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Book School and District Leadership in an Era of Accountability

Download or read book School and District Leadership in an Era of Accountability written by Bruce G. Barnett and published by IAP. This book was released on 2013-09-01 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our fourth book in the International Research on School Leadership series focuses on school leadership in an era of high stakes accountability. Fueled by sweeping federal education accountability reforms, such as the United States’ No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Race to the Top (R2T) and Australia’s Performance Measurement and Reporting Taskforce, school systems around the world are being forced to increase academic standards, participate in high-stakes testing, and raise evaluation standards for teachers and principals. These results-driven reforms are intended to hold educators “accountable for student learning and accountable to the public” (Anderson, 2005, p. 2, emphasis in original). While policymakers and the public debate the merits of student achievement accountability measures, P-12 educational leaders do not have the luxury to wait for clear guidance and resources to improve their schools and operating systems. Instead, successful leaders must balance the need to create learning communities, manage the organizational climate, and encourage community involvement with the consequences testing has on teacher morale and public scrutiny. The chapters in this volume clearly indicate that as school leaders attend to these potentially competing forces, this affects their problem-solving strategies, ability to facilitate change, and encourage community involvement. We were delighted with the responses from colleagues around the world who were eager to share their research dealing with how leaders are functioning effectively within a high-accountability environment. The nine chapters in this volume provide empirical evidence of the strategies school leaders use to cope with problems and negotiate external demands while improving student performance. In particular, the voices and actions of principals, superintendents, and school board members are captured in a blend of quantitative and qualitative studies. The breadth of studies is impressive, ranging from case studies of individual principals to cross-district comparisons to national data from the National Center for Education Statistics. To highlight important findings, we have organized the book into five sections. The first section (Chapters 2, 3, and 4) highlights the problem-solving strategies used by principals and superintendents when pressured to turn around low-performing schools. In the second section (Chapters 5 and 6), attention is devoted to ways in which school leaders act as “buffers” by reducing the impact of external demands within their local school contexts. Next, Chapters 7 and 8 explore creative ways in which financial analyses can be used to assess the cost effectiveness of programs and services. Chapters 9 and 10 examine how principals enact their instructional leadership roles in managing curriculum reforms and evaluating teachers. Finally, in the last section (Chapter 11), Kenneth Leithwood synthesizes the major themes and ideas emerging across these chapters, paying particular attention to practical issues influencing school leaders in this era of school reform and accountability as well as promising areas for future research.

Book Get Better Faster

    Book Details:
  • Author : Paul Bambrick-Santoyo
  • Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
  • Release : 2016-07-25
  • ISBN : 1119278716
  • Pages : 503 pages

Download or read book Get Better Faster written by Paul Bambrick-Santoyo and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-07-25 with total page 503 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Effective and practical coaching strategies for new educators plus valuable online coaching tools Many teachers are only observed one or two times per year on average—and, even among those who are observed, scarcely any are given feedback as to how they could improve. The bottom line is clear: teachers do not need to be evaluated so much as they need to be developed and coached. In Get Better Faster: A 90-Day Plan for Coaching New Teachers, Paul Bambrick-Santoyo shares instructive tools of how school leaders can effectively guide new teachers to success. Over the course of the book, he breaks down the most critical actions leaders and teachers must take to achieve exemplary results. Designed for coaches as well as beginning teachers, Get Better Faster is an integral coaching tool for any school leader eager to help their teachers succeed. Get Better Faster focuses on what's practical and actionable which makes the book's approach to coaching so effective. By practicing the concrete actions and micro-skills listed in Get Better Faster, teachers will markedly improve their ability to lead a class, producing a steady chain reaction of future teaching success. Though focused heavily on the first 90 days of teacher development, it's possible to implement this work at any time. Junior and experienced teachers alike can benefit from the guidance of Get Better Faster while at the same time closing existing instructional gaps. Featuring valuable and practical online training tools available at http://www.wiley.com/go/getbetterfaster, Get Better Faster provides agendas, presentation slides, a coach's guide, handouts, planning templates, and 35 video clips of real teachers at work to help other educators apply the lessons learned in their own classrooms. Get Better Faster will teach you: The core principles of coaching: Go Granular; Plan, Practice, Follow Up, Repeat; Make Feedback More Frequent Top action steps to launch a teacher’s development in an easy-to-read scope and sequence guide It also walks you through the four phases of skill building: Phase 1 (Pre-Teaching): Dress Rehearsal Phase 2: Instant Immersion Phase 3: Getting into Gear Phase 4: The Power of Discourse Perfect for new educators and those who supervise them, Get Better Faster will also earn a place in the libraries of veteran teachers and school administrators seeking a one-stop coaching resource.

