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High-quality assessments are crucial to many aspects of the educational process. They can help policymakers monitor long-term educational trends, assist state educational agencies (SEAs) and local educational agencies (LEAs) in allocating resources and professional development opportunities, provide insights to teachers about how well students have learned the knowledge and skills in an instructional unit, and help teachers and students adjust learning and instruction during daily interactions. Broadly speaking, educational assessment involves tools and processes used to gather information to support a range of decisions--from classroom instruction to school-level professional learning topics to district, state, and federal policies. Education leaders are regularly bombarded with false claims about assessments that can purportedly serve multiple purposes. These claims feed into misconceptions about the utility of results from certain types of educational tests. However, the harsh reality is that educational assessments are currently designed and validated for a very limited set of purposes and uses--typically only one interpretive use per assessment. The need--to support the full range of uses of assessment information--is the reason why assessment experts and others have called for the design and development of balanced assessment systems, in which the system's different assessment components complement and support each other. This volume explores the history of balanced assessment systems and reimagines balanced assessment systems that center equitable classroom learning environments. In doing so, it provides guidance to state and local educational agencies, as well as schools and teachers, regarding how to (1) foster and maintain a culture of productive assessment use to improve ambitious and equitable teaching and learning at the classroom level; (2) design policy, professional learning, and other local systems necessary to implement balanced assessment systems; and (3) implement processes to use aggregate data to continually improve the assessment system itself to better serve all students, especially those most disenfranchised.

In "From Tinkering to Transformation," Meredith Honig and Lydia Rainey call on superintendents and other district leaders to rethink the very premises that underlie the long-standing ways of working in their central offices. Based on the results of nearly two decades of research from districts of 2,000 to 200,000 students, Honig and Rainey pinpoint how central offices support equitable teaching and learning in schools through specific changes in key central office functions: teaching and learning, human resources, principal supervision, operations, and the superintendent's cabinet. Using lively case studies, detailed examples, and performance data from ten US school districts, Honig and Rainey deftly highlight how central offices must transform in order to support equitable teaching and learning in schools. They identify typical pitfalls district leaders may encounter, illustrate a guiding set of design principles that can be used to inform transformation efforts, and offer practical advice on how to realize the ambitious goals of fundamental systemic change for equity. This inspiring work shows how district leaders can move forward with revolutionary central office reforms that support equitable teaching and learning for every student.

This National Academy of Education (NAEd) volume provides guidance to key stakeholders on how to accurately report and interpret comparability assertions concerning large-scale educational assessments as well as how to ensure greater comparability by paying close attention to key aspects of assessment design, content, and procedures. The goal of the volume is to provide guidance to relevant state-level educational assessment and accountability decision makers, leaders, and coordinators; consortia members; technical advisors; vendors; and the educational measurement community regarding how much and what types of variation in assessment content and procedures can be allowed, while still maintaining comparability across jurisdictions and student populations. At the same time, the larger takeaways from this volume will hopefully provide guidance to policy makers using assessment data to enact legislation and regulations and to district- and school-level leadership to determine resource allocations, and also provide greater contextual understanding for those in the media using test scores to make comparability determinations.

A vital inquiry into trans issues in education, this compelling work argues for the design of education research, policies, and environments that honor all gender experiences and identities. Edited by two prominent figures in trans studies, Mario I. Suárez and Melinda M. Mangin, "Trans Studies in K-12 Education" brings together scholars and professionals representing a range of academic traditions, research methodologies, and career backgrounds to explore why and how schools should affirm gender diversity and challenge gender-based inequities. The collection offers a comprehensive examination of how gender is manifested in the educational context. Gathering a wealth of evidence, the book's contributors expose the prevailing norm of gendered environments, which are entrenched in the very design and execution of educational research. The collection also lays out a critical overview of US laws and policies related to gender equity, gender identity, and gender expression and how these frameworks impact educational environments. These findings draw attention to deficit-oriented, pathologizing ideologies that surround nonconforming gender identities and the detrimental, often traumatizing effects on transgender students and educators. Throughout, the contributors recommend methods for establishing gender-affirming research, policy, and practice. They outline the sociopolitical and legal pathways that trans and nonbinary students and school employees may use to secure education and workplace rights. They discuss the positive gains made by professional development for teachers, LGBTQ+ advocacy, and community programs that successfully support transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals. Ultimately, the volume highlights the promise of creating K-12 education spaces that are liberating rather than constraining.

