From Poverty to Principal: A Guide to Promote Equity and Student Advocacy


Book Description

From Poverty to Principal takes you on a journey from Annetha Jones's childhood to adulthood. She shares her strengths, vulnerabilities, and how life events propelled her to promote educational advocacy for Black and Brown students. Through her experiences and deliberate efforts, she transparently imparts her personal and professional strategies to assist students of color to avoid common pitfalls as they navigate the educational system. A retired principal, Jones gained extensive knowledge of the system's inner workings and has been privy to the inequities faced by many students of color. "I hope what I have learned helps others gain the most from the educational system. We must all work to ensure our students are prepared for the amazing opportunities awaiting them."




Reaching and Teaching Students in Poverty


Book Description

This influential book describes the knowledge and skills teachers and school administrators need to recognize and combat bias and inequity that undermine educational engagement for students experiencing poverty. Featuring important revisions based on newly available research and lessons from the authors professional development work, this Second Edition includes: a new chapter outlining the dangers of grit and deficit perspectives as responses to educational disparities; three updated chapters of research-informed, on-the-ground strategies for teaching and leading with equity literacy; and expanded lists of resources and readings to support transformative equity work in high-poverty and mixed-class schools. Written with an engaging, conversational style that makes complex concepts accessible, this book will help readers learn how to recognize and respond to even the subtlest inequities in their classrooms, schools, and districts.







Excellence Through Equity


Book Description

Excellence Through Equity is an inspiring look at how real-world educators are creating schools where all students are able to thrive. In these schools, educators understand that equity is not about treating all children the same. They are deeply committed to ensuring that each student receives what he or she individually needs to develop their full potential and succeed. To help educators with what can at times be a difficult and challenging journey, Blankstein and Noguera frame the book with five guiding principles of Courageous Leadership: Getting to your core Making organizational meaning Ensuring constancy and consistency of purpose Facing the facts and your fears Building sustainable relationships. They further emphasize that the practices are grounded in three important areas of research that are too often disregarded: (1) child development, (2) neuroscience, and (3) environmental influences on child development and learning. You'll hear from Carol Corbett Burris, Michael Fullan, Marcus J. Newsome, Paul Reville, Susan Szachowicz, and other bold practitioners and visionary thinkers who share compelling and actionable ideas, strategies, and experiences for closing the achievement gap in your classrooms and school. Ensuring that all students receive an education that cultivates their talents and potential is in all our common interest. As Andy Hargreaves writes in the coda: "The opportunity for all Americans is to articulate and believe in an inspiring vision of educational change that is about what the next generation of America and Americans should become, not about a target or ranking that the nation should attain." From the Foreword by Archbishop Desmond Tutu: "Letting go of a system of winners and losers in favor of what is proposed in this book is a courageous leap forward that we all must take together. Let this bold, practical book be a guide; and may you travel into this new exciting vista, in which every child can succeed."




Breakthrough Principals


Book Description

Bridge the achievement gap with proven strategies for student success Breakthrough Principals debunks the myth of the 'superhero' principal by detailing the common actions and practices of leaders at our nation's fastest-gaining public schools. Based on the authors' Transformational Leadership Framework, which they developed through in-depth study of more than 100 high-gaining, high-poverty schools, the book distills findings into a practical, action-focused plan for diagnosing school needs and implementing structures, systems and practices that accelerate student achievement. Brought to life by case studies of principals who have led dramatic gains in student achievement, the book is a how-to guide for increasing the quality of teaching and learning; improving school culture; attracting and supporting high-performing teachers; and involving parents and community to help students achieve. You'll learn how breakthrough principals make the school's mission a real part of both strategy and practice, and set up sustainable systems that support consistent, ongoing improvement. High-impact practices are organized into five broad categories: learning and teaching, school-wide culture, aligned staff, operations and systems, and personal leadership. The primary job of school leadership is to help students succeed. It begins with first recognizing and prioritizing areas of need, then finding and implementing the most effective solutions. Whether you work in a turn around environment, or want to make a good school better, this book will give you a set of concrete practices—illustrated through examples of real principals in real schools—that have been proven to work. Discover the primary drivers of student achievement Work toward the school's vision in staffing, operations, and systems Set the tone for all relationships and practices with good leadership Closing the achievement gap is a major goal of educational leadership, and principals are forever searching for viable methods that help them better serve their students. Breakthrough Principals unveils the details behind the success stories from across the nation to provide a roadmap to transformative gains.