Book Why Our High Schools Need the Arts

Download or read book Why Our High Schools Need the Arts written by Jessica Hoffmann Davis and published by Teachers College Press. This book was released on 2011-12-16 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this follow-up to her bestselling book, Why Our Schools Need the Arts, Jessica Hoffmann Davis addresses the alarming dropout rate in our high schools and presents a thoughtful, evidence-based argument that increasing arts education in the high school curriculum will keep kids in school. Davis shares compelling voices of teachers and their adolescent learners to demonstrate how courses in the arts are relevant and valuable to students who have otherwise become disenfranchised from school. This important book points the way toward rescuing the American high school from the inside out by ensuring that all students benefit from the compelling and essential learning opportunities that the arts uniquely provide. In an engaging and accessible narrative, Why Our High Schools Need the Arts will inform the uninitiated, change the minds of doubters, and fuel the fight of those already committed to arts-related school reform. This timely resource: Takes key foundational principles presented in Why Our Schools Need the Arts and describes how they work in high schools. Presents research that indicates arts learning engages youth and provides them with a reason to stay in school and graduate. Provides real-life examples, with teacher and student voices, that school reformers need to hear.

Book High Need Schools

    Book Details:
  • Author : Devin Thornburg
  • Publisher : Springer
  • Release : 2016-10-26
  • ISBN : 9463007059
  • Pages : 148 pages

Download or read book High Need Schools written by Devin Thornburg and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-10-26 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book covers issues that pertain to high-need schools but the authors challenge the distinctions made in the research and reason that the issues are relevant to all schools. From the rise of accountability in the 1960s to now, high-need schools have been dealing with curriculum, program initiatives, and responding to diverse populations, typically without the resources necessary to implement change. In this book we discuss important issues that have to be tackled if we as educators will succeed in meeting the needs of the next generation. From education laws, use of technology, leadership, diversity and multicultural issues, teaching in high-need schools, curriculum and teaching student with special needs, the book explores both problems and solutions, changing the dialogue from one of blame and stasis to one of action and hope.

Book Davonte s Inferno

Download or read book Davonte s Inferno written by Laurel M. Sturt and published by . This book was released on 2013-11 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A TEACHER'S STORY OF FEAR AND LOATHING IN AMERICAN EDUCATION TODAY. Calling on policy, research, humor and a generous serving of snark, in this cutting edge story irreverent Laurel M. Sturt pulls no punches detailing her bizarre life in the trenches teaching in a high-needs elementary school in the Bronx. With the Alice in Wonderland backdrop of teaching in a school strangled by poverty, No Child Left Behind's "accountability," and Michael Bloomberg's micromanagement, Sturt trains an unflinching eye on the crisis confronting today's educators, delivering a scathing indictment of pretentious education reform driven by a mercenary agenda to privatize a system worth billions. The author charges educators and parents to unite and organize at the grassroots level to fight for this civil rights issue of our time--the right to a decent education--coalescing around proven non-negotiables such as sufficient funding, universal pre-kindergarten, a rich curriculum free from high stakes testing, and the socioeconomic integration of schools. By refusing an apartheid in which the one percent and the ninety-nine percent receive vastly different educations, community by community we can drive back the privatizers, restoring the "public" to a system committed to all.

