tensions and tradeoffs that characterize these systems and highlight the influence of historical and contextual factors as well. Most importantly, they question whether the portfolio management model represents a fundamental restructuring of education governance or more incremental change, and whether it points in the direction of meaningful improvement in school practices.Drawing on a rigorous, multimethod study, Challenging the One Best System represents a significant contribution to our understanding of system-level change in education.

2022 PROSE Award FinalistDrawing on narratives from hundreds of Black, Latinx, and Indigenous individuals, Ebony Omotola McGee examines the experiences of underrepresented racially minoritized students and faculty members who have succeeded in STEM. Based on this extensive research, McGee advocates for structural and institutional changes to address racial discrimination, stereotyping, and hostile environments in an effort to make the field more inclusive.Black, Brown, Bruised reveals the challenges that underrepresented racially minoritized students confront in order to succeed in these exclusive, usually all-White, academic and professional realms. The book provides searing accounts of racism inscribed on campus, in the lab, and on the job, and portrays learning and work environments as arenas rife with racial stereotyping, conscious and unconscious bias, and micro-aggressions. As a result, many students experience the effects of a racial battle fatigue—physical and mental exhaustion borne of their hostile learning and work environments—leading them to abandon STEM fields entirely. McGee offers policies and practices that must be implemented to ensure that STEM education and employment become more inclusive including internships, mentoring opportunities, and curricular offerings. Such structural changes are imperative if we are to reverse the negative effects of racialized STEM and unlock the potential of all students to drive technological innovation and power the economy.

In Creating Inclusive Learning Opportunities in Higher Education, Sheryl Burgstahler provides a practical, step-by-step guide for putting the principles of universal design into action. The book offers multiple ways to access, engage with, and transform the higher education environment: making physical spaces welcoming to students of all abilities; creating digital learning and assistive technology programs that meet the needs of all users; developing universal design in higher education (UDHE) syllabi, assessments and teaching practices that minimize the need for academic accommodations; and institutionalizing universal design supports and services. A follow-up to Universal Design in Higher Education, Burgstahler's new book will be a valuable resource for leaders, faculty, and administrators who are interested in acquiring the tools needed to create barrier-free learning environments. Filled with applications, examples, recommendations, and above all, a framework in which to conceptualize UDHE, this volume will help educators meet the design needs of all students and honor the principles of diversity and inclusivity.

Written by two leading experts in education research and policy, Common-Sense Evidence is a concise, accessible guide that helps education leaders find and interpret data and research, and then put that knowledge into action. In the book, Nora Gordon and Carrie Conaway empower educators to address the federal Every Student Succeeds Act mandate that schools use evidence-based improvement strategies. Recommendations include utilizing existing research; generating evidence on the success of their own improvement efforts; and building an organizational culture of evidence use. The authors walk readers through the processes for determining whether research is relevant and convincing; explain useful statistical concepts; and show how to quickly search for and scan research studies for the necessary information. The book directs readers through case studies of typical scenarios including a superintendent trying to reduce chronic absenteeism; a middle school math department chair trying to improve student performance on exams; and a chief state school officer attempting to recruit teachers for rural schools.Common-Sense Evidence helps education leaders build capacity for evidence-based practice in their schools and districts.

The United States has about $2 trillion tied up in aging school facilities. School districts throughout the country spend about $12 billion every year keeping this infrastructure going. Yet almost all of the new money we pour into school facilities reinforces an existing—and obsolete—model of schooling. In Blueprint for Tomorrow, Prakash Nair—one of the world's leading school designers—explores the hidden messages that our school facilities and classrooms convey and advocates for the “alignment” of the design of places in which we teach and learn with twenty-first-century learning goals.Blueprint for Tomorrow provides simple, affordable, and versatile ideas for adapting or redesigning school spaces to support student-centered learning. In particular, the author focuses on ways to use current spending to modify existing spaces, and explains which kinds of adaptations offer the biggest return in terms of student learning. The book is organized by area—from classrooms to cafeterias—and is richly illustrated throughout, including “before and after” features, “smart idea” sidebars, and “do now” suggestions for practical first steps. It outlines key principles for designing spaces that support today's learning needs and includes tools to help educators evaluate the educational effectiveness of their own spaces.Blueprint for Tomorrow will open educators'eyes to the ways that architecture and learning are entwined and will challenge them to rethink the ways they teach and work together.