School, Family, and Community Partnerships


Book Description

Strengthen programs of family and community engagement to promote equity and increase student success! When schools, families, and communities collaborate and share responsibility for students′ education, more students succeed in school. Based on 30 years of research and fieldwork, the fourth edition of the bestseller School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Your Handbook for Action, presents tools and guidelines to help develop more effective and more equitable programs of family and community engagement. Written by a team of well-known experts, it provides a theory and framework of six types of involvement for action; up-to-date research on school, family, and community collaboration; and new materials for professional development and on-going technical assistance. Readers also will find: Examples of best practices on the six types of involvement from preschools, and elementary, middle, and high schools Checklists, templates, and evaluations to plan goal-linked partnership programs and assess progress CD-ROM with slides and notes for two presentations: A new awareness session to orient colleagues on the major components of a research-based partnership program, and a full One-Day Team Training Workshop to prepare school teams to develop their partnership programs. As a foundational text, this handbook demonstrates a proven approach to implement and sustain inclusive, goal-linked programs of partnership. It shows how a good partnership program is an essential component of good school organization and school improvement for student success. This book will help every district and all schools strengthen and continually improve their programs of family and community engagement.




Turning High-Poverty Schools into High-Performing Schools


Book Description

Schools across the United States and Canada are disrupting the adverse effects of poverty and supporting students in ways that enable them to succeed in school and in life. In this second edition, Parrett and Budge show you how your school can achieve similar results. Expanding on their original framework's still-critical concepts of actions and school culture, they incorporate new insights for addressing equity, trauma, and social-emotional learning. These fresh perspectives combine with lessons learned from 12 additional high-poverty, high-performing schools to form the updated and enhanced Framework for Collective Action. Emphasizing students' social, emotional, and academic learning as the hub for all action in high-performing, high-poverty schools, the authors describe how educators can work within the expanded Framework to address the needs of all students, but particularly those who live in poverty. Equipped with the Framework and a plethora of tools to build collective efficacy (self-assessments, high-leverage questions, action advice, and more), school and district leaders—as well as teachers, teacher leaders, instructional coaches, and other staff—can close persistent opportunity gaps and reverse longstanding patterns of low achievement.




Poor Students, Richer Teaching


Book Description

Discover practical and research-based strategies to ensure all students, regardless of circumstance, are college and career ready. This thorough resource details the necessary but difficult work that teachers must do to establish the foundational changes essential to positively impact students in poverty. Organized tools and resources are provided to help teachers effectively implement these essential changes.




Handbook of Social Justice Interventions in Education


Book Description

The Handbook of Social Justice Interventions in Education features interventions in social justice within education and leadership, from early years to higher education and in mainstream and alternative, formal and informal settings. Researchers from across academic disciplines and different countries describe implementable social justice work underway in learning environments—organizations, programs, classrooms, communities, etc. Robust, dynamic, and emergent theory-informed applications in real-world places make known the applied knowledge base in social justice, and its empirical, ideological, and advocacy orientations. A multiplicity of social justice-oriented lenses, policies, strategies, and tools is represented in this Handbook, along with qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Alternative and conventional approaches alike advance knowledge and educational and social utility. To cover the field comprehensively the subject (i.e., social justice education and leadership) is subdivided into four sections. Part 1 (background) provides a general background of current social justice literature. Part II (schools) addresses interventions and explorations in preK-12 schools. Part III (education) covers undergraduate and graduate education and preservice teacher programs, classrooms, and curricula, in addition to teacher and student leadership in schools. Part IV (leadership) features educational leadership and higher education leadership domains, from organizational change efforts to preservice leader preparation programs, classrooms, etc. Part V (comparative) offers interventions and explorations of societies, cultures, and nations. Assembling this unique material in one place by a leading cast will enable readers easy access to the latest research-informed interventionist practices on a timely topic. They can build on this work that takes the promise of social justice to the next level for changing global learning environments and workplaces.




Visioning Onward


Book Description

The step-by-step guide to defining your vision—and making it reality As a leader, it’s your job to look beyond the present and envision a brighter future for your school. Choosing the right path, however, can be a challenge. This inspirational resource is your guide. By following its one-of-a-kind iterative visioning process, you’ll sharpen your vision into a road map for transformative change—tailored to the needs of your learning community. Features include: Key strategies and tools for building a shared vision Practical implementation ideas Case studies from exemplary schools Common trends at the heart of impactful, positive change Thought-provoking vignettes Turn vision into reality, possibilities into plans, and create an environment that strengthens engagement, provides safe and nurturing learning opportunities, and produces students with the skills, knowledge, and disposition to be successful in life.