With the advent of charter schools in the United States, the face of public education has changed in this country. From its early beginning in Minnesota to its exponential growth inCalifornia the charter school movement has generated much controversy. It has been praised for its accomplishments, and criticized for its creaming of students.Over 130,000 students attend nearly 250 charter schools in the city of Los Angeles. Thisbook presents an in-depth look at seventeen...

Clay Christensen's groundbreaking bestselling work in education now updated and expanded, including a new chapter on Christensen's seminal "Jobs to Be Done" theory applied to education."Provocatively titled, Disrupting Class is just what America's K-12 education system needs--a well thought-through proposal for using technology to better serve students and bring our schools into the 21st Century. Unlike so many education 'reforms,' this is not small-bore stuff. For t...

A road map for teachers who strive to be highly effective leaders in our nation's classroomsTeach For America has fought the daunting battle of educational equity for the last twenty years. Based on evidence from classrooms across the country, they've discovered much about effective teaching practice, and distilled these findings into the six principles presented in this book. The Teaching As Leadership framework inspires teachers to: Set Big Goals; Invest...

Selected as one of the "Best Books on Innovation, 2008" by BusinessWeek magazineNamed the "Best Human-Capital Book of 2008" by Strategy + Business magazineA crash course in the business of learning-from the bestselling author of The Innovator's Dilemma and The Innovator's Solution…"Provocatively titled, Disrupting Class is just what America's K-12 education system...

"A rich, much-needed remedy for the standardized institutions that comprise too much of our school system today… ideal for teachers and parents intent on resurrecting and fostering students' inherent drive to learn…An essential resource."-Daniel H. Pink, author of DRIVE and A WHOLE NEW MIND“Schools that Learn is a magnificent, grand book that pays equal attention to the small and the big picture - and what's more integrates them. There is no book on educatio...

An educational innovator who worked at Sesame Workshop and The George Lucas Educational Foundation offers a new vision for learningAs a result of constant innovation, learning is no longer limited by traditional confines and we're moving beyond students tied to their chairs, desks, and textbooks-and teachers locked away in classrooms. In Education Nation author Milton Chen draws from extensive experience in media-from his work on Sesame Street in its nasce...

Despite the best efforts of educators, our nation's schools are dangerously obsolete. Instead of teaching students to be critical thinkers and problem-solvers, we are asking them to memorize facts for multiple choice tests. This problem isn't limited to low-income school districts: even our top schools aren't teaching or testing the skills that matter most in the global knowledge economy. Our teens leave school equipped to work only in the kinds of jobs that are fast disappearing from the ...

In this provocative book, authors Washor and Mojkowski observe that beneath the worrisome levels of dropouts from our nations high school lurks a more insidious problem: student disengagement from school and from deep and productive learning. To keep students in school and engaged as productive learners through to graduation, schools must provide experiences in which all students do some of their learning outside school as a formal part of their programs of study. All students need to leave s...

As we gain access to more and more knowledge and information online, the future will belong to those who are powerful, literate, curious learners. That means emphasis in classrooms must move toward helping students develop the skills, literacies, and dispositions to be powerful, self-organized learners. Teachers who are themselves master learners in new, modern contexts are crucial to making that happen.

"[The anti-testing] movement now has a guidebook. . . . Kamenetz shows how fundamentally American it would be to move toward a more holistic system." -- New York Times Book ReviewThe Test is an essential and critically acclaimed book for any parent confounded by our national obsession with standardized testing. It recounts the shocking history and tempestuous politics of testing and borrows strategies from fields as diverse as games, neuroscience,...

"This handbook synthesizes the best of educational research in an easily accessible format. Educators will find it an effective roadmap for leading their schools to organizational excellence, effective instruction, and optimum student achievement."—Brenda P. Dean, Assistant SuperintendentHamblen County Schools, Morristown, TN"The author clearly makes the case for the principal to be THE instructional and curricular leader of his or her school site. Princi...

School improvement that lasts: find out how with this masterful guide!Common Core requirements, merit-based pay, new teacher evaluations, project-based learning—21st-century learning is a demanding and rapidly changing landscape. Advance from overwhelmed to empowered with Alan Blankstein’s Failure Is Not an Option, used by more than 350,000 educators to create schools that sustain success for every student.New case studies...