Book The Privileged Poor

    Book Details:
  • Author : Anthony Abraham Jack
  • Publisher : Harvard University Press
  • Release : 2019-03-01
  • ISBN : 0674239660
  • Pages : 464 pages

Download or read book The Privileged Poor written by Anthony Abraham Jack and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-01 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An NPR Favorite Book of the Year Winner of the Critics’ Choice Book Award, American Educational Studies Association Winner of the Mirra Komarovsky Book Award Winner of the CEP–Mildred García Award for Exemplary Scholarship “Eye-opening...Brings home the pain and reality of on-campus poverty and puts the blame squarely on elite institutions.” —Washington Post “Jack’s investigation redirects attention from the matter of access to the matter of inclusion...His book challenges universities to support the diversity they indulge in advertising.” —New Yorker “The lesson is plain—simply admitting low-income students is just the start of a university’s obligations. Once they’re on campus, colleges must show them that they are full-fledged citizen.” —David Kirp, American Prospect “This book should be studied closely by anyone interested in improving diversity and inclusion in higher education and provides a moving call to action for us all.” —Raj Chetty, Harvard University The Ivy League looks different than it used to. College presidents and deans of admission have opened their doors—and their coffers—to support a more diverse student body. But is it enough just to admit these students? In this bracing exposé, Anthony Jack shows that many students’ struggles continue long after they’ve settled in their dorms. Admission, they quickly learn, is not the same as acceptance. This powerfully argued book documents how university policies and campus culture can exacerbate preexisting inequalities and reveals why some students are harder hit than others.

Book Educational Leadership  Culture  and Success in High Need Schools

Download or read book Educational Leadership Culture and Success in High Need Schools written by Elizabeth T. Murakami and published by IAP. This book was released on 2019-05-01 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The exploration of the intersection of leadership practices from the school principal and other educators, the school culture, and the school success across different high-need contexts and cultures make this volume unique. Chapters in this volume present original investigations or reanalysis of empirical research enhancing our understanding of the interrelationship between leadership, culture and success through descriptions of practice that can contribute to lessons in leadership for school improvement. When considering a culture of success, leadership that focuses on impacting schools in high-need areas bring about lessons on how to create sustainable environments for student learning in challenging contexts. High-need schools include not only socioeconomic challenges influencing the performance of students. It includes multiple external and internal factors impacting leaders, teachers, students, and their families, affecting the management of structures, processes, and most importantly, learning. In the quest to improve high-need schools, and understand strategies for principals dedicated to a variety of contexts, this volume brings lessons with application for researchers, policy-makers, and practitioners who want to join in the quest to improve the quality of education among worldwide communities.

Book The Power of Latino Leadership

Download or read book The Power of Latino Leadership written by Juana Bordas and published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. This book was released on 2013-05-06 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Embracing diversity, valuing people, taking action Over 50 million Latinos live in the United States, and it’s estimated that by 2050 one in three of the US population will be Hispanic. What does it take to lead such a varied and vibrant people who hail from twenty-two different countries and are a blend of different races? And what can leaders of all cultures and ethnicities learn from how Latinos lead? Juana Bordas takes us on a journey to the very heart and soul of Latino leadership. She offers ten principles that richly illustrate the inclusive, people-oriented, socially responsible, and life-affirming way Latinos have led their communities. Bordas includes the voices and experiences of other distinguished Latino leaders and vivid dichos (traditional sayings) that illustrate positive aspects of the Latino culture. This unprecedented book illustrates powerful and distinctive lessons that will inform leaders of every background. “America grows more diverse by the day. Leaders want to understand and motivate those they lead but may feel intimidated by the complex history and culture of Latinos in America. Juana Bordas has written a handbook for making sense of it all. The Power of Latino Leadership helps the reader decode the coming America and the changing workforce.” —Ray Suarez, Senior Correspondent, PBS News Hour, and former host, Talk of the Nation, NPR “Bordas has mentored generations of young Hispanics throughout her distinguished career. [Here] she presents a compelling case for how the strengths Hispanics bring to the table...can infuse new life into leadership development for all of our country’s current and future leaders.” —Janet Murguía, President, National Council of La Raza “Juana Bordas provides timely insight into Latino contributions to our nation’s future and why their influence will continue to increase.” —Arturo Vargas, Executive Director, National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials “To develop a deeper appreciation for the countless contributions the Latino community is making to America’s multicultural leadership journey, read this book!” —Ken Blanchard, coauthor of The One Minute Manager and Great Leaders Grow

