Resources
PARCC Assessments
The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) is a consortium of 18 states plus the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands working together to develop a common set of K-12 assessments in English and math anchored in what it takes to be ready for college and careers. These new K-12 assessments will build a pathway to college and career readiness by the end of high school, mark students’ progress toward this goal from 3rd grade up, and provide teachers with timely information to inform instruction and provide student support. The PARCC assessments will be ready for states to administer during the 2014-15 school year.
Photographs in Color
Color photographs from the book Transforming Sanchez School.
Publication: Transforming Sanchez School
Topic: Policy, Leadership, and Advocacy
Specialty:
Object(s): photo
Policy advancements for ELLs under Common Core State Standards
View this youtube video of Delia Pompa, Vice President for Education for the National Council of La Raza and member of the Understanding Language group, discussing policy advancements for ELLs under the Common Core State Standards.
Publication: Caslon Community
Topic: Policy, Leadership, and Advocacy
Specialty:
Object(s): video
Reform Excerpt Chapter 2
Raymond R. Isola and Jim Cummins analyze education reform initiatives during the past 60 years and explore difficult questions, including:
• Do standardized tests boost achievement?
• Does systematic phonics instruction increase reading comprehension?
• Is it reasonable to expect English learners to learn English in just 1 year?
• Is underachievement caused by bad teaching or by low socioeconomic status?
The authors argue that when policy ignores credible education research, there are consequences for vulnerable student populations, especially those from low-income and linguistically diverse communities.
Publication: Transforming Sanchez School
Topic: Policy, Leadership, and Advocacy
Specialty:
Object(s): reference
Roles of the Principal Excerpt Chapter 3
This book explores the multidimensional roles of the school principal, including instructional leader, resource manager, social architect of learning, and community organizer and activist.
Dr. Isola is the principal who led the successful turnaround effort at Sanchez School over 13 years. Readers will readily relate to his perspective, examples, and stories about:
• the principal’s roles in school transformation,
• the principal’s efforts to balance attention to top-down reform mandates with socioemotional and instructional approaches that lead to real student learning, and
• the principal’s collaborations for shared leadership, family engagement, and teacher agency.
This is a story told by a principal, Raymond R. Isola, and a university researcher, Jim Cummins, to illustrate the dynamic and complex processes of education reform during a turbulent time in the history of education in this country. It is a tale of a principal and his staff making choices in the best interests of their students.
Publication: Transforming Sanchez School
Topic: Policy, Leadership, and Advocacy
Specialty:
Object(s): reference
Shared Leadership Excerpt Chapter 4
The term “shared leadership” refers to the sharing of leadership opportunities and responsibilities among all members of the school staff and the grounding of instructional directions and initiatives in the empirical research evidence. The expertise that develops through collaboration in assuming leadership roles is distributed among all engaged parties.
Publication: Transforming Sanchez School
Topic: Policy, Leadership, and Advocacy
Specialty:
Object(s): reference
Teacher Agency Excerpt Chapter 1
Isola and Cummins describe how the faculty at Sanchez School worked together to identify strengths and needs of their students, families, and the school. These educators then collaborated in the design and implementation of organizational and instructional changes that significantly increased the academic achievement of its low-income students from linguistically diverse backgrounds. This book documents the power of teachers to change the culture of a school through teacher agency.
Publication: Transforming Sanchez School
Topic: Policy, Leadership, and Advocacy
Specialty:
Object(s): reference
Teacher Leadership Excerpt Chapter 1
One of the most effective ways to transform classrooms for multilingual learners, including English language learners (ELLs), is to prepare all teachers to differentiate instruction and assessment in ways that build on what these students can do with oral and written language. Teacher leadership offers the opportunity to build collective capacity in differentiating for multilingual learners through purposeful collaboration.
All teachers need to share responsibility for the multilingual learners in their classes, but their roles and responsibilities differ. General education teachers need to know how to differentiate content-area instruction and assessment by ELD levels so that ELLs have opportunities to learn in general education classes. ELD teachers need to know how to teach and assess language through content, and how to support their general education colleagues’ learning. As general education teachers assume responsibility for the ELLs in their classrooms, ELD teachers can take on more of a leadership and capacity-building role in the general education program.
Publication: Differentiating Instruction and Assessment for English Language Learners: A Guide for K-12 Teachers, second edition
Topic: Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment
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