Aimed at parents of and advocates for special needs children, explains how to develop a relationship with a school, monitor a child's progress, understand relevant legislation, and document correspondence and conversations.

Answers the calls of grassroots communities pressing for integration and increased education funding with a complete rethinking of school discipline In the era of zero tolerance, we are flooded with stories about schools issuing draconian punishments for relatively innocent behavior. One student was suspended for chewing a Pop-Tart into the shape of a gun. Another was expelled for cursing on social media from home. Suspension and expulsion rates have doubled over the past three decades as zero tolerance policies have become the normal response to a host of minor infractions that extend well beyond just drugs and weapons. Students from all demographic groups have suffered, but minority and special needs students have suffered the most. On average, middle and high schools suspend one out of four African American students at least once a year. The effects of these policies are devastating. Just one suspension in the ninth grade doubles the likelihood that a student will drop out. Fifty percent of students who drop out are subsequently unemployed. Eighty percent of prisoners are high school drop outs. The risks associated with suspension and expulsion are so high that, as a practical matter, they amount to educational death penalties, not behavioral correction tools. Most important, punitive discipline policies undermine the quality of education that innocent bystanders receive as well—the exact opposite of what schools intend. Derek Black, a former attorney with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, weaves stories about individual students, lessons from social science, and the outcomes of courts cases to unearth a shockingly irrational system of punishment. While schools and legislatures have proven unable and unwilling to amend their failing policies, Ending Zero Tolerance argues for constitutional protections to check abuses in school discipline and lays out theories by which courts should re-engage to enforce students’ rights and support broader reforms.

Classroom management is a topic of enduring concern for teachers, administrators, and the public. It consistently ranks as the first or second most serious educational problem in the eyes of the general public, and beginning teachers consistently rank it as their most pressing concern during their early teaching years. Management problems continue to be a major cause of teacher burnout and job dissatisfaction. Strangely, despite this enduring concern on the part of educators and the public, few researchers have chosen to focus on classroom management or to identify themselves with this critical field. The Handbook of Classroom Management has four primary goals: 1) to clarify the term classroom management; 2) to demonstrate to scholars and practitioners that there is a distinct body of knowledge that directly addresses teachers’ managerial tasks; 3) to bring together disparate lines of research and encourage conversations across different areas of inquiry; and 4) to promote a vigorous agenda for future research in this area. To this end, 47 chapters have been organized into 10 sections, each chapter written by a recognized expert in that area. Cutting across the sections and chapters are the following themes: *First, positive teacher-student relationships are seen as the very core of effective classroom management. *Second, classroom management is viewed as a social and moral curriculum. *Third, external reward and punishment strategies are not seen as optimal for promoting academic and social-emotional growth and self-regulated behavior. *Fourth, to create orderly, productive environments teachers must take into account student characteristics such as age, developmental level, race, ethnicity, cultural background, socioeconomic status, and ableness. Like other research handbooks, the Handbook of Classroom Management provides an indispensable reference volume for scholars, teacher educators, in-service practitioners, and the academic libraries serving these audiences. It is also appropriate for graduate courses wholly or partly devoted to the study of classroom management.

Under a Congressional mandate, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) is required to collect data on the frequency, seriousness, and incidence of violence in elementary and secondary schools. The NCES responded to this requirement by commissioning a survey, the Principal/School Disciplinarian Survey on School Violence, the results of which are detailed in this report. The school violence survey was conducted with a nationally representative sample of 1,234 regular public elementary, middle, and secondary schools in the 50 states and the District of Columbia in the spring and summer of 1997. The survey requested information on: (1) the incidence of crime and violence in the public schools; (2) principals' (or school disciplinarians') perceptions about discipline issues; (3) types of disciplinary actions schools took; and (4) security and violence prevention measures in the schools. More than half of U.S. public schools reported experiencing at least one crime incident in the school year 1996-97, and 1 in 10 schools reported at least one serious violent crime during the school year. Crime and violence were more of a problem in middle and high schools than in elementary schools. Middle and high schools were more likely to report that they had experienced one or more incidents of any crime and one or more incidents of serious violent crime than elementary schools. Most public schools reported having zero tolerance policies towards serious student offenses, and most schools reported that they used low levels of security measures to prevent violence. Most schools reported having formal school violence prevention programs. An appendix contains the survey questionnaire. (Contains 12 figures, 32 tables.) (SLD)

"Commissioned by ERIC Clearinghouse on Educational Management ..."--T.p.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 2004 (IDEA 2004) is confusing to parents, educators, and even to most attorneys. Wrightslaw: IDEA 2004 provides a clear roadmap to the law and how to get better special education services for all children with disabilities. Learn what the law says about Individualized Education Programs (IEPS), IEP teams, transition, progress. Learn about evaluations, reevaluations, parental consent, and independent educational evaluations. You will learn about research-based instruction, early intervening services, discrepancy formulas and response to intervention. This book includes information about assessments, accommodations and alternate assessments. You will find information about procedural safeguards, new procedures and timelines for due process hearings. Wrightslaw: IDEA 2004 is and invaluable resource for parents, advocates, educators, and attorneys. You will refer to this book again and again.

The No Child Left Behind Act is confusing to parents, educators, administrators, advocates, and most attorneys. This book provides a clear roadmap to the law and how to get better educational services for all children. Includes CD ROM of resources and references.

In 1975, the Supreme Court decision in "Goss versus Lopez" established the foundation of procedural law in student suspensions. This text focuses on procedural aspects of the expulsion and suspension of students. It is devoted to the elementary and secondary public-school settings involving regular-education students. It describes how the constitutional basis for due process for students can be traced to the 14th Amendment, which states that a person cannot be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process. The "Goss" decision established that a student's education is a property interest. The text looks at requirements for giving notice of long-term suspensions and expulsions, the timeliness of hearings, the persons who should receive notice, and location of the student pending the hearing. It outlines what should happen in the formal hearing, issues surrounding self-incrimination and the right to remain silent, the Miranda warning for students, double jeopardy, the public hearing, and the right to counsel. The book also provides information on access to evidence, sufficiency of evidence, voluntary confessions, imposing penalties, witnesses, and recording the hearing. Short-term suspensions are treated separately, and special concerns such as inschool suspensions, school-bus suspensions, timeliness of suspensions, and suspensions from extracurricular activities are addressed. (RJM)

In Twenty Years of Life, Suzanne Bohan exposes the ugly truth that health is largely determined by zip code. Life expectancies in wealthy versus poor neighborhoods can vary by as much as twenty years. Bohan chronicles a bold experiment to challenge that inequity. The California Endowment, one of the nation's largest health foundations, is upending the old-school, top-down charity model and investing $1 billion over ten years to help distressed communities advocate for their own interests. With compassion and insight, Bohan shares stories of students and parents, former street shooters, urban farmers, and a Native American tribe who are tapping into their latent political power to make their neighborhoods healthier. Their stories will fundamentally change how we think about the root causes of disease and the prospects for healing.

Examines the relationship between the law and the school-to-prison pipeline, argues that law can be an effective weapon in the struggle to reduce the number of children caught, and discusses the consequences on families and communities.