The past thirty years have seen dozens of otherwise successful investors try to improve education through the application of market principles. They have funneled billions of dollars into alternative schools, online education, and textbook publishing, and they have, with surprising regularity, lost their shirts. In Class Clowns, professor and investment banker Jonathan A. Knee dissects what drives investors' efforts to improve education and why they consistently fail. Knee takes readers inside four spectacular financial failures in education: Rupert Murdoch's billion-dollar effort to reshape elementary education through technology; the unhappy investors—including hedge fund titan John Paulson—who lost billions in textbook publisher Houghton Mifflin; the abandonment of Knowledge Universe, Michael Milken's twenty-year mission to revolutionize the global education industry; and a look at Chris Whittle, founder of EdisonLearning and a pioneer of large-scale transformational educational ventures, who continues to attract investment despite decades of financial and operational disappointment. Although deep belief in the curative powers of the market drove these initiatives, it was the investors' failure to appreciate market structure that doomed them. Knee asks: What makes a good education business? By contrasting rare successes, he finds a dozen broad lessons at the heart of these cautionary case studies. Class Clowns offers an important guide for public policy makers and guardrails for future investors, as well as an intelligent exposé for activists and teachers frustrated with the repeated underperformance of these attempts to shake up education.

When Athena Lorenzo becomes the target of a class clown, she hires Jigsaw and Mila to figure out who is behind the practical jokes

Leonardo can't stop being the class clown despite his teacher's protestations.

"Character" has become a front-and-center topic in contemporary discourse, but this term does not have a fixed meaning. Character may be simply defined by what someone does not do, but a more active and thorough definition is necessary, one that addresses certain vital questions. Is character a singular characteristic of an individual, or is it composed of different aspects? Does character--however we define it--exist in degrees, or is it simply something one happens to have? How can character be developed? Can it be learned? Relatedly, can it be taught, and who might be the most effective teacher? What roles are played by family, schools, the media, religion, and the larger culture? This groundbreaking handbook of character strengths and virtues is the first progress report from a prestigious group of researchers who have undertaken the systematic classification and measurement of widely valued positive traits. They approach good character in terms of separate strengths-authenticity, persistence, kindness, gratitude, hope, humor, and so on-each of which exists in degrees. Character Strengths and Virtues classifies twenty-four specific strengths under six broad virtues that consistently emerge across history and culture: wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence. Each strength is thoroughly examined in its own chapter, with special attention to its meaning, explanation, measurement, causes, correlates, consequences, and development across the life span, as well as to strategies for its deliberate cultivation. This book demands the attention of anyone interested in psychology and what it can teach about the good life.

"Once again Hurwitz exhibits her talent for creating characters who talk, act, and think just like real kids. Realistic dialogue . . . and commonplace situations that sparkle with humor combine to make this a fine choice".--School Library Journal. Illustrated. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Head lice have invaded Edith B. Sugarman Elementary School, and George wants nothing more than to remain scotch-free from the vermin. Well, that and he wants his dad's booth at Career Day to be infinitely more popular than his enemy Louis Farley's dad's booth. He even bet his skull ring for Louis's wheelie sneakers to prove his dad's job is cooler. But when it comes to the day of the event, George isn't so confident he will win the bet . . . or stay lice-free!

Squizzard is a small squid who always wants to be the center of attention, whether it's playing with his best friend Toothy the vegetarian Great White Shark, or giving a report in school. When his behavior finally causes a rift in their friendship, Shay the seahorse explains what he's doing wrong--but change is difficult for Squizzard and it takes an ecounter with Bennie the Barracuda, the fifth-grade bully at Deep Reef Elementary, to finally teach him the error of his ways.