This book presents the results of research that focused on international students receiving writing instruction on a US university campus. It explores how the students developed their foreign-student identities and their own ways of grappling with the unique issues they encountered as they worked to improve their academic literacy skills. The book extends the theoretical horizons of language socialization research by integrating insights from other disciplinary frameworks, such as a translingual approach, multilingual literacies and writing center theory, to explore international students' university experiences. By adopting these varied lenses, the book provides readers with a more holistic, integrative and ecological understanding of students' language and literacy development. The authors also investigate how a translingual pedagogy informs language instructors and literacy instructors in facilitating multilingual students' academic literacy development across a variety of codes, registers, genres, modes and media.

This book responds to a growing body of work in sociolinguistics and applied linguistics that places an emphasis on situated descriptions of language education practices and illuminates how these descriptions are enmeshed with local, institutional and wider social forces. It engages with new ways of understanding language that expand its meaning by including other semiotic resources and meaning-making practices and bring to the fore its messiness and unpredictability. The chapters illustrate how a translingual and transcultural orientation to language and language pedagogy can provide a point of entry to reimagining what language education might look like under conditions of heightened linguistic and cultural diversity and increased linguistic and social inequalities. The book unites an international group of contributors, presenting state-of-the-art empirical studies drawing on a wide range of local contexts and spaces, from linguistically and culturally heterogeneous mainstream and HE classrooms to complementary (community) school and informal language learning contexts.

Focusing on the work of the Interfaith Leadership in Higher Education Initiative, a partnership between AAC&U and Interfaith Youth Core, this publication showcases institutional efforts to broaden, deepen, and strengthen commitments to interfaith teaching and learning. [Foreword by Lynn Pasquerella.]

Veteran professors synthesize their combined 60+ years of expertise at primarily undergraduate, teaching-focused universities into easy-to-follow advice for graduate students and current faculty seeking to build thriving careers at similar institutions. Writing in a friendly tone that includes their personal reflections, the authors guide readers through the entire career trajectory: finding and applying for positions, developing essential knowledge and skills over the course of one's career, seeking tenure and promotions, and continuing to thrive in the mid- to late-career stages while preparing for retirement. The authors offer detailed insights for becoming a successful academic who can meet all the expectations of a teaching-focused institution. They explain how to develop core teaching competencies; choose advising philosophies for mentoring individual students, groups, and clubs; perform high-quality faculty service; and achieve scholarly, creative, and research goals--all while managing a high teaching load. Strategies for obtaining scarce yet crucial resources--time, money, and mentors--are also provided.

This timely and essential book provides a comprehensive guide for school leaders who desire to engage their school communities in transformative systemic change. Sharon I. Radd, Gretchen Givens Generett, Mark Anthony Gooden, and George Theoharis offer five practices to increase educational equity and eliminate marginalization based on race, disability, socioeconomics, language, gender and sexual identity, and religion. For each dimension of diversity, the authors provide background information for understanding the current realities in schools and beyond, and they suggest "disruptive practices" to replace the status quo in order to achieve full inclusion and educational excellence for every child. Assuming that leadership to create equity is a unique practice, the book offers: (1) Clear explanations of foundational terms and concepts, such as equity, systemic inequity, paradigms and cognitive dissonance, and privilege; (2) Specific recommendations for how to build support and sustainability by engaging colleagues and other stakeholders in constructive dialogues with multiple perspectives; (3) Detailed descriptions of routines and roles for building effective equity-leadership teams; (4) Guidelines and tools for performing an equity audit, including environmental scans; (5) A change framework to skillfully transform your system; and (6) Reflection activities for self-discovery, understanding, and personal and professional growth. A call to action that is both passionate and practical, "Five Practices for Equity-Focused School Leadership" is an indispensable roadmap for educators undertaking the journey toward an education system that acknowledges and advances the worth and potential of all students.

