This practical volume provides school administrators and teachers with the information needed to convert ordinary schools into high performing schools. It offers practices for teachers and school principals to foster academic success, and strategies for involving parents in their child's education.

"All children can learn. The principals and schools profiled in this book have overcome the bureaucratic and cultural obstacles that keep low-income children behind in most public schools. No Excuses schools have created a culture of achievement among children whom most public schools would condemn to a life of failure."--Foreword, p. 1-2.

Best Leadership Practices for High-Poverty Schools presents both the practice and theory of best leadership practices in high-poverty schools. Authors Linda Lyman and Christine Villani take a unique approach by inviting readers into two high-poverty elementary schools where they will experience, through in-depth case studies, how two extraordinary principals model and practice their beliefs in the ability and worth of all children. Lyman and Villani demonstrate that a successful learning community for children of low-income families is based on the beliefs and attitudes of the school leader and the entire school community. Preparation programs for school principals typically do not provide for study of the complexity of poverty or the leadership practices that contribute to successful learning and achievement for children in high-poverty schools. The concluding questions that the authors pose provide a guide to developing best leadership practices that make a difference to the learning, achievement, and lives of children who live in poverty.This book offers: an insightful overview of research about leadership strategies and beliefs in high-poverty schools, causes and remedies for the achievement gap, evidence of continuing racial and ethnic prejudice, the widespread deficit thinking that limits learning. The authors challenge leaders, teachers, staff members, and others to examine their own attitudes and beliefs and then to commit to creating successful learning communities for all children from low-income families. This book is written as a resource for aspiring and practicing principals, or anyone interested in improving educational opportunities for children from families living in poverty.

Nina Bascia, Alister Cumming, Amanda Datnow, Kenneth Leithwood and David Livingstone This Handbook presents contemporary and emergent trends in educational policy research, in over ?fty chapters written by nearly ninety leading researchers from a number of countries. It is organized into ?ve broad sections which capture many of the current dominant educational policy foci and at the same time situate current understandings historically, in terms of both how they are conceptualized and in terms of past policy practice. The chapters themselves are empirically grounded, providing illustrations of the conceptual implications c- tained within them as well as allowing for comparisons across them. The se- re?exivity within chapters with respect to jurisdictional particularities and c- trasts allows readers to consider not only a range of approaches to policy analysis but also the ways in which policies and policy ideas play out in di?erent times and places. The sections move from a focus on prevailing policy tendencies through increasingly critical and ‘‘outsider’’ perspectives on policy. They address, in turn, the contemporary strategic emphasis on large-scale reform; substantive emphases at several levels – on leadership and governance, improving teacher quality and conceptualizing learning in various domains around the notion of literacies and concluding, ?nally, with a contrasting topic, workplace learning, which has had less policy attention and thus allows readers to consider both the advantages and disadvantages of learning and teaching under the bright gaze of policy.

The rapid growth of diversity within U.S. schooling and the heightened attention to the lack of equity in student achievement, school completion, and postsecondary attendance has made equity and diversity two of the principle issues in education, educational leadership, and educational leadership research. The Handbook of Research on Educational Leadership for Equity and Diversity is the first research-based handbook that comprehensively addresses the broad diversity in U.S. schools by race, ethnicity, culture, language, gender, disability, sexual identity, and class. The Handbook both highly values the critically important strengths and assets that diversity brings to the United States and its schools, yet at the same time candidly critiques the destructive deficit thinking, biases, and prejudices that undermine school success for many groups of students. Well-known chapter authors explore diversity and related inequities in schools and the achievement problems these issues present to school leaders. Each chapter reviews theoretical and empirical evidence of these inequities and provides research-based recommendations for practice and for future research. Celebrating the broad diversity in U.S. schools, the Handbook of Research on Educational Leadership for Equity and Diversity critiques the inequities connected to that diversity, and provides evidence-based practices to promote student success for all children.

The "Struggle for Identity in Today's Schools" examines cultural recognition and the struggle for identity in America's schools. In particular, the contributing authors focus on the recognition and misrecognition as antagonistic cultural forces that work to shape, and at times distort identity. What surfaces throughout the chapters are two lessons to be learned in relation to identity. The first lesson is that identities and the acts attributed to them are always forming and re-forming in relation to historically specific contexts, and these contexts are political in nature, I.E., defined by issues of diversity such as race, ethnicity, language, sexual orientation, gender, and economics. The second lesson presented by the authors is that identity forms in and across intimate and social contexts, over long periods of time. The historical timing of identity formation cannot simply be dictated by discourse. The identities posited by any particular discourse become important and a part of everyday life based on the intersection of social histories and social actors. Importantly, the social-cultural use of identities leads to another way of conceptualizing histories, personhoods, cultures, and their distributions over social and political groups. Contents of this book include: (1) Cultural Identity--Discovering Authentic Voice; (2) Introduction: Cultural Identity and the Struggle for Recognition (Patrick M. Jenlink and Faye Hicks Townes), which includes: (a) Affirming Diversity, Politics of Recognition, and the Cultural Work of Schools (Patrick M. Jenlink); (b) Dialoguing Toward a Racialized Identity: a Necessary First Step in a Politics of Recognition (Kris Sloan); and (c) Misrecognition Compounded (Faye Hicks Townes); and (3) Struggle for Recognition--Embracing Cultural Politics, which includes: (a) Recognition, Identity Politics, and English Language Learners (Angela Crespo Cozart); (b) Identity Formation and Recognition in Asian-American Students (Kim Woo); (c) Curriculum and Recognition (Ray Horn); (d) Extracurricular Activities and Student Identity (Amanda Rudolph); (e) Recognition, Identity Politics, and the Special Needs Student (Sandra Stewart); (f) Athletes, Recognition, and the Formation of Identity (Vincent Mumford); (g) Administrator to Parent Recognition: Treat Me with Respect (Julia Ballenger); (h) Recognition and Parent Involvement (Betty Alford); (I) Student Identity and Cultural Communication (Sandy Harris); (j) Value-Added Community: Recognition, Induction-Year Teacher Diversity and the Shaping of Identity (John Leonard); and (k) Coda: Recognition, Difference, and the Future of America's Schools (Patrick M. Jenlink).

A team of expert academics and practitioners examines the life circumstances that impact Latino/a youth growing up in two cultures—their native culture and that of the United States. What effect does growing up in an ethnic minority and perhaps in an immigrant family have on development? That is the overarching question Latina and Latino Children's Mental Health sets out to answer. The work examines all of the myriad physical, psychological, social, and environmental factors that undermine or support healthy development in Latino American children, from biology to economics to public policy. The first volume of this two-volume set focuses on early-life experiences and the second on youth/adolescent issues, treating such topics as children's development of a sense of self, development of linguistic skills, peer relationships, sexual orientation, and physical development. The work analyzes familial relationships, often an important resource that helps young people build resilience despite the stresses of migration. And it looks at patterns of behavior, social status, and social-goal orientations that differentiate Latino/a children and adolescents from their African American and European American peers.

Discover the teaching practices that make the biggest difference in student performance! This practical, research-based book gives principals, teachers, and school administrators a direct, inside look at instructional practices from top award-winning urban schools. The authors provide detailed examples and analyses of these practices, and successfully demystify the achievement of these schools. They offer practical guides to help educators apply these successful practices in their own schools. Teaching Practices from America's Best Urban Schools will be a valuable tool for any educator in both urban and non-urban schools-schools that serve diverse student populations, including English language learners and children from low-income families.