Teachers, parents, students, administrators, and community members all agree that we need better grading and reporting systems. Often, these systems are inadequate because they are part of a tradition that can go unexamined and unquestioned for years. Here is the first serious look at the issue, written to provide all those involved — especially teachers — with a coherent and thoughtful framework.Guskey and Bailey offer four pillars of successful grading and reporting systems:...

"Guskey and Bailey offer realistic solutions to improving how educators communicate a student′s academic progress to all stakeholders. Their work provides a faculty with the research, step-by-step guidelines, and reporting templates to begin the dialogue to develop a standards-based report card. Without a doubt, this work is a model for schools that want to improve their system of grading and reporting. It certainly has transformed ours!"—Jeffrey Erickson, Assistant Princip...

This book shows how schools can--and must--develop expertise in "learning variation" (understanding how different kinds of minds learn) and apply this knowledge to classroom instruction in order to address the chronic learning challenges and achievement gap faced by millions of students. Barringer shows how using what we know about learning variation with a focus on discovering learning strengths, not just deficits, can help schools create plans for success for those stud...

Between good intentions and great results lies a program theory-not just a list of tasks but a vision of what needs to happen, and how. Now widely used in government and not-for-profit organizations, program theory provides a coherent picture of how change occurs and how to improve performance. Purposeful Program Theory shows how to develop, represent, and use program theory thoughtfully and strategically to suit your particular situation, drawing on the fifty-year history of program theor...

The first completely comprehensive, practical guide for recognizing, diagnosing, and overcoming any childhood reading difficulty.According to the National Institute of Health, ten million of our nation’s children (approximately 17 percent) have trouble learning to read. While headlines warn about the nation’s reading crisis, Susan Hall (whose son was diagnosed with dyslexia) and Louisa Moats have become crusaders for action. The result of their years of research and personal experi...

Instructional-Design Theories and Models, Volume III: Building a Common Knowledge Base is perhaps best described by its new subtitle. Whereas Volume II sought to comprehensively review the proliferating theories and models of instruction of the 1980’s and 1990’s, Volume III takes on an even more daunting task: starting to build a common knowledge base that underlies and supports the vast array of instructional theories, models and strategies that constitute the field of Instructio...

In this comprehensive resource, Raymond J. Wlodkowski and Margery B. Ginsberg describe how to meet the challenge of teaching intensive and accelerated courses to nontraditional learners and working adults. By making motivation and cultural relevance essential to instruction, they clearly show what instructors can do to enhance learning in classes that can last from three to six hours. Teaching Intensive and Accelerated Courses makes full use of the authors' twenty years of experie...

This hands-on guidebook helps principals collect, analyze, and use data to make meaningful instructional decisions to impact learning, school improvement goals, and accountability issues.

Discover a practical, comprehensive model of effective professional learning communities. In this user-friendly guide, educators explore research-based steps and strategies designed to increase the effectiveness of collaborative teams and enhance PLCs. Examine how the PLC process can transform critical components of education—including curriculum, assessment, instruction, and teacher development—and use reproducible agendas, scales, and checklists to improve schoolwide practices.

Instructional Strategies for Middle and High School is an accessible, practical, and engaging methods textbook that introduces pre-service teachers to various instructional strategies and helps them to decide how and when to use these methods in the classroom. Classrooms are comprised of diverse learners, and aspiring teachers will face complex decisions about the assessment of student learning and classroom management. Veteran teacher educators Bruce Larson and Timothy Keiper off...

The only textbook to outline the skills social workers need to conduct effective client interviews, this volume synthesizes recent research on interviewing and demonstrates its value in unique settings and with a variety of clients and issues. Connecting evidence-based approaches to the quality of practitioner-client relationships and the achievement of different objectives at each phase of the interview, the text shows students how to apply their learning systematically and develop specia...

In order to make appropriate changes to improve your teaching and your students’ learning, first you need to know how you’re teaching now. Figure it out for yourself and invigorate your teaching on your own terms!This practical evidence-based guide promotes excellence in teaching and improved student learning through self-reflection and self-assessment of one’s teaching. Phyllis Blumberg starts by reviewing the current approaches to instructor evaluation and describes their inadequ...