This book provides a framework for synchronous and asynchronous online language teaching. It elaborates on the key features of an online teaching setting, including the instructional media that are involved in it, their affordances and limitations, and recommends ways to adapt pedagogy to suit the online environment. To this end, the book draws on well-established language teaching methods that have been widely used in the physical classroom and puts them to the test by applying them online. This results in the emergence of an e-clectic approach that enables language teachers to be flexible and intentional in their online classroom-related decisions and combines good practices that cut across the broader methodological spectrum with personal teaching preferences, teaching style, and stakeholders' specifications always considering the capabilities of the setting and the tools currently available to teachers and learners. The book enables teachers to be critical and reflective of their own online teaching practices and equips them, via analysis of live online language sessions, with the necessary skills to confidently engage with screen layout. It also addresses the prominent issue of adapting teacher and learner identity in the online context, and examines their respective roles in online language sessions in a holistic way, offering guidance and support for the practicing online language teacher.

Student wellbeing is foundational to academic success. One recent survey of postsecondary educators found that nearly 80 percent believed emotional wellbeing is a "very" or "extremely" important factor in student success. Studies have found the dropout rates for students with a diagnosed mental health problem range from 43 percent to as high as 86 percent. While dealing with stress is a normal part of life, for some students, stress can adversely affect their physical, emotional, and psychological health, particularly given that adolescence and early adulthood are when most mental illnesses are first manifested. In addition to students who may develop mental health challenges during their time in postsecondary education, many students arrive on campus with a mental health problem or having experienced significant trauma in their lives, which can also negatively affect physical, emotional, and psychological wellbeing. The nation's institutions of higher education are seeing increasing levels of mental illness, substance use and other forms of emotional distress among their students. Some of the problematic trends have been ongoing for decades. Some have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic consequences. Some are the result of long-festering systemic racism in almost every sphere of American life that are becoming more widely acknowledged throughout society and must, at last, be addressed. "Mental Health, Substance Use, and Wellbeing in Higher Education" lays out a variety of possible strategies and approaches to meet increasing demand for mental health and substance use services, based on the available evidence on the nature of the issues and what works in various situations. The recommendations of this report will support the delivery of mental health and wellness services by the nation's institutions of higher education. [Contributors include Policy and Global Affairs; Health and Medicine Division; and Committee on Mental Health, Substance Use, and Wellbeing in STEMM Undergraduate and Graduate Education.]

This book examines tensions and challenges in the professional lives and identities of contemporary academics. Drawing on extensive interviews conducted over seven years with academics in the United States and the United Kingdom, the authors analyze the experiences of four types of academics as they respond and adjust to the demands of neoliberalism: part-time faculty, full-time faculty, department heads and chairs, and deans. While critical of this phenomenon, "University Management, the Academic Profession, and Neoliberalism" also recognizes that neoliberalism cannot be driven out of academia easily or without serious consequences, such as a perilous loss of revenue and public support. Instead, it works to shed light on the complex--sometimes contradictory, sometimes complementary--relationship between market values and academic values in the roles and behaviors of faculty and administrators. In providing an unprecedented in-depth, data-based look at the management of the academic profession, the book will be of interest not only to educational researchers but also to professionals throughout higher education.

"Supervising Principals for Instructional Leadership" specifies the conditions that district leaders can implement to help principal supervisors take a teaching and learning approach to their work. In particular, Meredith I. Honig and Lydia R. Rainey explore how these supervisors can most effectively support principals in becoming instructional leaders and developing the capacity to lead their own learning. The authors argue for a shift in supervisors' focus from a compliance and evaluation orientation to one in which they serve as learning partners for these principals. The professional development the supervisors offer principals must advance from group meetings focused on the delivery of information to intensive coaching differentiated to meet principals' needs. Using extended cases and detailed examples, the authors illustrate how supervisors associated with positive results "teach" rather than tell. These successful supervisors guide principals' learning with specific teaching moves such as modeling how to think and act like an instructional leader. Based on extensive research of district central offices, "Supervising Principals for Instructional Leadership" advocates for a transformation to the role of principal supervisors.

This book explores the role of the teacher in dual language bilingual education (DLBE) implementation in a time of nationwide program expansion, in large part due to new and unprecedented top-down initiatives at state and district level. The book provides case studies of DLBE teachers who: (a) implemented the DLBE model with fidelity; (b) struggled to implement the DLBE model; and (c) adapted the DLBE model to meet the needs of their local classroom context. The book demonstrates the way teachers as language policymakers navigate and interpret district-wide DLBE implementation and the tensions that surface through this process. The research, conducted over four years using a variety of methods, highlights the challenges and opportunities faced by teachers implementing DLBE, and will be of interest to both teachers and administrators of DLBE programs as well as scholars working in bilingual education.

