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.




Model School Library Standards for California Public Schools


Book Description

Provides vision for strong school library programs, including identification of the skills and knowledge essential for students to be information literate. Includes recommended baseline staffing, access, and resources for school library services at each grade level.




The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report


Book Description

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, published by the U.S. Government and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in early 2011, is the official government report on the United States financial collapse and the review of major financial institutions that bankrupted and failed, or would have without help from the government. The commission and the report were implemented after Congress passed an act in 2009 to review and prevent fraudulent activity. The report details, among other things, the periods before, during, and after the crisis, what led up to it, and analyses of subprime mortgage lending, credit expansion and banking policies, the collapse of companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the federal bailouts of Lehman and AIG. It also discusses the aftermath of the fallout and our current state. This report should be of interest to anyone concerned about the financial situation in the U.S. and around the world.THE FINANCIAL CRISIS INQUIRY COMMISSION is an independent, bi-partisan, government-appointed panel of 10 people that was created to "examine the causes, domestic and global, of the current financial and economic crisis in the United States." It was established as part of the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009. The commission consisted of private citizens with expertise in economics and finance, banking, housing, market regulation, and consumer protection. They examined and reported on "the collapse of major financial institutions that failed or would have failed if not for exceptional assistance from the government."News Dissector DANNY SCHECHTER is a journalist, blogger and filmmaker. He has been reporting on economic crises since the 1980's when he was with ABC News. His film In Debt We Trust warned of the economic meltdown in 2006. He has since written three books on the subject including Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity (Cosimo Books, 2008), and The Crime Of Our Time: Why Wall Street Is Not Too Big to Jail (Disinfo Books, 2011), a companion to his latest film Plunder The Crime Of Our Time. He can be reached online at www.newsdissector.com.




The Adult Learner


Book Description

How do you tailor education to the learning needs of adults? Do they learn differently from children? How does their life experience inform their learning processes? These were the questions at the heart of Malcolm Knowles’ pioneering theory of andragogy which transformed education theory in the 1970s. The resulting principles of a self-directed, experiential, problem-centred approach to learning have been hugely influential and are still the basis of the learning practices we use today. Understanding these principles is the cornerstone of increasing motivation and enabling adult learners to achieve. The 9th edition of The Adult Learner has been revised to include: Updates to the book to reflect the very latest advancements in the field. The addition of two new chapters on diversity and inclusion in adult learning, and andragogy and the online adult learner. An updated supporting website. This website for the 9th edition of The Adult Learner will provide basic instructor aids including a PowerPoint presentation for each chapter. Revisions throughout to make it more readable and relevant to your practices. If you are a researcher, practitioner, or student in education, an adult learning practitioner, training manager, or involved in human resource development, this is the definitive book in adult learning you should not be without.




Training in Management Skills


Book Description

This text is appropriate for college courses in Management Skills. Management is an applied topic. Conceptual frameworks can provide business school graduates with needed information and ideas to understand management situations, but to become effective managers they need practice in behaving as a manager and they need to receive feedback on their performance. This text focuses on how to develop the skills one needs to manage, rather than what managers do. It is organized around the four functions of management (planning, organizing, leading and controlling).




Physical Education Assessment Toolkit


Book Description

-Tailor assessments to every topic, skill, and concept taught in physical education. -Help students make connections between concepts to enhance learning. -Meet a wide range of learning styles and teach to all intelligences, including linguistic, spatial, visual, and kinesthetic. -Incorporate learning into the assessment process by calling on various levels of thinking, such as recall, summary application, and evaluation. In today's physical education framework, the demands on your time and energy are great. Every second of class time is precious, so an efficient method of assessment that can plug into any lesson or unit being taught is a highly sought-after commodity. Loaded with assessment templates and sample units, the Physical Education Assessment Toolkit provides you with everything you need in order to simultaneously assess and teach students the lifelong value of physical education. Assessment templates form the basis of the Physical Education Assessment Toolkit. Presented in a concise, user-friendly format, this comprehensive package contains the following features: -Bound-in CD-ROM--PDFs of each reproducible are provided for duplication, including posters that can be printed on letter-sized or larger paper in color or in black and white. -Reproducible templates--Generic forms may be completed easily to address the specific topic, concept, or skill at hand, allowing you to tailor assessments to your students' needs and abilities. -Sample units--Designed using the backward design model of curriculum development, three complete units show how to transform blank reproducibles into highly practical assessment tools. Each chapter includes lesson plans with model reproducibles for the following categories: written assessment, self-assessment, peer assessment, and application or performance assessment. Within each of these categories, you'll receive guidance on implementing and creating more meaningful assessments. Templates may be used to meet a variety of student learning styles, providing opportunities for assessing through rubrics, journal-writing assignments, self-assessments, and skill-tracking assessments across the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor realms. Rather than stealing valuable classroom time, the template approach actually enables teachers to use assessment to reinforce and extend learning in a systematic way. The Physical Education Assessment Toolkit is the one resource that physical educators will turn to anytime they need to do an assessment, no matter what unit or lesson is being taught. This book and CD-ROM package contains the ready-made, pilot-tested materials needed for effective assessments of students, leaving teachers to focus on what they do best--teach.







