Social Reform

As a teacher in an inner-city school, Lucy Crehan was exasperated with ever-changing government policy claiming to be based on lessons from top-performing education systems. She resolved to find out what was really going on in the classrooms of countries whose teenagers ranked top in the world in reading, maths, and science. Cleverlands documents Crehan's journey around the world, weaving together her experiences with research on policy, history, psychology, and culture to offer extensive new insights into what we can learn from these countries.

Chenoweth draws on her decade-long journey into neighborhood schools where low-income students and students of color are learning at unexpectedly high levels to reveal a key ingredient to their success: in one way or another, their leaders have confronted the traditional ways that schools are organized and have adopted new systems, all focused on improvement. In profiles of once-embattled schools, Chenoweth shows how school leaders doggedly reorganized internal systems in order to prioritize teaching and learning, resulting in improved outcomes that in many cases exceeded statewide averages.

In this best-selling expose of national policy gone wrong, America's foremost historian of education, Diane Ravitch, renounces her support for reform policies implemented over the past decade that she says are wrecking America's cherished tradition of public education.

Reform or Revolution was an influential pamphlet published by Marxist Rosa Luxemburg in 1899. In it, she argues that a revolution is necessary in order to transform a capitalist society into a socialist one. It was a strong criticism of German socialist thinker Eduard Bernstein.

Since Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 Americans have viewed school integration as a central tenet of the Black civil rights movement. Yet, school integration was not the only - or even always the dominant - civil rights strategy. At times, African Americans also fought for separate, Black-controlled schools dedicated to racial uplift and community empowerment.

Gilly and her friends are back at Fairy Tale Reform School - this time for vocational school! But when a new kid, Jack, gets thrown into FTRS for planting magic beans, Gilly realizes that something bad is brewing with the giants. Gilly and her friends know they need a plan to stop them, but delinquent Jack can't help but remind Gilly how good it feels to be bad. And with her sister still on the run with Rumpelstiltskin and seemingly involved with the giants, Gilly's going to have to make some big choices....

Judge Cordell, the first African American woman to sit on the Superior Court of Northern California, knows firsthand how prejudice has permeated our legal system. And yet, she believes in the system. From ending school segregation to legalizing same-sex marriage, its progress relies on legal professionals and jurors who strive to make the imperfect system as fair as possible. Her Honor is an entertaining and provocative look into the hearts and minds of judges.

Times are changing at Fairy Tale Reform School. At least that's what Gilly's heard. Rumor is that notorious trickster Rumpelstiltskin has taken over management from Headmistress Flora, and he's locked down the school tighter than the Pied Piper's pants. Not that this news concerns Gilly - she's been released from FTRS and is now suffering through attending Jack of All Trades School, where she gets to learn about different kinds of shoe leather and ways to measure feet (truly riveting stuff!).

Safe Is Not Enough illustrates how educators can support the positive development of LGBTQ students in a comprehensive way so as to create truly inclusive school communities. Using examples from classrooms, schools, and districts across the country, Michael Sadowski identifies emerging practices such as creating an LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum; fostering a whole-school climate that is supportive of LGBTQ students; providing adults who can act as mentors and role models; and initiating effective family and community outreach programs.

Gilly's gone from zero to hero at Fairy Tale Reform School, but it's still not smooth sailing. Her new villainous professor is the infamous pirate Blackbeard, and her newfound cool factor might be making her act a bit more royal than she'd like to admit. When The Wicked One, aka Sleeping Beauty's nemesis, breaks the Evil Queen out of the dungeon, Gilly realizes the kingdom is still far from safe.

Resource Management for School Administrators is the only comprehensive book covering all school resources - fiscal, facilities, and human resources. Each chapter has objectives that are aligned with the new ELCC and ISLCC standards on accreditation. Many of the federal and various state policies and laws are included. Everything you need to know on managing school resources is covered: national and state perspectives, future challenges to funding public education, resource allocation, developing a school district budget, and much more.

The liberal arts educational system is under attack. Governors in Texas, Florida, and North Carolina have announced that they will not spend taxpayer money subsidizing the liberal arts. Majors like English and history - which were once very popular and highly respected - are in steep decline, and President Obama has recently advised students to keep in mind that technical training could be more valuable than a degree in art history when deciding on an educational path.

In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education warned, “The educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and a people.” Forty years later, are things better or worse? This book shares forty examples of how poorly today’s government schools are doing to show that the “rising tide of mediocrity” has created a tsunami of low expectations and poor performance, suggesting the need for alternative solutions.

More than two million students are enrolled in for-profit colleges, from the small family-run operations to the behemoths brandished on billboards, subway ads, and late-night commercials. These schools have been around just as long as their bucolic not-for-profit counterparts, yet shockingly little is known about why they have expanded so rapidly in recent years - during the so-called Wall Street era of for - profit colleges.

The evil Rumplestiltskin is planning to cast a curse that will erase Enchantasia as the world knows it, and a fairy prophecy declares that Gilly Cobbler will play a key role. Never likely to shy away from adventure, Gilly and her friends embark on an epic swashbuckling journey to stop Stiltskin from getting the ingredients he needs before it's too late. Gilly can't help but wonder if it's already too late for her beloved sister, Anna, who is still a member of the villainous Stiltskin Squad and will seemingly stop at nothing to thwart Gilly and her crew.

In the magical fairytale kingdom of Enchantasia, becoming a legendary prince or princess doesn't happen overnight. Enter Royal Academy, the training ground for the fairytale leaders of tomorrow! But reluctant future princess and new student Devin has some reservations about RA, especially when it comes to its headmistress. Olivina seems obsessed with preparing students for possible villain attacks. But when Devin asks when they're going to learn how to actually rule a kingdom, Olivina becomes enraged. Something isn't right with this lady.

Why has land reform been such a failure in South Africa? Will expropriation without compensation solve the problem? What can be done to get the land programme back on track? Tembeka Ngcukaitobi tackles these questions and more. Going back in history, he shows how Africans’ communal land ownership was used by colonial rulers to deny that Africans owned the land at all. He explores the effect of the Land Acts, Bantustans and forced removals. And he considers the ANC’s policies on land throughout the 20th century, during the negotiations of the 1990s, and in government.

Outside Atlanta, a middle-class Black family faces off with a school system seemingly bent on punishing their teenage son. North of Dallas, a conservative white family relocates to an affluent suburban enclave, but can’t escape the changes sweeping the country. On Chicago’s North Shore, a multiracial mom joins an ultraprogressive challenge to the town’s liberal status quo. In Compton, California, whose suburban roots are now barely recognizable, undocumented Hispanic parents place their gifted son’s future in the hands of educators at a remarkable elementary school.

College costs more today than ever and is worth less. Tuition at public colleges has more than tripled in the past 50 years. Over the same period student debt has grown from virtually nothing to more than $1.7 trillion, second only to home mortgages. Skyrocketing student-loan burdens are leading an entire generation to put off the traditional milestones of adulthood: buying homes, getting married, starting families, and saving for retirement.

Using campus social justice movements as an entry point, Leigh Patel shows how the struggles in higher education often directly challenged the tension between narratives of education as a pathway to improvement and the structural reality of settler colonialism that creates and protects wealth for a select few.