Twelve Steps to Reform Canadian Public Education
Twelve Steps to Reform Canadian Public Education

Author: Bill McKerlich

Publisher: Trafford Publishing

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 518

ISBN-13: 1553697669

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Are the learning needs of children and youth being met by the Canadian school system? Is it possible for all students to learn what is essential to function in our society? What must be done to reform schools? Canadian parents, business leaders, citizens, community and political leaders are asking these, and similar questions. They know that education is essential for their children, and they realize that our country's future depends on a population of educated citizens. This book is Bill McKerlich's response to these questions. Twelve Steps to Reform Canadian Public Education outlines both a comprehensive assessment and a thoughtful plan for the necessary reform of our schools written by an experienced educator. Focus: "To adjust the focal length of the eye to give a clear image." Our school system may have been adequate for the past, but is now out of focus with the present learning needs of our students. The system requires immediate adjustment so that it has a clear image of purpose, and how to achieve this purpose. As part of this process, it will be necessary to improve the early childhood development of an important minority of our children. Using our democratic processes, these adjustments will be discussed and changes decided. The results will be immediately planned and implemented. If this does not happen, effective public schooling for all children and youth will be lost, and a significant minority of Canadian children will not reach their potential to be happy and productive citizens. The resulting long-term negative social and economic consequences will cripple our society. Book Purpose: The purpose of this book is to assist this important public discussion by outlining a plan of school reform in twelve steps. The plan describes how the early childhood development of some deprived children can improve, and how the school system can be refocused so that all children will learn to the maximum of their ability. Book Organisation: The steps are stated at the beginning of the chapters in which they are described. The first five chapters centre on children, learning, teaching, and schools. The later four chapters describe the organisation, governance, leadership, and management processes required for schools to have all children learn. The twelve steps form a planned approach to improving schools with the steps often interdependent on each other. This approach is in contrast to the unsatisfactory ad hoc tinkering that public education has experienced over the years. The plan has direct relevance to the Canadian provinces, but may have some application to the education jurisdictions of other countries. Visit the author's website at http://www.reform-education.com

Twelve Roles of Facilitators for School Change
Twelve Roles of Facilitators for School Change

Author: R. Bruce Williams

Publisher: Corwin Press

Published: 2008-03-20

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 1412961122

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This updated edition shows school leaders how to become powerful agents of school change. The author provides 55 tools to aid in the transformation and reform process, allowing all participants to develop skills that foster communication, consensus, and schoolwide support. This valuable resource outlines twelve roles based on the four main functions of effective facilitators: leading the collaboration and change process, providing skills training, acting as a resource consultant, and motivating and energizing the group.

Education Governance for the Twenty-First Century
Education Governance for the Twenty-First Century

Author: Paul Manna

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2013-01-03

Total Pages: 434

ISBN-13: 0815723954

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A Brookings Institution Press with the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the Center for American Progress publication America's fragmented, decentralized, politicized, and bureaucratic system of education governance is a major impediment to school reform. In this important new book, a number of leading education scholars, analysts, and practitioners show that understanding the impact of specific policy changes in areas such as standards, testing, teachers, or school choice requires careful analysis of the broader governing arrangements that influence their content, implementation, and impact. Education Governance for the Twenty-First Century comprehensively assesses the strengths and weaknesses of what remains of the old in education governance, scrutinizes how traditional governance forms are changing, and suggests how governing arrangements might be further altered to produce better educational outcomes for children. Paul Manna, Patrick McGuinn, and their colleagues provide the analysis and alternatives that will inform attempts to adapt nineteenth and twentieth century governance structures to the new demands and opportunities of today. Contents: Education Governance in America: Who Leads When Everyone Is in Charge?, Patrick McGuinn and Paul Manna The Failures of U.S. Education Governance Today, Chester E. Finn Jr. and Michael J. Petrilli How Current Education Governance Distorts Financial Decisionmaking, Marguerite Roza Governance Challenges to Innovators within the System, Michelle R. Davis Governance Challenges to Innovators outside the System, Steven F. Wilson Rethinking District Governance, Frederick M. Hess and Olivia M. Meeks Interstate Governance of Standards and Testing, Kathryn A. McDermott Education Governance in Performance-Based Federalism, Kenneth K. Wong The Rise of Education Executives in the White House, State House, and Mayor’s Office, Jeffrey R. Henig English Perspectives on Education Governance and Delivery, Michael Barber Education Governance in Canada and the United States, Sandra Vergari Education Governance in Comparative Perspective, Michael Mintrom and Richard Walley Governance Lessons from the Health Care and Environment Sectors, Barry G. Rabe Toward a Coherent and Fair Funding System, Cynthia G. Brown Picturing a Different Governance Structure for Public Education, Paul T. Hill From Theory to Results in Governance Reform, Kenneth J. Meier The Tall Task of Education Governance Reform, Paul Manna and Patrick McGuinn