In What Excellent Community Colleges Do, Joshua S. Wyner draws on the insights and evidence gained in administering the inaugural Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence.This book identifies four domains of excellence—degree completion, equity, student learning, and labor market success—and describes in rich detail the policies and practices that have allowed some community colleges to succeed in these domains.By starting with a holistic definition of excellence, measuring success against that definition, and then identifying practices and policies that align with high levels of student success, the author seeks to contribute to the growing body of knowledge about improving student success in community colleges.

In Natural Allies, Soo Hong offers a paradigm shift in how we think about family engagement with schools. Hong challenges the conventional depiction of parents and teachers as “natural enemies,” and shows how, through teachers'initiative and commitment, they can become natural allies instead.Based on a three-year ethnographic study, the book features the experiences and motivations of five urban school teachers who have successfully created meaningful, productive relationships and partnerships with students'families. In Natural Allies, the teachers'personal narratives are juxtaposed with rich descriptions of their interactions with families and children. The book explores how the dimensions of race, class, culture, and family history shape the interactions between teachers and families, particularly in schools where teacher-parent dynamics may be fraught with distrust or misunderstanding.The book demonstrates how commitment to families and community can become a central part of educators'development as professionals. In addition, the research provides new insight and seeks to merge the study of family engagement with the field of culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogies.Offered with optimism and urgency, Natural Allies addresses an area in which many educators feel ill equipped and unprepared. Readers will emerge from a reading of the book with new ideas on family engagement that are grounded in an analysis of the deep contours of the parent-teacher relationship.

Pathways to Personalization offers an innovative five-step framework to help school leaders and teacher teams design and implement blended and personalized learning initiatives based on local needs and interests. The book draws on principles of improvement science and change management, as well as work in nearly five hundred classrooms, to help educators define their own rationale for personalized learning; it guides them as they establish small pilot initiatives, determine criteria for success, evaluate their efforts, and create a path for replication and scale. Filled with activities and templates for organizing information and student feedback, the book also includes many examples of how district leaders, school principals, and teachers have successfully navigated the change process to create more student-centered classrooms. Shifting a school or district to offer more personalized learning requires a great deal of commitment, passion, and energy, but it also demands a strategic process. Pathways to Personalization meets this need by providing a field-tested road map for educators seeking ways to meet the academic and emotional needs of all students, and to empower them to take charge of their own learning.

In Teaching for Purpose, Heather Malin explores the idea of purpose as the purpose of education and shows how educators can prepare youth to live intentional, fulfilling lives. The book highlights the important role that purpose—defined as “a future-directed goal that is personally meaningful and aimed at contributing to something larger than the self”—plays in optimal youth development and in motivating students to promote the cognitive and noncognitive skills that teachers want to instill. Based on a decade of research conducted at the Stanford University Center on Adolescence, the book explores how educators and schools can promote purpose through attention to school culture, curriculum, project learning, service learning, and other opportunities. Malin argues for expansive thinking on the direction schools should take, especially in terms of educating students to be creative, innovative, and self-directed critical thinkers. The book includes profiles of six organizations working in schools across the US that have made purpose development a priority. Infused with the engaging voices of purposeful youth, Teaching for Purpose offers a fresh, inspirational guide for educators who are looking for new ways to support students to succeed not only in school, but in life.

Policy Patrons offers a rare behind-the-scenes view of decision making inside four influential education philanthropies: the Ford Foundation, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation. The outcome is an intriguing, thought-provoking look at the impact of current philanthropic efforts on education.Over a period of several years, Megan E. Tompkins-Stange gained the trust of key players and outside observers of these four organizations. Through a series of confidential interviews, she began to explore the values, ideas, and beliefs that inform these foundations'strategies and practices. The picture that emerges reveals important differences in the strategies and values of the more established foundations vis-à-vis the newer, more activist foundations—differences that have a significant impact on education policy and practice, and have important implications for democratic decision making.In recent years, the philanthropic sector has played an increasing role in championing and financing education reform. Policy Patrons makes an original and invaluable contribution to contemporary discussions about the appropriate role of foundations in public policy and the future direction of education reform.

