Despite often being associated with anti-establishment, irreverent, and a do-it yourself (DIY) rejection of dominant culture, less considered may the collaborative, communal and curative threads of punk thinking, being and doing. From the outset, punk offered critiques and alternative ways of conceptualizing a world and ways of worlding, that…

Differentiated instruction is a nice idea, but what happens when it comes to assessing and grading students? What's both fair and leads to real student learning? An internationally recognized expert on grading practices, Rick Wormeli first examined these questions 10 years ago in the first edition of "Fair Isn't Always Equal." In this…

How do assessments for learning differ from assessments of learning? What is the purpose of grading? After nearly two decades of immersion in standards-based curriculua and instruction, our nation's educators are often still confounded by the (admittedly complex) landscape of standards, assessment, and reporting. In "Answers to Essential…

Frederick M. Hess and Michael Q. McShane have gathered a diverse group of scholars to examine the shifting federal role in education across the presidential administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. While the administrations were vastly different, one thing remained constant: an ongoing and significant expansion of the federal role in…

April 2015 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the landmark legislation that has provided the foundation of federal education policy in the United States. In "Presidents, Congress, and the Public Schools," longtime policy analyst Jack Jennings examines the evolution of federal education…

The coming decade holds immense potential for dramatic improvement in US education and in the achievement of American children--provided that people seize the opportunities at hand and are not deterred by the obstacles to change. In this volume, members of the Hoover Institution's Koret Task Force on K-12 Education examine both the potential gains…

Standards-based education (SBE) has been the dominant educational reform movement since the early 1980s, reinforced by federal and state accountability systems. This book examines the efforts of educational leaders in implementing SBE to improve student achievement in a variety of demographic contexts but with common challenges. Four stages of SBE…

In her new book, Betty Demarest describes a bold agenda for education reform--one that is firmly grounded in a synthesis of educational research about learning, teaching, and the contexts of education. The author's "learning-centered" framework includes: (1) a broad and balanced set of education goals, (2) a multi-faceted concept of…

The pressing need to improve achievement in American schools is widely recognized. In "Tests, Testing, and Genuine School Reform," Herbert J. Walberg draws on scientific studies of tests and their uses to inform citizens, educators, and policy makers about well-established principles of testing, current problems, and promising evidence-based…

Pundits, politicians, and business leaders continually make claims for what standardized tests can do, and those claims go largely unchallenged because they are in line with popular assumptions about what these tests can do, what the scores mean, and the psychology of human motivation. But what most of what these opinion leaders say--and the…

"Number Talks" is: (1) A five- to fifteen-minute classroom conversation around purposefully crafted computation problems that are solved mentally; and (2) The best part of a teacher's day. Whether you want to implement number talks but are unsure of how to begin or have experience but want more guidance in crafting purposeful problems, this…

"Nurturing Creativity in the Classroom" is a groundbreaking collection of essays by leading scholars, who examine and respond to the tension that many educators face in valuing student creativity but believing that they cannot support it given the curricular constraints of the classroom. Is it possible for teachers to nurture creative…

Standards-based accountability has become a central feature of the public education system in each state and is a theme of national discussions about how achievement for all students can be improved and achievement gaps narrowed. Questions remain, however, about the implementation of standards and accountability systems and about whether their…

For lower-achieving students with disabilities, effective and appropriate alternate assessment based on modified achievement standards (AA-MAS) can open the door to greater expectations and opportunities. State policymakers have the option of providing certain students who have disabilities with AA-MAS aligned with grade-level content--and now…

This book overturns the typical conception of standards, empowering educators by providing concrete examples of how top-down models of assessment can be embraced and used in ways that are consistent with critical pedagogies. Although standards, as broad frameworks for setting learning targets, are not necessarily problematic, when they are…