Recently Published

The Transformation of Great American School Districts
How Big Cities Are Reshaping Public Education

Edited by William Lowe Boyd, Charles Taylor Kerchner, and Mark Blyth

In The Transformation of Great American School Districts, William Lowe Boyd, Charles Taylor Kerchner, and Mark Blyth argue that urban education reform can best be understood as a long process of institutional change, rather than as a series of failed projects.

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Toward Excellence with Equity
An Emerging Vision for Closing the Achievement Gap

By Ronald F. Ferguson

For the past 15 years, economist Ronald Ferguson has investigated the myriad factors that combine to create racial disparities in academic performance. This volume brings together Ferguson’s most important papers and most recent thinking on these issues. In language accessible and useful to education practitioners, Ferguson sets forth a wide-ranging and compelling vision for closing the achievement gap.

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Managing School Districts for High Performance
Cases in Public Education Leadership

Edited by Stacey Childress, Richard F. Elmore, Allen Grossman, and Susan Moore Johnson

Managing School Districts for High Performance brings together more than twenty case studies and other readings that offer a powerful and transformative approach to advancing and sustaining the work of school improvement.

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Spotlight on Leadership and School Change

Edited by Nancy Walser and Caroline Chauncey

Scratch the surface of a successful school and you will find a web of interactions that is the root of its success. Who is it that envisions, inspires, cajoles, and rallies all the various players in and around a school toward any improvement goal? Often it’s a superintendent, a principal, a professor, a special teacher, or a parent. In a word, it’s a leader. This latest volume in the Harvard Education Letter Spotlight Series brings together 20 recent articles that highlight the ways leadership has made a difference in schools.

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Indigenous Knowledge and Education
Sites of Struggle, Strength, and Survivance

Edited by Malia Villegas, Sabina Rak Neugebauer, and Kerry R. Venegas

This book brings together essays that explore Indigenous ways of knowing and that consider how such knowledge can inform educational practices and institutions.

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Minding the Gap
Why Integrating High School with College Makes Sense and How to Do It

Edited by Nancy Hoffman, Joel Vargas, Andrea Venezia, and Marc S. Miller

Minding the Gap argues that in today’s highly competitive, global economy, all young people need a postsecondary education. Yet only one in ten students from the lowest economic quintile in the United States currently earns a postsecondary credential. This timely and instructive book from Jobs for the Future explores policies and practices that would quickly enable a larger number of low-income and first-generation college students to earn postsecondary degrees.

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"It's Being Done"
Academic Success in Unexpected Schools

By Karin Chenoweth

This straightforward and inspiring book takes readers into schools where educators believe—and prove—that all children, even those considered “hard-to-teach,” can learn to high standards.

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Collateral Damage
How High-Stakes Testing Corrupts America's Schools

By Sharon L. Nichols and David C. Berliner

Drawing on their extensive research, Nichols and Berliner document and categorize the ways that high-stakes testing threatens the purposes and ideals of the American education system.

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City Schools
How Districts and Communities Can Create Smart Education Systems

Edited by Robert Rothman

In City Schools, Robert Rothman and his colleagues at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University put forward a vision of “smart education systems” that link a highly functioning and effective school district with a comprehensive and accessible web of supports for children, youth, and families.

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Pay-for-Performance Teacher Compensation
An Inside View of Denver’s ProComp Plan

By Phil Gonring, Paul Teske, and Brad Jupp

Denver’s groundbreaking campaign to introduce performance-based pay for teachers captured national and international attention and has paved the way for similar efforts elsewhere. In this book, Phil Gonring, Paul Teske, and Brad Jupp—among the key players in this successful come-from-behind campaign—offer the inside story of the ProComp initiative. They describe how entrepreneurial behavior within the teachers union and support from outside philanthropic groups propelled the plan from a cutting-edge concept into concrete policy.

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