Normative statement

Abstract: The authors review and integrate various theoretical perspectives, normative statements, and pieces of empirical evidence about the organizational structures and processes best suited for implement...

Abstract: Ha-Joon Chang's "23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism" turns received economic wisdom on its head to show you how the world really works. In this revelatory book, Ha-Joon Chang destroys the biggest myths of our times and shows us an alternative view of the world, including: there's no such thing as a 'free' market Globalization isn't making the world richer; we don't live in a digital world - the washing machine has changed lives more than the internet; poor countries are more entrepreneurial than rich ones; higher paid managers don't produce better results; and we don't have to accept things as they are any longer. Ha-Joon Chang is here to show us there's a better way. "Lively, accessible and provocative ...read this book". (Sunday Times). "A witty and timely debunking of some of the biggest myths surrounding the global economy".("Observer"). "The new kid on the economics block...Chang's iconoclastic attitude has won him fans". (Independent on Sunday). "Lucid ...audacious ...increasingly influential ...will provoke physical symptoms of revulsion if you are in any way involved in high finance". ("Guardian"). "Important ...persuasive ...an engaging case for a more caring era of globalization". ("Financial Times"). "A must-read ...incisive and entertaining". ("New Statesman Books of the Year"). Ha-Joon Chang is a Reader in the Political Economy of Development at the University of Cambridge. He is author of "Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective", which won the 2003 Gunnar Myrdal Prize, and "Bad Samaritans: Rich Nations", "Poor Policies" and the "Threat to the Developing World". Since the beginning of the 2008 economic crisis, he has been a regular contributor to the "Guardian", and a vocal critic of the failures of our economic system.

Abstract: Systems of law usually establish a hierarchy of norms based on the particular source from which the norms derive. In national legal systems, it is commonplace for the fundamental values of society to be given constitutional status and afforded precedence in the event of a conflict with norms enacted by legislation or adopted by administrative regulation; administrative rules themselves must conform to legislative mandates, while written law usually takes precedence over unwritten law and legal norms prevail over nonlegal (political or moral) rules. Norms of equal status must be balanced and reconciled to the extent possible. The mode of legal reasoning applied in practice is thus naturally hierarchical, establishing relationships and order between normative statements and levels of authority.

Abstract: Even though we already know the best way to improve instruction, we persist in pursuing strategies that have repeatedly failed. Mr. Schmoker urges us to break free of our addiction to strategic planning and large-scale reform. THERE ARE simple, proven, affordable structures that exist right now and could have a dramatic, widespread impact on schools and achievement -- in virtually any school. An astonishing level of agreement has emerged on this point. Indeed, Milbrey McLaughlin speaks for a legion of esteemed educators and researchers when she asserts that "the most promising strategy for sustained, substantive school improvement is building the capacity of school personnel to function as a professional learning community" (emphasis added).1 But here's the problem. Such "learning communities" -- rightly defined -- are still extremely rare. For years, they have been supplanted and obscured by hugely popular, but patently discredited, reform and improvement models. The record is clear that these failed, unnecessarily complex reforms have had only the most negligible impact on what should be our core concern: the quality of teaching students receive. As Jim Collins has famously found, any organization attempting improvement must first "confront the brutal facts" about itself.2 In our case, the facts point to a fairly stark choice and an unprecedented opportunity for better schools. The place to begin is with a hard look at the evidence against conventional reform and improvement efforts -- and at the evidence that argues for the right kind of "learning communities." The Rise (and Fall) of 'Strategic Planning' In the years since "reform" first became a byword in education circles, "strategic planning" has had a pervasive influence on reform and improvement efforts. It was given a big boost by people like William Cook (some called it the "Bill Cook model"), an organizational theorist who eventually wrote a popular book on how to adapt strategic planning for schools.3 The terms and trappings of this process reach into virtually every school and district. In the late 1980s, I began to work closely with schools to develop such strategic (sometimes "comprehensive" or "systemic") plans. Led by sharp, well-intentioned people, the work required days of dialogue involving large swaths of school and community stakeholders. There were procedures for conducting wide-ranging "needs assessments"; for writing lofty-sounding (but ultimately irrelevant) "mission," "vision," and "belief statements"; for "reaching consensus," setting "goals," and listing "action steps" and "objectives." We then designated "persons responsible," "resources needed," "evaluation," and "timelines" for the abundance of goals, action steps, and objectives we had set. All of this was then transferred into fat, published plans, replete with columns and boxes for each term and category. Some of us began to notice that, once under way, the planning juggernaut was hard to control. Invariably, we wound up committing to far more activities and initiatives than anyone could possibly monitor, much less successfully implement. In selecting the professional or staff development activities that filled our plans, novelty and surface appeal overwhelmingly trumped evidence of school success -- or any direct connection to improvements in teaching. Clarity and coherence suffered. These processes were conducted with no clear definitions of key terms. We worked for years before we learned that the right definition of "goals" was central to success: to have any impact on instruction, they had to be simple, measurable statements linked to student assessments -- not commitments to offer workshops or implement programs.4 It also took us a long time to learn that coherence required that the number of goals be severely limited.5 We wound up setting an impossible number of "goals," even as the word was used almost interchangeably with "action steps" or "objectives. …