"Voices from the Field: Collaborative Innovations in Early Childhood Educator Preparation" is jointly published by the Illinois Education Research Council (IERC) and the Illinois Board of Education (IBHE), and highlights the accomplished work of many of the state's two- and four-year faculty to redesign early childhood educator preparation programs to meet regional and state workforce needs. This edited book has chapters authored by EC faculty from both the 2-year and 4-year sectors and provides clear, tangible examples of how universities across Illinois worked together, often with regional employers, to design pathways for early childhood educators to earn the state's industry-recognized Gateways credentials while taking college coursework leading to degrees. Each chapter has a unique focus and together, their "Voices" provide significant insight into the innovative partnerships that the Early Childhood Educator Preparation Program Innovation (EPPI) grants inspired. The editors have been at the forefront of the early childhood credentialing and competency assessment design in Illinois. The following chapters are included: (1) Advancing the Illinois Early Childhood Education Workforce Through Stackable Credentials Embedded in Degrees (Stephanie A. Bernoteit, Johnna C. Darragh Ernst, and Nancy I. Latham); (2) Beginning with Yes: Reframing the Narrative in Teacher Preparation to Support Community College Transfer Students in Early Childhood Special Education (Jennifer G. Asimow, Adam S. Kennedy, and Anna T. Lees); (3) Cross-Institutional Advising and Curriculum Agreements: Supports for Transfer and Degree Completion in Early Childhood Programs (Patricia Steinhaus and Donna Walker); (4) Providing a Pathway to Degree Completion for Child Care Associates in Rural Southern Illinois (Martha Latorre and Melissa Batchelor); (5) Transfer Pathways Beyond Articulation: A Partnership Initiative Between National Louis University and Triton Community College ( Sherri Bressman, Ayn Keneman, Kristin Lems, Jason Stegemoller, Mary Ann Olson, and Mary Rinchiuso); (6) Sherri Bressman, Ayn Keneman, Kristin Lems, Jason Stegemoller, Mary Ann Olson, and Mary Rinchiuso (Tara Mathien, Carrie Nepstad, Antonia Potenza, Jin-ah Kim, and Wendy Mertes); (7) Collaborative Power: An Inter-Institutional Community Partnership (Andrianna Smyrniotis, Patricia Nugent, Hwa Lee, Cecile M. Arquette, Robert Wolffe, Beth Bussan, and Heljä Antola Crowe); (8) Shifting the Balance: Re-Envisioning Early Childhood Educator Preparation Design Through Meaningful Collaboration (Rebecca Pruitt, Carla Diez, Kari Livesey, and Melissa Szymczak); (9) Working Together to Support Math Pedagogy: It All Adds Up for Students (Stephanie C. Sanders-Smith and Nancy Gaumer); (10) When Innovation Means Breaking the Enrollment Management Mold: Building a Postsecondary Institution Transfer Network Consortium (Marie Ann Donovan, Patricia Steinhaus, Protenza, Antonia, Ann George, Cheryl Bulat, and Donna Walker); (11) Supporting Early Childhood Workforce Development and Pathways: Developing a Competency-Based Assessment System in Illinois (Sherry Sanden, Johnna C. Darragh Ernst, Kira Hamann, Amanda Quesenberry, Nancy I. Latham, Diane Christianson, Andrianna Smyrniotis); (12) Career Pathways in Early Childhood in Rural Communities (Christie McIntyre, Stacy D. Thompson, Diane King, Ruth Smith, Marilyn Toliver); (13) Supporting Change in the Education of English Language Learners and Young Children in Central Illinois (Joyce Bezdicek, Georgette Comuntzis Page, Jeanne Helm); (14) Refine, Refocus, and Renew: Early Childhood Preparation Pathways in Chicago (Catherine Main, Jennifer G. Asimow, Kate Connor); (15) Bridging Diverse ECE Preparation Programs Through Partnership: Tackling Complexities and Sustaining Change (Nancy I. Latham, Stephanie A. Bernoteit, Johnna C. Darragh Ernst); and (16) Listening to Voices from the Field: Implications for Higher Education (Johnna C. Darragh Ernst, Nancy I. Latham, Stephanie A. Bernoteit). Individual chapters contain references.