Book Using Data in Schools to Inform Leadership and Decision Making

Download or read book Using Data in Schools to Inform Leadership and Decision Making written by Alex J. Bowers and published by IAP. This book was released on 2014-11-01 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our fifth book in the International Research on School Leadership series focuses on the use of data in schools and districts as useful information for leadership and decision making. Schools are awash in data and information, from test scores, to grades, to discipline reports, and attendance as just a short list of student information sources, while additional streams of data feed into schools and districts from teachers and parents as well as local, regional and national policy levels. To deal with the data, schools have implemented a variety of data practices, from data rooms, to data days, data walks, and data protocols. However, despite the flood of data, successful school leaders are leveraging an analysis of their school’s data as a means to bring about continuous improvement in an effort to improve instruction for all students. Nevertheless, some drown, some swim, while others find success. Our goal in this book volume is to bring together a set of chapters by authors who examine successful data use as it relates to leadership and school improvement. In particular, the chapters in this volume consider important issues in this domain, including: • How educational leaders use data to inform their practice. • What types of data and data analysis are most useful to successful school leaders. • To what extent are data driven and data informed practices helping school leaders positively change instructional practice? • In what ways does good data collection and analysis feed into successful continuous improvement and holistic systems thinking? • How have school leadership practices changed as more data and data analysis techniques have become available? • What are the major obstacles facing school leaders when using data for decision making and how do they overcome them?

Book Why Our Schools Need the Arts

Download or read book Why Our Schools Need the Arts written by Jessica Hoffmann Davis and published by Teachers College Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Next Generation Digital Tools and Applications for Teaching and Learning Enhancement

Download or read book Next Generation Digital Tools and Applications for Teaching and Learning Enhancement written by Grassetti, Mary T. and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2019-10-18 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Digital tools and applications are an intricate part of many classroom communities. In the field of education, there is a need to continually monitor the digital landscape and keep up to date on the tools and applications that are available to classroom teachers and K-12 students. Understanding the ever-changing digital landscape and its impact on teaching and learning is critical to using digital tools and applications effectively and in ways that enhance students’ opportunities to learn. Next Generation Digital Tools and Applications for Teaching and Learning Enhancement is a critical scholarly publication that explores digital tools and applications for the PreK-12 classroom and how digital technology can enhance the preparation of teachers. Featuring a wide range of topics including education equity, social media, and teacher education, this book is essential for educators, academicians, curriculum designers, educational software developers, IT specialists, library specialists, researchers, and practitioners.

Book Turning High Poverty Schools into High Performing Schools

Download or read book Turning High Poverty Schools into High Performing Schools written by William H. Parrett and published by ASCD. This book was released on 2020-04-28 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Schools across the United States and Canada are disrupting the adverse effects of poverty and supporting students in ways that enable them to succeed in school and in life. In this second edition, Parrett and Budge show you how your school can achieve similar results. Expanding on their original framework's still-critical concepts of actions and school culture, they incorporate new insights for addressing equity, trauma, and social-emotional learning. These fresh perspectives combine with lessons learned from 12 additional high-poverty, high-performing schools to form the updated and enhanced Framework for Collective Action. Emphasizing students' social, emotional, and academic learning as the hub for all action in high-performing, high-poverty schools, the authors describe how educators can work within the expanded Framework to address the needs of all students, but particularly those who live in poverty. Equipped with the Framework and a plethora of tools to build collective efficacy (self-assessments, high-leverage questions, action advice, and more), school and district leaders—as well as teachers, teacher leaders, instructional coaches, and other staff—can close persistent opportunity gaps and reverse longstanding patterns of low achievement.

Book Digital Learning in High Needs Schools

Download or read book Digital Learning in High Needs Schools written by Heejung An and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-06-21 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Digital Learning in High-Needs Schools examines the challenges and affordances that arise when high-needs school communities integrate educational technologies into their unique settings. Although remote, blended, and networked learning are ubiquitous today, a number of cultural, economic, and political realities—from the digital divide and digital literacy to poverty and language barriers—affect our most vulnerable and underresourced teachers and students. This book uses critical theory to compassionately scrutinize and unpack the systemic issues that impact high-needs schools’ implementation of digital learning tools. Incisive sociocultural analyses across fifteen original chapters explore the intersection of society, technology, people, politics, and education in high-needs school contexts. Informed by real-world cases pertaining to technology infrastructure, formative feedback, Universal Design for Learning, and more, these chapters illuminate how best practices emerge from culturally responsive and context-specific foundations.