Exemplary Science in Grades 9-12
Exemplary Science in Grades 9-12

Author: Robert Eugene Yager

Publisher: NSTA Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 0873552571

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In this collection of 15 essays, educators describe successful programs they've developed to fulfill the US National Science Education Standards' vision for the reform of teaching assessment, professional development, and content at the high school level. All the visions correspond with the Less Emphasis and More Emphasis conditions that conclude each section of the Standards, characterizing what most teachers and programs should do less of as well as describing the changes needed if real reform is to occur. Essay titles reveal the range of programs, and creativity, this book encompasses. Among the titles are: "Technology and Cooperative Learning: The IIT Model for Teaching Authentic Chemistry Curriculum," "Modeling: Changes in Traditional Physics Instruction," "Guided by the Standards: Inquiry and Assessment in Two Rural and Urban Schools," and even "Sing and Dance Your Way to Science Success." The book ends with a summary chapter by editor Robert Yager on successes and continuing challenges in meeting the Standards' visions for improving high school science. As Yager notes, "The exemplary programs described in this monograph give inspiration while also providing evidence that the new directions are feasible and worth the energy and effort needed for others to implement changes.

Law and the Shaping of Public Education, 1785-1954
Law and the Shaping of Public Education, 1785-1954

Author: David B. Tyack

Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press

Published: 1987

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 9780299108847

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Using case studies as illustrations, this text explores the ways in which public schooling was shaped by state constitutions, by state statutes and administrative law, and by appellate decisions concerning public public education.

An Unbroken Educational Apartheid Legacy
An Unbroken Educational Apartheid Legacy

Author: David E. Morgan Ph.D.

Publisher: AuthorHouse

Published: 2015-03-17

Total Pages: 1413

ISBN-13: 150490057X

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This is a thought-provoking book on the black-white academic achievement gap in Chicago’s predominantly black communities of color and what highly effective school boards can do to change it. In this book, the reader will be powerfully enlightened by a civil and human rights debate that calls for effective leadership in our schools, beginning with effective school boards. The primary agenda of effective school boards is raising student achievement performance levels and engaging the school district community to attain that goal. These instructive analyses of effective school board leadership builds on the research and wisdom of great leaders. Simultaneously, it develops a breath of fresh air for school reformers who seek to implement a new model and escape the insanity and pathology inherent in school board dysfunctions and violations of our civil and human rights which prevents progress in Chicago’s south suburban communities of color. In both highs and lows of awesome moments, as educational reform leaders and school board members, we are in a strategic leadership position to help school boards carry out their essential responsibilities for creating equity and excellence in public education. In doing so, highly effective school leaders can team with our school board leaders to lead our school district communities in preparing all students to succeed in a rapidly changing global society. School board members doing the same things over and over again and then expecting different results in academic outcomes is the definition for insanity. Education is freedom. In an era of mass educational apartheid with its consequent mass incarceration of blacks that has surpassed the enforced chattel bondage of slavery’s peak numbers in 1860, this book addresses a subject that is critically essential, timely, and in need of immediate attention for the security, success, and ultimate survival of black America. As the problems of the academic under-achievement gap is addressed in this book, it is also essential that school boards, educators, and community and national leaders accept reality, to view the problem in its true perspective, to contemplate it as it is, in providing essential solutions toward removing limiting and limited school boards’ dysfunctions, obstructions, and other barriers to academic achievement in effective school board leadership. Supporting educational excellence will thereby produce more African American scholars in mathematics, science, and in many other disciplines. This book will provide information and focus on some key action areas that successful school boards in America and around the world have focused their attention on: Vision, Standards, Assessment, Resource Alignment, Climate, Collaboration, and Continuous Academic Improvement.