More and more states require students to pass large-scale tests as a condition of promotion or graduation. What forces have pushed high-stakes testing to the forefront of educational policy? Are such tests the best way to gauge educational attainment? This book examines the economic and educational assumptions underlying the call for high-stakes tests.
Written by experienced teachers and educational researchers Phillip Adey and Michael Shayer, Really Raising Standards analyses attempts to teach children to think more effectively and efficiently. Their practical advice on how to improve children's performance by the application of the findings of the CASE research project will radically alter the approach of many professional teachers and student teachers as to the education of children in schools. An important contribution to the application of psychological theory in education.
Starting in the 1990s, San Francisco launched a series of bold but relatively unknown public policy experiments to improve wages and benefits for thousands of local workers. Since then, scholars have documented the effects of those policies on compensation, productivity, job creation, and health coverage. Opponents predicted a range of negative impacts, but the evidence tells a decidedly different tale. This book brings together that evidence for the first time, reviews it as a whole, and considers its lessons for local, state, and federal policymakers.
"A License to Teach" speaks directly to the quality-of-education debate now focused on public schools. The authors show that reform of teacher education and licensing are needed to ensure that teachers are prepared for the classroom. A well-conceived licensing system that supports high-quality teacher preparation would ultimately support the more demanding learning goals now expected of students and would give parents and policymakers greater confidence that teachers are being prepared to practice their profession responsibly.
This book provides the busy teacher with all the information they need to make social inclusion a reality within schools. By demonstrating how teachers and schools must work together to promote the wider welfare of all children, the book focuses particularly on the welfare of children on the margins of society who need the most protection. It shows how teachers can aim to reduce inequalities and maximise the learning opportunities available for these vulnerable children, whatever their background or social class. The author addresses key issues such as: attendance and achievement exclusion and behaviour safeguarding and child protection children at risk of missing education. By emphasizing the Every Child Matters agenda and the importance of joined-up partnership approaches with other professionals and agencies, this book is essential reading for all practitioners working to support pupils at risk of exclusion.
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.
Beyond Standards highlights the structural conditions that have undermined the success of the standards movement and challenges us to confront them. The book offers an impassioned argument about the ways that our decentralized educational systems undermine the pursuit of educational equity and excellence. Morgan Polikoff applies a wide array of quantitative and qualitative data to provide a pointed critique of the US educational system. He addresses why standards have failed, whether standards-based reform can be salvaged, and what we can do to improve teaching and learning at scale across America's 13,000 school districts. Polikoff argues that no amount of tinkering can fix standards. Rather, we need to tackle the big, structural issues, such as decentralization. The author identifies curriculum reform as a high-leverage strategy for making meaningful progress at scale and emphasizes that states need to play a greater role in evaluating and recommending high-quality curriculum materials. Beyond Standards proposes a new, progressive vision that emphasizes the central role of states in challenging the antiquated, segregating structures that have thwarted educational improvement.
Cultural anthropologist and thought leader Grant McCracken proposes a radical solution for our time of unprecedented scandal: a return to honor. What used to be shocking has somehow become the new normal. Sexual predators stalk interns at work. Parents try to buy a place for their kids in college. Leaders compromise morals for political advantage. It happens so frequently that we can no longer dismiss these cases as a few bad apples. Something in the system is rotten. How can someone get ahead and be successful in our modern culture without compromising their morality? What makes a good man or woman in this era of scandal? Respected cultural anthropologist Grant McCracken has the answer: a return to the ancient idea of honor. By looking at examples of honor and dishonor in popular culture and at institutions as diverse as Harvard, PBS, and Wells Fargo, he lays out not just how we got to where we are, but practical guidelines for how leaders and individuals can restore moral order to their organizations and personal lives. Grant takes on topics like masculinity and gender roles, as well as classism and elitist attitudes. Celebrities and corporate leaders get knocked down to size while exploring just why their lack of honor can be harmful or dangerous. New Honor Code is a sharp and insightful guide to what honor truly is, and how to incorporate it into your life.
Assembling compelling and unprecedented evidence, "Political Standards: Accounting for Legitimacy" documents how in subtle ways the rules of corporate accounting a critical institution in modern market capitalism have been captured to benefit industrial corporations, financial firms, and audit firms. In what is perhaps the only independent overview of the accounting industry, Karthik Ramanna begins with a history of corporate accounting and an accessible explanation of how it works today, including the essential roles it plays in defining the fundamental notion of profitability, facilitating asset allocation, and ensuring the accountability of corporations and their managers. From the evidence, Ramanna shows how accounting rule-makers selectively co-opt conceptual arguments from academia and elsewhere to advance the views of the special-interest groups. From this, Ramanna moves on to develop more broadly a new type of regulatory challenge that of producing public policy in a thin political market. His argument is that accounting rules cannot be determined without the substantial expertise and experience of groups that by definition also have strong commercial interests in the outcome." Political Standards" concludes with an exploration of possible solutions to the problem in accounting and that of thin political markets in general, charting avenues for scholarship and practice. Certain to be an eye-opening account of a massive industry central to the modern business world, "Political Standards "will be an essential resource in understanding how the rules of the game business are set, whom they inevitably favor, and how they can be changed for the better of society."