Amplify your assessment literacy. Formative, data-driven, high-stakes—we all know the buzzwords surrounding educational testing. But we often shelve our understanding of these because they are overwhelmingly complex. Those who care about our schools and students—teachers, administrators, policymakers, parents, citizens—will discover how and why testing should be taken upon ourselves to advance. Using a nontechnical approach, this book offers fundamental knowledge to free you from testing fogginess—all framed around practical actions you can take to strengthen your assessment literacy. Inappropriate tests are leading to mistaken decisions, and this book provides everything you need to know to change that, including Reasons for tests Reliability/validity Fairness Test-building

The Achieving-Behaving-Caring (ABC) Program is an evidence-based approach to addressing the needs of elementary students at risk for emotional and behavioral difficulties and promoting successful home-school collaboration. This practical guide demonstrates how classroom teachers and parents can work together to boost individual children's strengths, reduce problems that interfere with learning, and provide classwide social skills training. The use of trained parent liaisons is a special feature of the program. Detailed, step-by-step instructions for implementing ABC are accompanied by many useful case illustrations and tips. The book includes more than two dozen reproducible handouts and forms, in a convenient large-size format. This book is in The Guilford Practical Intervention in the Schools Series, edited by Sandra M. Chafouleas.

Almost every major American city is experimenting with school choice, a deeply controversial idea that is dramatically reshaping public education. Will the wider array of school options help parents and educators identify better strategies for helping all children learn? Or will the high stakes of the marketplace end up privatizing this most public of institutions? Education activist Sam Chaltain believes that before we can answer these questions, we must put a human face on the modern landscape of teaching and learning. Our School documents a year in the life of two schools in the nation's capital, one a new charter school just opening its doors, the other a neighborhood school that first opened in 1924. Chaltain weaves together the observations and emotions of the people whose lives intersect there, and the triumphs and the challenges they experience. The result is an unsettling, complex portrayal of American public education. Our School is important reading for educational policymakers, administrators, parents, the media, and anyone who aspires to be a teacher.

This book is a valuable resource for teachers and other professionals who are looking for a proven way to increase cultural appreciation and awareness. New applications of the ABCs model of Cultural Understanding and Communication are presented and discussed in this new volume, based on studies done in the United States, and Canada and Europe. In this ground-breaking project, the authors describe how the ABCs model complicated and challenged and changed the cultural perceptions of those who participated in it, even those who were initially highly resistant to such possibilities. At the heart of the project is the exchange of narratives – life stories that give insight into the cultural worlds of selves and others. In addition to the narratives, other instruments including the Transcultural Competence Scale (TCC), provide further evidence of the positive impact of the ABCs on participants' receptivity toward cultural differences. In the TRANSABCs project, researchers from both sides of the Atlantic invited teacher candidates, students who will become workplace and other professionals to write an autobiography (A) of themselves from various cultural perspectives, a biography (B) of an individual who is culturally different from themselves along particular dimensions, and to use these documents to conduct cross-cultural comparisons (C) between themselves and the person they interviewed. Furthermore, candidates developed culturally responsive ideas for the school or the workplace (C). These exchanges and analyses produced epiphanies and insights that translated into specific actions to improve cultural understanding and communication in classrooms and workplaces. Educators and professionals can take from these examples to inspire their own personal journey toward greater cultural understanding and sensitivity.