The Basic Guide to Supervision and Instructional Leadership


Book Description

This brief version of Glickman, Gordon, and Ross-Gordon's SuperVision and Instructional Leadership: A Developmental Approach continues to break new ground by exploring, challenging, and reshaping the field of educational administration. A valuable resource for both aspiring and practicing school leaders, this book is a necessity for any school leader's library. While retaining an emphasis on collegiality, school culture, teachers as adult learners, developmental supervision, reflective inquiry, and democratic schools, this third edition continues to be a trend-setter by placing instructional leadership and school improvement within a community and societal context and presenting three new chapters on the cultural tasks of supervision. New features of the book include: * An updated discussion of adult learning and implications for instructional supervision (Chapter 4) * Role Play chapter feature that provides structured scenarios that allow for the practice of the four interpersonal approaches of developmental supervision: directive control, directive informational, collaborative, and nondirective (Chapters 8, 9, 10 and 11) * New Chapter, Facilitating Change, describes and evaluates theories of educational change, change at the individual level, the changing conditions of teaching, norms of continuous school improvement, and other concepts associated with successful school change (Chapter 20) * New Chapter, Addressing Diversity, examines economic, racial, and ethnic achievement gaps and the "cultural clashes" largely responsible for those gaps (Chapter 21) * Discussions of the characteristics of culturally responsive schools and teachers as well as strategies for promoting and encouraging the development of culturally responsive schools and teachers (Chapter 21) * New Chapter, Building Community, presents the concepts of the democratic community, moral community, and Professional Learning Community (Chapter 22) * Strategies and suggestions for engaging the school with the larger community it serves (Chapter 22)




SAGE Handbook of Research on Classroom Assessment


Book Description

The Sage Handbook of Research on Classroom Assessment provides scholars, professors, graduate students, and other researchers and policy makers in the organizations, agencies, testing companies, and school districts with a comprehensive source of research on all aspects of K-12 classroom assessment. The handbook emphasizes theory, conceptual frameworks, and all varieties of research (quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods) to provide an in-depth understanding of the knowledge base in each area of classroom assessment and how to conduct inquiry in the area. It presents classroom assessment research to convey, in depth, the state of knowledge and understanding that is represented by the research, with particular emphasis on how classroom assessment practices affect student achieventment and teacher behavior. Editor James H. McMillan and five Associate Editors bring the best thinking and analysis from leading classroom assessment researchers on the nature of the research, making significant contributions to this prominent and hotly debated topic in education.




Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States


Book Description

Scores of talented and dedicated people serve the forensic science community, performing vitally important work. However, they are often constrained by lack of adequate resources, sound policies, and national support. It is clear that change and advancements, both systematic and scientific, are needed in a number of forensic science disciplines to ensure the reliability of work, establish enforceable standards, and promote best practices with consistent application. Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward provides a detailed plan for addressing these needs and suggests the creation of a new government entity, the National Institute of Forensic Science, to establish and enforce standards within the forensic science community. The benefits of improving and regulating the forensic science disciplines are clear: assisting law enforcement officials, enhancing homeland security, and reducing the risk of wrongful conviction and exoneration. Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States gives a full account of what is needed to advance the forensic science disciplines, including upgrading of systems and organizational structures, better training, widespread adoption of uniform and enforceable best practices, and mandatory certification and accreditation programs. While this book provides an essential call-to-action for congress and policy makers, it also serves as a vital tool for law enforcement agencies, criminal prosecutors and attorneys, and forensic science educators.