Safe Is Not Enough illustrates how educators can support the positive development of LGBTQ students in a comprehensive way so as to create truly inclusive school communities. Using examples from classrooms, schools, and districts across the country, Michael Sadowski identifies emerging practices such as creating an LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum; fostering a whole-school climate that is supportive of LGBTQ students; providing adults who can act as mentors and role models; and initiating effective family and community outreach programs. While progress on LGBTQ issues in schools remains slow, in many parts of the country schools have begun making strides toward becoming safer, more welcoming places for LGBTQ students. Schools typically achieve this by revising antibullying policies and establishing GSAs (gay-straight student alliances). But it takes more than a deficit-based approach for schools to become places where LGBTQ students can fulfill their potential. In Safe Is Not Enough, Michael Sadowski highlights how educators can make their schools more supportive of LGBTQ students'positive development and academic success.

The Cage-Busting Teacher adopts the logic of Cage-Busting Leadership and applies it to the unique challenges and opportunities of classroom teachers. Detailed, accessible, and thoroughly engaging, it uncovers the many ways in which teachers can break out of familiar constraints in order to influence school and classroom practice, education policy, and school reform. “Cage-busting is concrete, precise, andpractical,” writes Frederick M. Hess. This invaluable book helps teachers understand why and how to revisit their assumptions and enables them to have greater impacts upon their schools and beyond. Based on interviews with hundreds of teachers, teacher advocates, union leaders, and others, Hess identifies the challenges teachers face, seeks concrete and workable solutions, and offers recommendations to put those solutions in place. A uniquely practical and inspiring book, The Cage-Busting Teacher is for educators who want to shape the schools and systems in which they work.

Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow provides a compelling analysis of the forces and choices that have shaped the trend toward the resegregation of public schools. By assembling a wide range of contributors—historians, sociologists, economists, and education scholars—the editors provide a comprehensive view of a community's experience with desegregation and economic development. Here we see resegregation through the lens of Charlotte, North Carolina, once a national model of successful desegregation, and home of the landmark Swann desegregation case, which gave rise to school busing. This book recounts the last forty years of Charlotte's desegregation and resegregation, putting education reform in political and economic context. Within a decade of the Swanncase, the district had developed one of the nation's most successful desegregation plans, measured by racial balance and improved academic outcomes for both black and white students. However, beginning in the 1990s, this plan was gradually dismantled. Today, the level of resegregation in Charlotte has almost returned to what it was prior to 1971. At the core of Charlotte's story is the relationship between social structure and human agency, with an emphasis on how yesterday's decisions and actions define today's choices.

Ripe for Change: Garden-Based Learning in Schools takes a big-picture view of the school garden movement and the state of garden-based learning in public K–8 education. The book frames the garden movement for educators and shows how school gardens have the potential to be a significant resource for teaching and learning. In this inviting and accessible book, the author:Summarizes the current school gardening movement and the emerging field of garden-based learningProvides an overview of the origins, benefits, and barriers to school gardeningExplores sustainable models for garden-based learningIncludes five case studies of successful partnerships between urban districts and nonprofit school gardening organizations around the countryIllustrates how gardens can be used for integrating academic lessons aligned with the Common Core State Standards and Next Generation Science StandardsIncludes examples of important tools available for assessing the impact of school gardensRipe for Change reveals a wealth of resources to show how garden-based learning is being implemented in a systematic way in public education, and offers next steps to widen and deepen the practice to reach children in all schools.

In Those Kids, Our Schools, Shayla Reese Griffin examines patterns of racial interaction in a large, integrated high school and makes a powerful case for the frank conversations that educators could and should be having about race in schools. Over three years, Griffin observed students, teachers, and administrators in a “post-racial” exurban high school in the Midwest. In its hallways, classrooms, lunchrooms, and staff meetings, she uncovered the disturbing ways in which racial tensions and prejudices persist and are reinforced. Students engaged in patterns of behavior that underscored racial hierarchies. Teachers—no matter how intellectually committed to equity and diversity—often lacked the skills, resources, or authority to address racial issues, while administrators failed to acknowledge racial tensions or recognize how school practices and policies perpetuated racial inequality. This astute and thoughtful book offers a revealing glimpse into the world of young people struggling with the legacy of racism. More important, it highlights the disservice being done to all students in our schools when educators fail to critically interrogate issues of race. Griffin's perceptive analysis illuminates the persistent influence of race in our education system and shows how—with appropriate support—teachers and students can develop the capacity to address racial issues and dynamics in schools in a frank and constructive way.