Book Educational Leadership for Social Justice and Improving High Needs Schools

Download or read book Educational Leadership for Social Justice and Improving High Needs Schools written by Bruce G. Barnett and published by IAP. This book was released on 2021-01-01 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To commemorate the 10-year anniversary of the International School Leadership Development Network (ISLDN), this book is a compilation of the work conducted by network scholars. This volume is the first comprehensive overview of the studies conducted by ISLDN members engaged in examining how social justice leaders and leaders of high-needs schools address the social conditions, learning experiences, and performance of their students. Other international school leadership research consortia have emerged in the 21st century; however, the ISLDN is the second longest operating project, after the International Successful School Principalship Project (ISSPP). Since its creation in 2010, ISLDN scholars have delivered papers at a variety of international conferences and shared findings in research publications, including books and special issues of journals. Until now, ISLDN research findings have been disseminated separately for the project’s two strands: (a) social justice leadership and (b) leadership in underperforming high-needs schools. Therefore, the purpose of the book is to document the history and evolution of the ISLDN and to provide descriptions and reflections of the project’s research findings, methodologies, and collaborative processes across the two strands. This volume captures studies of school leaders from 19 countries representing six continents - Africa, Asia, Australia and Oceania, Europe, North America, and South America. The authors examine important external and internal contextual factors influencing schools in different cultural settings and provide insights about the values and practices of social justice leaders working in high-needs school settings. Numerous practical strategies are provided for school leaders working in schools with similar conditions. The concluding chapter by the co-editors synthesizes the structural factors, personal beliefs and values, and contextualized change management strategies that shape school leaders’ actions aimed at ensuring the best learning outcomes for their students. Besides capturing the range of findings emerging from various ISLDN studies conducted over the past decade, several chapters critically examine the project’s current contributions to the field. Authors suggest broadening the dissemination of our findings to increase the visibility of the project, expanding the research methods beyond qualitative interviews, incorporating studies from non-Anglophone countries, and augmenting the scope of our analyses and research focus. These researchers’ journeys also reveal the obstacles to and benefits of engaging in these types of international collaborative research ventures.

Book The White Coat Investor

Download or read book The White Coat Investor written by James M. Dahle and published by White Coat Investor LLC the. This book was released on 2014-01 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by a practicing emergency physician, The White Coat Investor is a high-yield manual that specifically deals with the financial issues facing medical students, residents, physicians, dentists, and similar high-income professionals. Doctors are highly-educated and extensively trained at making difficult diagnoses and performing life saving procedures. However, they receive little to no training in business, personal finance, investing, insurance, taxes, estate planning, and asset protection. This book fills in the gaps and will teach you to use your high income to escape from your student loans, provide for your family, build wealth, and stop getting ripped off by unscrupulous financial professionals. Straight talk and clear explanations allow the book to be easily digested by a novice to the subject matter yet the book also contains advanced concepts specific to physicians you won't find in other financial books. This book will teach you how to: Graduate from medical school with as little debt as possible Escape from student loans within two to five years of residency graduation Purchase the right types and amounts of insurance Decide when to buy a house and how much to spend on it Learn to invest in a sensible, low-cost and effective manner with or without the assistance of an advisor Avoid investments which are designed to be sold, not bought Select advisors who give great service and advice at a fair price Become a millionaire within five to ten years of residency graduation Use a "Backdoor Roth IRA" and "Stealth IRA" to boost your retirement funds and decrease your taxes Protect your hard-won assets from professional and personal lawsuits Avoid estate taxes, avoid probate, and ensure your children and your money go where you want when you die Minimize your tax burden, keeping more of your hard-earned money Decide between an employee job and an independent contractor job Choose between sole proprietorship, Limited Liability Company, S Corporation, and C Corporation Take a look at the first pages of the book by clicking on the Look Inside feature Praise For The White Coat Investor "Much of my financial planning practice is helping doctors to correct mistakes that reading this book would have avoided in the first place." - Allan S. Roth, MBA, CPA, CFP(R), Author of How a Second Grader Beats Wall Street "Jim Dahle has done a lot of thinking about the peculiar financial problems facing physicians, and you, lucky reader, are about to reap the bounty of both his experience and his research." - William J. Bernstein, MD, Author of The Investor's Manifesto and seven other investing books "This book should be in every career counselor's office and delivered with every medical degree." - Rick Van Ness, Author of Common Sense Investing "The White Coat Investor provides an expert consult for your finances. I now feel confident I can be a millionaire at 40 without feeling like a jerk." - Joe Jones, DO "Jim Dahle has done for physician financial illiteracy what penicillin did for neurosyphilis." - Dennis Bethel, MD "An excellent practical personal finance guide for physicians in training and in practice from a non biased source we can actually trust." - Greg E Wilde, M.D Scroll up, click the buy button, and get started today!

