Tag » challenges

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  Chicago Public Schools

  1/25/07 - National Institute for Urban School Improvement,, Equity Alliance at ASU

  Chicago Public Schools plans to be the premier urban school district in the country by providing all their students and their families with high quality instruction, outstanding academic programs, and comprehensive student development supports to prepare them for the challenges of the world of tomorrow.

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  Improving Education: The Promise of Inclusive Schooling

  1/28/07 - Dianne L. Ferguson, Audrey Desjarlais, Gwen Meyer, Equity Alliance at ASU

  The purpose of education is to ensure that every student gains access to knowledge, skills, and information that will prepare them to contribute to America’s communities and workplaces. This central purpose is made more challenging as schools must accommodate students with ever more diverse backgrounds, abilities, and interests. For students with disabilities, achieving this common purpose means thinking again about the consequences of special and general education as separate systems, and...

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  Keeping the Faith and Climbing One Mountain at a Time: Reflections of Two Mothers on Their Children's Educational Journeys

  1/5/09 - Marquita Grenot-Scheyer , Hilda Sramek , Evelyne Milorin, Equity Alliance at ASU

  In this OnPoint we share the accounts of two mothers who have faced many challenges posed by schools and other human services agencies. Despite these challenges, discouragements, and setbacks, these two families, like many others of their “generation,” have endured, met the challenges, and developed a remarkable resiliency.

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  On Time and How to Get More Of It

  1/5/09 - Gwen Meyer, Equity Alliance at ASU

  Today’s schools are striving to meet the challenges of systemic reform and school improvement. It is a big and complicated job. Achieving real, lasting change requires that everyone in schools stops, thinks, and works together to make the kinds of changes that need to occur.

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  Preparing Teachers for the Future

  1/5/09 - Diane L. Ferguson, Equity Alliance at ASU

  As American schools seek to accommodate an increasing range of students, teachers are challenged as never before. When students with disabilities, linguistic differences or other unique abilities join general education classrooms, even willing teachers fear their lack of training and preparation to deal with such differences make their role as primary teacher inappropriate and inadequate.

• Toolkit for Inclusive School Improvement (Part 1)

  1/1/05 - National Institute for Urban School Improvement,

  Systemic school change is a complex and difficult task. The challenge is great, but educators throughout our nation and other nations are actively engaging the opportunity to transform education and how we go about the work of teaching and learning in our schools. This toolkit is developed by NIUSI to assess networks of schools engaging their faculty, staff, families, students, and community members in ongoing renewal and systemic change. The toolkit is organized around three areas...

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  The Challenge of Managing Roles: Understanding the Needs of Novice Special Education Teachers

  1/20/10 - Billingsley, B. S., Griffin, C. C., Smith, S. J., Kamman, M., & Israel, M.

  Understanding the challenges that novice special education teachers encounter in their first years provides important information for administrators as they consider policies and procedures that support new teacher induction. Find out how administrators can help novice special education teachers manage their complex and challenging roles.

• Districtwide Instructional Reform: Using Sociocultural Theory to Link Professional Learning to Organizational Support

  1/1/08 - Gallucci, Chrysan

  No Child Left Behind Act accountability pressures and calls to close achievement gaps between groups of students have challenged school districts to achieve systemwide instructional improvement. These policies create learning challenges for classroom teachers and for school and district leaders. This article engages questions about organizational support for professional learning in the context of reform initiatives. A theoretical lens--called the Vygotsky Space--is used to analyze case...

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  How Leaders Invest Staffing Resources for Learning Improvement

  1/7/09 - Margaret L. Piecki, Michael S. Knapp, Tino Castaneda, Tom Halverson, Robin LaSorta, Chad Lochmiller

  "Urban districts and their leaders face a set of common challenges with respect to staffing high-needs schools: how to maximize the quality and longevity of high-quality teaching staff; how to deploy and support novice teachers; how to manage and minimize teacher mobility and attribution; and how to align the diversity of teaching staff with the diversity of the student body. This report is part of a series by researchers from the University of Washington’s Center for the Study of Teaching...

• Monetary incentives in support of academic achievement: Results of a randomized field trial involving high-achieving, low-resource, ethnically diverse urban adolescents

  1/1/05 - Spencer, Margaret Beale, Noll, Elizabeth, Cassidy, Elaine

  Significant resources have been directed at understanding and alleviating the achievement gap in education. Most programs focused on this aim rely on a top-down approach, including funding for infrastructure improvement, curriculum development, class size, and teacher salaries. This article presents findings from a randomized field trial that evaluates a bottom-up approach in which high-achieving students of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds from poor families are given monetary...

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  On the front lines of schools: Perspectives of teachers and principals on the high school dropout problem

  1/5/09 - Bridgeland, J., Diulio, J., & Balfanz, R.

  This report has documented a mix of hopeful views and challenging statistics concerning how, and how well, those on the front lines of America's schools -- teachers and principals -- understand the nation's high school dropout crisis. Teachers and administrators in public high schools recognize there is a dropout problem, know they are confronted with daunting challenges in classrooms and in schools, and express strong support for reforms to address high dropout rates. Yet, less than...

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  Reading, Mathematics, and Science Instructional Strategies for English Language Learners with Disabilities: Insights from Educators Nationwide

  1/28/11 - Barrera, M., Shyyan, V., Liu, K. K., & Thurlow, M. L.

  This study focused on the instructional strategies employed at the middle and junior high school level. Teaching and learning at the middle school level have been found particularly challenging, perhaps because the curriculum places greater cognitive demands on emerging adolescents at a developmental stage when students, especially those who have already been struggling, can be at higher risk for academic failure (Mikow-Porto, Humphries, Egelson, O’Connell, & Teague, 2004). ELLs with...

• "They might need a little extra hand, you know": Latino students in at-risk programs

  1/1/08 - Fairbrother, Anne

  This is a qualitative study in a school district in a large city in the Southwest in response to the research question, "What are staff and student expectations for, and assessment of, three 'at-risk' programs in this large school district?" Four thematic findings from observations and interviews in four classes in two high school alternative programs and one alternative high school over one semester are reported, concerning (a) commitment to the programs, (b) labeling of students, (c...

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  21st Century skills, education & competitiveness: A resource and policy guide

  1/10/09 - Partnership for 21st Century Skills,

  This guide summarizes the challenges and opportunities that, if left unaddressed, will curtail our competitiveness and diminish our standing in the world.

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  A collective responsibility, a collective work: Supporting the path to positive life outcomes for youth in economically distressed communities

  1/14/09 - Tsoi-A-Fatt, R.

  This paper presents a picture of risk and challenge for youth in distressed communities and outlines how these communities can band together to create a continuum of supportive activities to bolster youth’s success in school and life.

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  A framework for developing and sustaining a Part C finance system

  1/5/09 - Greer, M., Taylor, A., Mackey Andrews, S.D., The National Early Childhood Technical Assistance Center

  This paper summarizes the fiscal challenges that this legislation presents and proposes a framework for analyzing, adjusting, and maintaining a flexible and self-regulating finance system to support Part C early intervention services for infants and toddlers and their families. The framework design features four phases of work to help agencies understand the issues and make informed decisions for on-going development and support of a Part C finance system.