In this incisive and practical book, H. Richard Milner IV provides educators with a crucial understanding of how to teach students of color who live in poverty. Milner looks carefully at the circumstances of these students'lives and describes how those circumstances profoundly affect their experiences within schools and classrooms. In a series of detailed chapters, Milner proposes effective practices—at district and school levels, and in individual classrooms—for school leaders and teachers who are committed to creating the best educational opportunities for these students. Building on established literature, new research, and a number of revelatory case studies, Milner casts essential light on the experiences of students and their families living in poverty, while pointing to educational strategies that are shaped with these students'unique circumstances in mind. Milner's astute and nuanced account will fundamentally change how school leaders and teachers think about race and poverty—and how they can best serve these students in their schools and classrooms.

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.

April 2015 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the landmark legislation that has provided the foundation of federal education policy in the United States. In Presidents, Congress, and the Public Schools, longtime policy analyst Jack Jennings examines the evolution of federal education policy and outlines a bold and controversial vision for its future. Jennings brings an insider's knowledge to this account, offering a vivid analysis of federal efforts in the education arena and revealing some of the factors that shaped their enactment. His rich descriptions and lively anecdotes provide pointed lessons about the partisan climate that stymies much federal policy making today. After assessing the impacts of Title I and NCLB, and exploring the variety of ways that the federal government has intervened in education, Jennings sets forth an ambitious agenda for reframing education as a federal civil right and ensuring that every child has the opportunity to learn.

In this groundbreaking book, Eric Toshalis explores student resistance through a variety of perspectives, arguing that oppositional behaviors can be not only instructive but productive. All too often treated as a matter of compliance, student resistance can also be understood as a form of engagement, as young people confront and negotiate new identities in the classroom environment. The focus of teachers'efforts, Toshalis says, should not be about “managing” adolescents but about learning how to read their behavior and respond to it in developmentally productive, culturally responsive, and democratically enriching ways. Noting that the research literature is scattered across fields, Toshalis draws on four domains of inquiry: theoretical, psychological, political, and pedagogical. The result is a resource that can help teachers address this pervasive classroom challenge in ways that enhance student agency, motivation, engagement, and academic achievement. The coauthor ofUnderstanding Youth: Adolescent Development for Educators (Harvard Education Press, 2006), Toshalis blends accessible explanations of theory and research with vignettes of interactions among educators and students. In Make Me!, Toshalis helps teachers perceive possibility, rather than pathology, in student resistance.

When their children were young, several parents interviewed in 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. The 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 effectively 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.

In English Language Learners and the New Standards, three leading scholars present a clear vision and practical suggestions for helping teachers engage ELL students in simultaneously learning subject-area content, analytical practices, and language. This process requires three important shifts in our perspective on language and language learning—from an individual activity to a socially engaged activity; from a linear process aimed at correctness and fluency, to a developmental process, focused on comprehension and communication; and from a separate area of instruction to an approach that embeds language development in subject-area activities.In English Language Learners and the New Standards, the authors:Clarify the skills and knowledge teachers need to integrate content knowledge and language developmentShow how teachers can integrate formative assessment in ongoing teaching and learningDiscuss key leverage points and stress points in using interim and summative assessments with ELLsProvide classroom vignettes illustrating key practicesFinally, the authors explain the theories and research that underlie their vision and examine the role of policy in shaping pedagogy and assessment for ELL students.

In Educating English Learners, Joyce W. Nutta and her colleagues offer practical tools for helping schools and teachers successfully integrate English learners into mainstream classrooms. Drawing on the One Plus model presented in their award-winning book, Preparing Every Teacher to Reach English Learners, the authors now turn their attention to the needs of K–12 teachers who typically have two or three English learners in their classrooms.English learners are not a homogenous group, and the challenges they face vary tremendously. Nutta and her colleagues present protocols and case studies to help pre-service and in-service teachers understand the needs of English learners in their classrooms and differentiate instruction and assessment accordingly.Woven throughout the book are the stories of Gero, Edith, Tasir, and Edgar, four case study students of different ages, backgrounds, and levels of English proficiency. The authors show how the protocols they provide can be applied to adapt sample lessons for students like these, across a range of grade levels, subject areas, and pedagogical approaches. Finally, the authors show how the system can be applied school-wide for a collaborative approach to meeting English learners'needs.