Understanding student and teacher motivation and developing strategies to foster motivation for students at all levels of performance are essential to effective teaching. This text is designed to help prospective and practicing teachers achieve these goals. Its premise is that current research and theory about motivation offer hope and possibilities for educators —teachers, parents, coaches, and administrators—to enhance motivation for achievement. The orientation draws primarily on social-cognitive perspectives that have generated much research relevant to classroom practice. Ideal for any course that is dedicated to, or includes coverage of, motivation and achievement, the text focuses on two key roles teachers play in supporting and cultivating motivation in the classroom: establishing the classroom structure and instruction that provides the environment for optimal motivation, engagement, and learning; and helping students develop the tools that will enable them to be self-regulated learners and develop their potential. Pedagogical features aid the understanding of concepts and the application to practice: Strategy boxes present guidelines and strategies for using the various concepts. Exhibit boxes include forms for different purposes (for example, goal setting), examples of teacher beliefs and practices, and samples of student work. Reflection boxes stimulate readers’ thinking about motivational issues inherent in the topics, their experiences, and their beliefs. A motivational toolbox at the end of each chapter helps readers identify important points to think about, lingering questions, strategies to use now, and strategies to develop in the future. NEW IN THE THIRD EDITION Updated research and new topics are added throughout as warranted by current inquiry in the field. Chapters are reorganized to provide more coherence and to account for new findings. New and updated material is included on issues of educational reform, standards for achievement, and high-stakes testing, and on achievement goal theory, especially regarding performance goals and the distinction between performance-approach and performance-avoidance goals as relevant to classroom practice.

This Book portrays God's calling of an Afro-American lad from the segregated Southern USA, in 1957, and elevated him and his wife, Dorothy, to become two of the most outstanding Black Pioneer Missionaries in World Missions, today! They have evangelized and planted churches in over 95 countries, and even more extensively, in the 23 countries where Christians in Action Missions has ministries. You will experience glimpes of fifty years of the Taylor's life and ministry, beginning with Elgin's call to missions in 1957, while in the USMarines. It Moves to their service as the First Black Missionaries to Japan, 1959-64; Elgin Pastored, studied Japanese, and attended The University of Maryland, earned his BA degree, and later earned his MTh in California. Dorothy, a high school teacher, taught at Okinawa Christian School and ran the youth ministry. They transferred to Nigeria, Africa, but due to a civil war, were evacuated to London, England, where they founded a Bible College, an Evangelical Church, and directed CinA's Europe, Africa, and India Ministries for 15 years. Returning to America,1980, they worked at the US Center for World Missions, Pasadena, CA with Dr Ralph Winters. In 1982, Elgin was elected CEO of CinA Missions International, (the only known Afro-American Director of a multi-ethnic, international, cross curtural ministry during this time). The book closes, with the spotlight on their present involvement in Ghana, West Africa, where they lead medical/outreach teams, build churches and schools, bore fresh water wells, and hold leadership seminars.They were appointed Chief and Queen Mother in the Broang Ahafo Region by the King, Ohmahene Okatakayie Kodom IV, in 2001. Today, they are blessed with much remaining fruit, in both the low places of the streets, to the palaces of Kings, to God be the Glory!

Always Look 3 Stoplights Ahead: 9 Principles for Establishing Successful Schools portrays the remarkable journey of an immigrant from Hungary who, after facing the death of his parents, along with a terrible economic depression in Europe, migrates to America, seeking a better life. Gustav’s journey is guided by nine research-based educational leadership principles learned from both his mentors and his experiences on the path. This man’s story is marked by love, struggles, learning curves, dreams, leaps of faith, an incredible desire to become an effective educator, and most importantly, the motto to always look three stoplights ahead.

These original essays summarize a decade of fruitful research and curriculum development using the LISP-derived language Logo. They discuss a range of issues in the areas of curriculum, learning, and mathematics, illustrating the ways in which Logo continues to provide a rich learning environment, one that allows pupil autonomy within challenging mathematical settings.Essays in the first section discuss the link between Logo and the school mathematics curriculum, focusing on the ways in which pupils' Logo activities relate to and are influenced by the ideas they encounter in the context of school algebra and geometry. In the second section the contributions take up pedagogical styles and strategies. They tackle such cognitive and metacognitive questions as, What range of learning styles can the Logo setting accommodate? How can teachers make sense of pupils' preferred strategies? And how can teachers help students to reflect on the strategies they are using? Returning to the mathematical structures, essays in the third section consider a variety of mathematical ideas, drawing connections between mathematics and computing and showing the ways in which constructing Logo programs helps or does not help to illuminate the underlying mathematics.

This resource examines how one of the nation's largest districts improved performance outcomes and achieved significant gains by integrating strategies from educational and business arenas.