Joseph P. McDonald

This timely book explores what data use in teaching really is, how it works in theory and practice, and why it sometimes fails to achieve expected goals. Each chapter includes a discussion of a new direction that schools and teachers can take to ensure that data use in teaching actually spurs growth in learning.

This timely book explores what data use in teaching really is, how it works in theory and practice, and why it sometimes fails to achieve expected goals. Each chapter includes a discussion of a new direction that schools and teachers can take to ensure that data use in teaching actually spurs growth in learning.

Dissecting twenty years of educational politics in our nation's largest cities, American School Reform offers one of the clearest assessments of school reform as it has played out in our recent history. Joseph P. McDonald and his colleagues evaluate the half-billion-dollar Annenberg Challenge - launched in 1994 - alongside many other large-scale reform efforts that have taken place in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and the San Francisco Bay Area. They look deeply at what school reform really is, how it works, how it fails, and what differences it can make nonetheless. McDonald and his colleagues lay out several interrelated ideas in what they call a theory of action space. Frequently education policy gets so ambitious that implementing it becomes a near impossibility. Action space, however, is what takes shape when talented educators, leaders, and reformers guide the social capital of civic leaders and the financial capital of governments, foundations, corporations, and other backers toward true results.

Dissecting twenty years of educational politics in our nation's largest cities, American School Reform offers one of the clearest assessments of school reform as it has played out in our recent history. Joseph P. McDonald and his colleagues evaluate the half-billion-dollar Annenberg Challenge - launched in 1994 - alongside many other large-scale reform efforts that have taken place in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and the San Francisco Bay Area. They look deeply at what school reform really is, how it works, how it fails, and what differences it can make nonetheless. McDonald and his colleagues lay out several interrelated ideas in what they call a theory of action space. Frequently education policy gets so ambitious that implementing it becomes a near impossibility. Action space, however, is what takes shape when talented educators, leaders, and reformers guide the social capital of civic leaders and the financial capital of governments, foundations, corporations, and other backers toward true results.

The use of protocols has quickly spread from conferences and workshops to everyday school and university settings. Now in its third edition, this perennial bestseller features substantial updates that take into account recent developments in the field of facilitative leadership. The authors have also added eleven totally new protocols, including the “Peer Review Protocol” and “Looking at Student Work with Equity in Mind.” This essential teaching and professional development tool includes: step-by-step descriptions of how educators can use protocols to study together, work on problems of practice, teach well, and explore students' work, explanations of the particular purpose of each protocol, discussions of the value that educators have found in using them, and helpful tips for facilitators, a free supplement on the Teachers College Press website with ""Abbreviated Protocols"" that can be downloaded and customised to suit each facilitator's needs.

Many users of the popular professional development book, The Power of Protocols, discovered that protocols are also very useful for online teaching. This new book, by three of the same authors, focuses on using protocols to enhance learning with their students in multiple environments including online—a growing sector of the educational world. Going Online with Protocols lays out the diverse challenges faced by teachers and by facilitators in the online world and provides readers with strategies to tackle them. The authors provide online adaptations for such traditional protocols as the Tuning Protocol, the Collaborative Assessment Conference, and the Consultancy Protocol. They also offer entirely new protocols unique to online environments. This dynamic resource combines a rich theoretical background with step-by-step illustrations of powerful protocols, along with tips on how and when to use them.

Since it was first invented, Americans have been trying to re-design the American high school. One of the latest approaches - funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation - is to find inventive high school designs that work well in one location and replicate them in other locations. The authors of this book followed a design team from Big Picture Learning as it worked to do exactly this, recording the challenges it faced, and the strategies it employed. Their accessible and entertaining account of Big Picture's work is laced with stories about 'scaling up' by other school design teams, and in other enterprises beyond high school. Based on careful research, the book is both a practical guide to a new dimension of school reform, and also an interesting read for anyone interested in school change.

"Should be read by all who are not satisfied with the status quo in education." --Teachers College Record This book patiently and persuasively asks us to rethink before we `redesign' schools, to question many of our deeply ingrained beliefs about learning and schooling, and to move beyond those which no longer meet the test of common sense. It mercifully gives us no ready-to-implement school reform blueprint but rather the necessary design of how to think well about learning and teaching and schooling. ? Theodore R. Sizer, chairman, Coalition of Essential Schools, university professor emeritus, Brown University