This landmark volume commemorates the fortieth anniversary of the Children's Defense Fund, which has been an uncompromising champion of American youth for all of those years. Yet the book looks not to the past but at our current circumstances—and at the challenges we must meet now and in the future on behalf of our young people. The book examines critical issues—prenatal and infant health and development, early child care and education, school reform, the achievement gap, vulnerable children, juvenile justice, and child poverty—and highlights crucial practical and policy measures we need to consider and undertake if we are to better serve American children. An invaluable survey of the conditions facing American youth—and a call to action at the local, state, and national levels—Improving the Odds for America's Children is an urgent, informative, and inspired volume that addresses shortcomings and challenges we cannot afford to ignore.Contributors include Sara Rosenbaum, Partow Zomorrodian, Jack P. Shonkoff, Joan Lombardi, Deborah Jewell- Sherman, Jal Mehta, Robert B. Schwartz, Jerry D. Weast, Greg J. Duncan, Richard J. Murnane, Michael S. Wald, Jane Waldfogel, Robert G. Schwartz, Laurence Steinberg, Arloc Sherman, Robert Greenstein, Sharon Parrott, and Eric Dearing.

Achieving Coherence in District Improvement focuses on a problem of practice faced by educational leaders across the nation: how to effectively manage the relationship between the central office and schools. The book is based on a study of five large urban districts that have demonstrated improvement in student achievement. The authors—all members of Harvard University's Public Education Leadership Project (PELP)—argue that there is no “one best way” to structure the central office-school relationship. Instead, they say, what matters is whether district leaders effectively select and implement their strategy by achieving coherence among key elements and actors—the district's environment, resources, systems, structures, stakeholders, and culture. The authors examine the five districts'approaches in detail and point to a number of important findings. First, they emphasize that a clear, shared understanding of decision rights in key areas—academic programming, budgeting, and staffing—is essential to developing an effective central office-school relationship. Second, they stress the importance of building mutually supportive and trusting relationships between district leaders and principals. Third, they highlight the ways that culture and the external environment influence the relationship between the central office and schools. Each chapter also provides relevant “Lessons for Practice”—actionable takeaways—that educational leaders from any district can use successfully to improve the central office-school relationship.

'Congratulations. Your school has just purchased a cart housing twenty-four tablets. Your principal wants you to roll it right into your classroom and start innovating—tomorrow.”So begins this engaging and highly accessible guide for practitioners looking for a systematic way to kick their teaching up a notch by combining education technology with best practices in teaching and learning.Written by two veteran teacher-trainers, TechnoTeaching provides a clear blueprint that educators of all experience levels can use to challenge themselves and their students over a single school year. Through “stellar units,” “dare-devil missions,” and other activities, the authors show how teachers can progressively transform their classrooms by adding new digital and web tools to meet the specific needs of students.TechnoTeaching includes planning templates, reflection documents, and other resources, making it immediately usable and indispensable for classroom teachers.

In this landmark volume, Greg J. Duncan and Richard J. Murnane lay out a meticulously researched case showing how—in a time of spiraling inequality—strategically targeted interventions and supports can help schools significantly improve the life chances of low-income children.The authors offer a brilliant synthesis of recent research on inequality and its effects on families, children, and schools. They describe the interplay of social and economic factors that has made it increasingly hard for schools to counteract the effects of inequality and that has created a widening wedge between low- and high-income students.Restoring Opportunity provides detailed portraits of proven initiatives that are transforming the lives of low-income children from prekindergarten through high school. All of these programs are research-tested and have demonstrated sustained effectiveness over time and at significant scale. Together, they offer a powerful vision of what good instruction in effective schools can look like. The authors conclude by outlining the elements of a new agenda for education reform.Restoring Opportunity is a crowning contribution from these two leading economists in the field of education and a passionate call to action on behalf of the young people on whom our nation's future depends.Copublished with the Russell Sage Foundation

