With a foreword by Professor Stephen Ball What can we do with students who don′t succeed in the typical classroom, and what are the alternatives to full-time schooling? With contributions from leading academics from Canada, America, the UK, The Netherlands and Australia, this internationally-minded book helps the reader to reflect on the ways young people are taught, and presents possible alternative approaches. Global social and economic changes and technological developments are driving the need for change within education, so that we can better cater for a diversity of young people. This book offers a forward-looking overview of where we are now, and where we might want to go in the future. It includes chapters on: - educational innovations; - learning identities; - learning spaces; - e-learning and remote students; - alternatives in education. This book will open your mind to the changing experience of schooling, and highlights new and different ways to help those whose needs simply don′t fit into the usual mould. Suitable for all those on all undergraduate and postgraduate Education courses, and for those on Education Studies and Childhood and Youth courses, this book is an engaging, thought-provoking read. Kitty te Riele is a Senior Lecturer in Education in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology, Sydney

"This program has produced significant, lasting improvements in the school districts where it has already been implemented. Drawing on the results of a landmark study of 223 schools in six cities, a project that Ouchi supervised and that was funded in part by the National Science Foundation, Making Schools Work shows that a school's educational performance may be most directly affected by how the school is managed."--BOOK JACKET.

Private schools always provide a better education than public schools. Or do they? Inner-city private schools, most of which are Catholic, suffer from the same problems neighboring public schools have including large class sizes, unqualified teachers, outdated curricula, lack of parental involvement and stressful family and community circumstances. Straightforward and authoritative, All Else Equal challenges us to reconsider vital policy decisions and rethink the issues facing our current educational system.

K-12 teachers and administrators will : read about classroom teachers who have successfully implemented joy ; gain ideas for how to make classrooms joyful learning environments ; examine education jargon that negatively impacts school culture ; learn how to create a sense of community in school among teachers and students ; discover the importance of wonder and inquiry in engaging students.--Publisher's description.

In an elegant affirmation of human capacity and creativity, Patricia Carini counters high-stakes testing, the pathologizing of children, and the unrelenting critique of the public schools with a persuasive account of how children, all children, actively make sense of the world and their experience through the making of works such as drawings, constructions, and writings. This engaging and vivid account of the day-to-day possibilities of learning and teaching, and ultimately the remaking of the schools, is indispensable reading for anyone called to teach or committed to a liberating education for all children. “This is a beautifully written book. I am inspired with each page.” —Vito Perrone, Harvard University "In this precious book by one of our most powerful thinkers, Pat Carini takes us deep, deep into the lives of children, into classrooms and schools, into the human heart of education at its best.” —William Ayers, University of Illinois at Chicago “A thoughtful book that challenges us to embrace an expansive vision of education. Throughout this powerful collection of essays, Pat Carini reminds us to place the value of each individual at the center of all we do in schools." —Judy Buchanan, National Writing Project “In this book, Carini draws on children’s and teachers’ stories, poetry, and philosophy as she attends to making visible for the reader the humanness of education." —Ofelia García, Dean, School of Education, Long Island University

This book examines case studies of eight public and eight private schools that investigated different identifiable and transferable private school practices that public schools could adopt to improve student outcomes. Data came from interviews with administrators, teachers, parents, and students from diverse schools. Chapter 1, "Accountability to Parents," discusses resistance to parents, structural limits to parent accountability, managing participation at parochial schools, lower-income parent participation, cases of formal accountability to parents, and observations about accountability to parents. Chapter 2, "Clarity of Goals and Expectations," discusses the religious character of parochial schools, broader educational goals versus testable outcomes, anchoring expectations in scripture, and clarity of goals. Chapter 3, "Behavioral and Value Objectives," discusses different approaches to discipline and the teaching of ethical and religious values in public and private schools. Chapter 4, "Clear Standards for Teacher Selection and Retention," includes faculty collegiality, hiring standards and teacher quality, formal and informal teacher evaluation, teacher retention and dismissal, and observations on selection and retention. Chapter 5, "Similarity of Curriculum Materials," discusses formal curricular similarities. Chapter 6 discusses "Competitive Improvements." Chapter 7, "Conclusions," suggests that similarities between public and private schools and the problems they face outweigh the differences. Differences are determined mainly by parent socioeconomic and cultural factors. Case study descriptions are appended. (Contains 17 references.) (SM)

This is a book about a school within a school system created when parents approached the school board for the creation of a progressive school modeled after their parental cooperative preschool. The school began in the 70s and exists today because of the commitment of the founding teachers who wanted to make a difference. The school has moved into the era of accountability, maintaining its child development focus. The parent community volunteering at the school has made this possible. The book expands the Epstein framework with its strong commitment of parents involved in the classroom and in the governance of the school. The result is a rich environment that allows for project-based learning and the development of the imagination. This kind of environment is as relevant today as it was in its founding days; twenty-first century skills are fostered in such an environment. The book includes sections on the teachers, the curriculum, benefits of experiential learning, examples of how the parents worked in the school, and some school artifacts.