School leaders, especially those serving in school turnaround contexts, play an important role in shaping access to excellent educators for all students. As states move forward with Equitable Access Plan implementation, the Center on Great Teachers and Leaders (GTL Center) is offering two new resources that help to identify the standards and competencies that principals Read more about What do School Leaders Need to Succeed?[…]
GTL Center’s latest Professional Learning Module is Supporting Principals Using Teacher Effectiveness Data (September 2015). It discusses practical strategies principals and district leaders can use to make hiring, staffing, teacher leadership, and professional development decisions. Teacher effectiveness data can help school and district leaders to make informed and evidence-based talent management decisions, but too many Read more about Supporting Principals Using Teacher Effectiveness Data[…]
There is a proposal going around about a new type of charter school, one that is very low risk and modeled on the 4.0 Schools project in New Orleans, called tiny schools. These are small schools that are started in a library or classroom with volunteer students who are willing to learn. The students can Read more about Tiny Schools: Models of Innovation[…]
Michael J. Petrilli of the Fordham Institute on Education recently delivered an address to the New York State Council of School Superintendents about how to end the American education reform wars. Admittedly coming from a more conservative perspective, Petrilli advocates three main goals for school leaders: Be the voice of the sane, sensible center. Grab Read more about How to End the Education Reform Wars[…]
States are collecting and reporting on a wide range of college and career readiness measures. A new brief and interactive map from the Center on College and Career Readiness and Success Center provides information on states’ college and career readiness definitions, reported metrics, and programs such as career and technical education and dual enrollment. Links Read more about How Are States Reporting on College and Career Readiness?[…]
How are America’s students really doing? We thought we knew, back when each state gave its own state assessments, but it turns out that proficiency rates were often highly inflated. Now we have some states collaborating in assessment consortia (e.g., PARCC and Smarter Balanced). Those common assessments will help provide a more reliable picture of Read more about October Issue Brief: International Benchmarking in Education[…]
Getting Smart is a website devoted to improving education in today’s rapidly changing and globally connected world. One recent initiative of Getting Smart is “Smart Cities that Work for Everyone.” This initiative offers recommendations for how leaders in cities, but also applicable in states overall, can help educate and prepare others for the rigors of Read more about Getting Smart’s Seven Skills for Smart Cities (and States!)[…]
While there are certainly shortcomings of the SAT and ACT exams, they are still a benchmark to evaluate the American education system because millions of students take these tests across the nation. The results from 2014 are not good: Only 28 percent of 2015 ACT-tested high school graduates met college-readiness benchmarks in each of the Read more about Stagnant ACT and SAT Results Demand Educational Improvements[…]
Marc Tucker of the National Center on Education and the Economy wants the U.S. to reform the way that it approaches its instructional core. By this, he means “the combination of state-mandated standards, curriculum frameworks, course syllabi, instructional materials, and tests and examinations that together define and measure what students are taught.” Tucker’s recommendations, like Read more about Is There a Market in the United States for a Strong Instructional Core?[…]
Deeper learning is a term being used more and more across the country, and state education leaders are being asked to create and implement aligned policies. A new report from Education Commission of the States serves as a primer for state policymakers seeking to modify instruction and assessment policies to better engage today’s students. The Read more about Deeper Learning: A Primer for State Legislators[…]
The School Turnaround Learning Community has assembled a collection of reports, policy papers, and tools related to principal evaluation. This collection of resources provides considerations for developing local administrator evaluation systems, examples of implementation and resources in support of these systems, and literature reviews identifying themes and perspectives that might be useful to practitioners and Read more about Featured Collection: Principal Evaluation[…]
In 2016-17, the Opportunity Culture initiative included more than 110 schools, 1250 teachers, and 34,000 students in 17 sites across 7 states. According to the Public Impact website, Opportunity Culture schools are defined by the following characteristics: Teachers lead the way. Each Opportunity Culture school creates a team of teachers and administrators who decide what Read more about Opportunity Culture Initiative Update[…]
Project Tomorrow’s Trends in Digital Learning report focuses on how innovative classroom models empower more engaging and purposeful learning environments for students and teachers. The report examines both the desired student achievements and the strategic use of digital tools, content and resources to understand, from the perspective of the students, teachers and administrators on the Read more about The Newest from Project Tomorrow: Trends in Digital Learning[…]
Rachel B. Baker at AEI Education has a new report out about Competency Based Education (CBE) programs at the college level. Following is a portion from the introduction to the executive summary: The basic idea underlying CBE is simple: programs award credit based on demonstrated student competencies rather than on the amount of time a Read more about The student experience: How competency-based education providers serve students[…]
Research consistently shows that family engagement in learning positively affects a range of student outcomes, including grades, behavior, enrollment in higher level programs, graduation, and college attendance. Parents and teachers want children to succeed, so why is parent engagement such a challenge? In this month’s issue brief, we explore resources and recommendations related to parent Read more about August Issue Brief: Parent Engagement[…]
A recent survey finds that more than half of high school juniors and seniors across the country don’t feel they’re ready for college and careers, even though these remain top goals for students. The survey was a multi-year College and Career Readiness survey of 165,000 high school students conducted by YouthTruth, a San Francisco-based nonprofit. Read more about Survey: Most High Schoolers Feel Unprepared for College, Careers[…]