The Behavior Code Companion delivers a helpful inventory of concrete and practical resources for the development and implementation of successful behavior intervention plans for students.Special educator and behavioral analyst Jessica Minahan, coauthor of The Behavior Code, delivers a companion guide for educators and parents who want to better support students with challenging behaviors. Used by countless educators, the FAIR Behavior Intervention Plan has been proven to improve proactive classroom management, encourage positive teacher-student relationships, and reduce the need for school discipline.In this book, Minahan offers a wealth of supplemental materials for each stage of the FAIR Behavior Intervention Plan—which involves determining the function (F) of the behavior, offering appropriate accommodations (A), implementing proactive intervention strategies (I), and practicing positive response strategies (R). Among other invaluable supports, she provides clear and direct exercises for brainstorming and reflection, a series of checklists to help with implementation and monitoring progress, and planning activities and templates that can be customized and put to use immediately. The author also recommends apps and other technology that can assist and simplify plan implementation.Throughout the book, Minahan offers illustrative case studies, with a special focus on students with mental health diagnoses and those with anxiety-related or oppositional behaviors.Filled with actionable advice, this highly useful resource gives educators and parents the tools to meet challenging behaviors with both confidence and compassion. This volume will help educators create optimal learning environments for all students.

In this lively and groundbreaking book, arts educator Marit Dewhurst examines why art is an effective way to engage students in thinking about the role they might play in addressing social injustice. Based on interviews and observations of sixteen high schoolers participating in an activist arts class at a New York City museum, Dewhurst identifies three learning processes common to the act of creating art that have an impact on social justice: connecting, questioning, and translating. Noting that “one of the challenges of social justice art education has been the difficulty of naming effective strategies that can be used across multiple contexts,” Dewhurst outlines core strategies for an “activist arts pedagogy” and offers concrete suggestions for educators seeking to incorporate activist art projects inside or outside formal school settings.Social Justice Art seeks to give common language to educators and others who are looking to expand and refine their practices in an emerging field, whether they work in art education, social justice programming, or youth development.

Under increasing pressure to raise graduation rates and ensure that students leave high school college- and career-ready, many school and district leaders may believe that, when students graduate with college acceptances in hand, their work is done. But as Benjamin L. Castleman and Lindsay C. Page show, summer can be a time of significant attrition among college-intending seniors—especially those from low-income families. Anywhere from 10 to 40 percent of students presumed to be headed to college fail to matriculate at any postsecondary institution in the fall following high school.Summer Melt explores the complex factors that contribute to this trend—the absence of school support, confusion over paperwork, lack of parental guidance, and the teenage tendency to procrastinate. The authors draw on findings from fields such as neuroscience, behavioral economics, and social psychology to contextualize these factors. Drawing on a series of research studies, they show how schools and districts can develop effective, low-cost, scalable responses—including counselor outreach, peer mentoring, and using text messages and social media—to help students stay on track over the summer.Summer Melt offers very practical guidance for schools and districts committed to helping their students make the transition to college.

As a group, Black and Latino boys face persistent and devastating disparities in achievement when compared to their White counterparts: they are more likely to obtain low test scores and grades, be categorized as learning disabled, be absent from honors and gifted programs, and be overrepresented among students who are suspended and expelled from school. They are also less likely to enroll in college and more likely to drop out. Put simply, they are among the most vulnerable populations in our schools.Schooling for Resilience investigates how seven newly formed schools, created specifically to serve boys of color, set out to address the broad array of academic and social problems faced by Black and Latino boys. Drawing on student and teacher surveys, focus groups, interviews, and classroom observations, the authors investigate how these schools were developed, what practices they employed, and how their students responded academically and socially. In particular, they focus on the theory of action that informed each school's approach to educating Black and Latino boys and explore how choices about school structure and culture shaped students'development and achievement. In doing so, the authors identify educational strategies that all schools can learn from.This thoughtful, passionately argued volume promises to influence efforts to improve the achievement and life outcomes of Black and Latino boys for years to come.

This book, by two editors of Data Wise: A Step-by-Step Guide to Using Assessment Results to Improve Teaching and Learning, attempts to bring about a fundamental shift in how educators think about the meetings we attend. They make the case that these gatherings are potentially the most important venue where adult and organizational learning can take place in schools, and that making more effective use of this time is the key to increasing student achievement. In Meeting Wise, the authors show why meeting planning is a high-leverage strategy for changing how people work together in the service of school improvement. To this end, they have created a meeting-planning “checklist” to develop a common language for discussing and improving the quality of meetings. In addition, they provide guidelines for readers on “wise facilitating” and “wise participating,” and also include “top tips” and common dilemmas. Simple, succinct, and practical, Meeting Wise is designed to be read and applied at every level of the educational enterprise: district leadership meetings with central office staff, charter-school management summits, principals'meetings with teachers, professional development sessions, teacher-team meetings, and even teachers'meetings with parents and students.