Book Demographics and the Demand for Higher Education

Download or read book Demographics and the Demand for Higher Education written by Nathan D. Grawe and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The economics of American higher education are driven by one key factor--the availability of students willing to pay tuition--and many related factors that determine what schools they attend. By digging into the data, economist Nathan Grawe has created probability models for predicting college attendance. What he sees are alarming events on the horizon that every college and university needs to understand. Overall, he spots demographic patterns that are tilting the US population toward the Hispanic southwest. Moreover, since 2007, fertility rates have fallen by 12 percent. Higher education analysts recognize the destabilizing potential of these trends. However, existing work fails to adjust headcounts for college attendance probabilities and makes no systematic attempt to distinguish demand by institution type. This book analyzes demand forecasts by institution type and rank, disaggregating by demographic groups. Its findings often contradict the dominant narrative: while many schools face painful contractions, demand for elite schools is expected to grow by 15+ percent. Geographic and racial profiles will shift only slightly--and attendance by Asians, not Hispanics, will grow most. Grawe also use the model to consider possible changes in institutional recruitment strategies and government policies. These "what if" analyses show that even aggressive innovation is unlikely to overcome trends toward larger gaps across racial, family income, and parent education groups. Aimed at administrators and trustees with responsibility for decisions ranging from admissions to student support to tenure practices to facilities construction, this book offers data to inform decision-making--decisions that will determine institutional success in meeting demographic challenges"--

Book Exam Schools

    Book Details:
  • Author : Chester E. Finn, Jr.
  • Publisher : Princeton University Press
  • Release : 2012-09-16
  • ISBN : 1400844576
  • Pages : 264 pages

Download or read book Exam Schools written by Chester E. Finn, Jr. and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012-09-16 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An in-depth look at academically selective public high schools in America What is the best education for exceptionally able and high-achieving youngsters? Can the United States strengthen its future intellectual leadership, economic vitality, and scientific prowess without sacrificing equal opportunity? There are no easy answers but, as Chester Finn and Jessica Hockett show, for more than 100,000 students each year, the solution is to enroll in an academically selective public high school. Exam Schools is the first-ever close-up look at this small, sometimes controversial, yet crucial segment of American public education. This groundbreaking book discusses how these schools work--and their critical role in nurturing the country's brightest students. The 165 schools identified by Finn and Hockett are located in thirty states, plus the District of Columbia. While some are world renowned, such as Boston Latin and Bronx Science, others are known only in their own communities. The authors survey the schools on issues ranging from admissions and student diversity to teacher selection. They probe sources of political support, curriculum, instructional styles, educational effectiveness, and institutional autonomy. Some of their findings are surprising: Los Angeles, for example, has no "exam schools" while New York City has dozens. Asian-American students are overrepresented—but so are African-American pupils. Culminating with in-depth profiles of eleven exam schools and thoughtful reflection on policy implications, Finn and Hockett ultimately consider whether the country would be better off with more such schools. At a time of keen attention to the faltering education system, Exam Schools sheds positive light on a group of schools that could well provide a transformative roadmap for many of America's children.