A step-by-step guidebook for advance preparation and early response to school crises This Second Edition of Preparing for Crises in the Schools arrives at a critical moment. With several recent dramatic examples of school violence and other tragedies afflicting communities nationwide, the need for school districts to take proactive measures–rather than merely react to a crisis–is critical. This completely updated edition offers practical plans for laying the important groundwork to ensure that crisis response will be both immediate and thorough in the wake of tragedy. Authored by three school crisis response planning experts, it offers advice on early detection of trouble, developing plans and procedures to intervene with youths quickly and successfully, and conducting a school in-service workshop on crisis response planning and intervention. Essential for counselors, school psychologists, teachers, and administrators alike, this book helps ensure that schools are not caught by surprise when a crisis occurs.

The national educational crisis can be solved by practical yet inexpensive methods, according to Carl Sommer. Shortly after becoming a high school teacher, he found serious limitations with the education his students received. He probed into the reasons why some schools were successful, even among traditionally low-achieving children, while so many others failed to provide students with a proper education. He interviewed parents, students, teachers, assistant principals, and principals. For 10 years he researched to find solutions for the problems facing American education. One basic reason for the massive educational decline, Sommer believes, is that many administrators have embraced progressive policies, such as: not encouraging reasonable educational standards for both students and teachers, lack of concern over students' deficiency in the basics, and permitting unqualified children to advance automatically from grade to grade.

The Crisis of School Violence is the only interdisciplinary book about school violence. It presents a broad and in-depth approach to the key questions about why bullying continues at an unprecedentedly high rate and why rampage school shootings continue to shock the nation. Based on extensive research, The Crisis of School Violence investigates human nature and its relation to aggressive behavior, with a special focus on the culture of violence that predicates school violence (including rampage shootings) and perpetuates industries that profit from violence. Marianna King presents the considerable psychological and neuroscientific research that investigates the effects of violent entertainment media on the brain and, subsequently, on behavior, which clearly reveals a causal connection between exposure to violent electronic entertainment media—especially violent video games—and increased aggressive and violent behavior. The book also reveals a more specific connection between exposure to violent video games and rampage school shootings. Ultimately this volume is a call to action that includes recommendations for parents, teachers, decision makers, and citizens alike.

Drawing on both extensive demographic data and compelling case studies, this book reveals the depths of the educational crisis looming for Latino students, the nation's largest and most rapidly growing minority group.

School leadership is synonymous with challenge. However, some school leaders face true crises - situations threatening the continuing existence of their school. Leading Schools During Crisis analyzes leadership and behaviors of principals in these extraordinary circumstances. A simultaneously scholarly and practice-oriented book, Leading Schools During Crisis proposes the first school-specific model of defining and analyzing crises. Through authentic case studies, Leading Schools During Crisis offers a detailed theoretical and practical analysis of each crisis and the lessons from it for all school leaders. Highlights of the twelve case studies include: P.S. 234, Manhattan. At nine a.m. on September 11, 2001, the thirty-seven teachers and 650 elementary students of P.S. 234 were twelve hundred feet from Ground Zero. Principal Anna Switzer states, '[r]ight when the second plane crashed_that's when we knew that it wasn't an accident.' George Washington Carver H.S., New Orleans, Louisiana. Principal Vanessa Eugene believed Katrina would be another chapter in New Orleans' long history of near-miss hurricanes. Carver's campus was soon under ten feet of water. Sobrante Park E.S., Oakland, California. Like many schools, Sobrante Park only slowly realized the paradigm shift associated with the No Child Left Behind Act_until the fifth year of failing to make Adequate Yearly Progress. 'What do you do when all the data is bad?' asked Principal Marco Franco. Platte Canyon H.S, Bailey, Colorado. Principal Brian Krause was approached by a frantic student who reported: ''[T]here's a guy in the English classroom with a gun' . . . . I remember thinking, okay, he said guy. He didn't say student or kid or Johnny.' Other case studies include the challenges inherent in starting charter schools, discovery of systemic and deliberate grade fraud, rezoning of 95 percent of a elementary school's student population, and leading a school populated by changing_and often contentious_refugee groups.

Based on twenty case studies of universities worldwide, and on a survey administered to leaders in 101 universities, this open access book shows that, amidst the significant challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, universities found ways to engage with schools to support them in sustaining educational opportunity. In doing so, they generated considerable innovation, which reinforced the integration of the research and outreach functions of the university. The evidence suggests that universities are indeed open systems, in interaction with their environment, able to discover changes that can influence them and to change in response to those changes. They are also able, in the success of their efforts to mitigate the educational impact of the pandemic, to create better futures, as the result of the innovations they can generate. This challenges the view of universities as "ivory towers" being isolated from the surrounding environment and detached from local problems. As they reached out to schools, universities not only generated clear and valuable innovations to sustain educational opportunity and to improve it, this process also contributed to transform internal university processes in ways that enhanced their own ability to deliver on the third mission of outreach