Search results for ""Author Alan M. Blankstein""

School improvement that lasts: find out how with this masterful guide! Common Core requirements, merit-based pay, new teacher evaluations, project-based learning—21st-century learning is a demanding and rapidly changing landscape. Advance from overwhelmed to empowered with Alan Blankstein’s Failure Is Not an Option, used by more than 350,000 educators to create schools that sustain success for every student. New case studies and field-tested techniques uncover indispensable insights into successful school change. Develop high-performing leadership teams through Powerful engagement strategies and capacity-building questions to help staff and students leverage what’s working and target measurable goals New real-world examples to help stakeholders maintain collaborative cultures in the face of new teacher evaluations and merit pay, sustain successful RTI and Common Core initiatives, thrive in diverse settings, and promote community engagement New tools, forms, and video segments on a companion website Use this handbook to discover what makes results-oriented, enduring school improvement models work! Praise for the Second Edition: "An overwhelming body of research shows that educational change and improvement must come from the inside. Here is a practical road map for improving the climate and culture of schools in ways that are meaningful and enduring. We must be open to new ideas, new strategies, and new opportunities. School transformation is something you do with educators, not to them. This book will show you how." —Dennis Van Roekel, President National Education Association

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Now is the time for Breakthrough Leadership This book was borne out of urgency. We face the consequences of a raging pandemic, coupled with an unprecedented call to end racial injustice. COVID-19 has exposed longstanding structural inequities, while at the same time offering a rare "breakthrough" opportunity to dismantle inequitable systems that have harmed our most marginalized students for generations. Breakthrough Leadership is rooted in moral courage and calls us to act upon a new discovery, or epiphany about a fundamental truth that challenges previous beliefs. While this book offers examples of schools that were "beating the odds" pre-COVID-19 as well as strategies for changing those odds in the future. Breakthrough Leadership also spotlights professionals now leveraging crises like this to shape local and national priorities toward a more equitable and healthy society for our children in order to: Create and sustain Equitable Learning Communities (ELCs) that are grounded in relational trust Establish comprehensive systems to ensure that all students thrive Implement cutting-edge principles of effective curriculum, instruction, and assessment including culturally responsive teaching, trauma-informed practice, and blended learning Meaningfully engage families and community Leadership from the classroom to the board room is needed to advance an agenda of equitable and successful outcomes for our students. The facts stakes couldn’t be starker. Good leadership saves lives both in pandemics, and in our profession. "The critical variable that determines whether or not our schools can respond adequately to the numerous challenges that they and their children face is leadership. . . This book is about the work of such leaders. In big cities, small towns, and rural areas, a small number of principals and superintendents are showing that progress can be made when leaders have the resourcefulness and courage to address equity challenges directly. The educational leaders profiled in this book have a clear sense of how to systematically build the capacity of teachers and schools to meet the needs of the students they serve. I urge other leaders to learn from them so that great schools that serve all children well, will be the norm, rather than the exception." ~Pedro Noguera "With all its devastation, COVID-19 also presents the opportunity of the century to transform the public education system that, to say the least, has become stalled and stagnant in the past 50 years. . . . Breakthrough Leadership makes a significant contribution to our next phase, which must be one of definable and targeted transformation of equity-based learning. ~Michael Fullan

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