With the new school year just starting, the majority of educators across the country are hard at work implementing the new K-12 Common Core State Standards (CCSS). The new standards have sparked a range of resources and tools to support CCSS-aligned instruction, as well as drawn a lot of media Read more
The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), a 23-state consortium working together to create next generation assessments, released its first set of item and task prototypes for both English language arts/literacy and mathematics. The prototypes are illustrative of how the critical content and skills found in Read more
In a newly released study, American Enterprise Institute (AEI) director of education policy studies Frederick (Rick) Hess, professor Paul Manna and researcher Keenan Kelly assess Indiana’s 2011 “Putting Students First” education reform law, a first of its kind large-scale reform package which includes school choice, teacher evaluation and collective bargaining Read more
Juan Williams of the Wall Street Journal recently wrote an article about technology-based personalized learning strategies being employed across the country that have shown success. Excerpts from the article are below. …Prize-winning documentaries such as “Waiting for ‘Superman’” have revealed the terrible cost of losing young minds to failing schools. Read more
We all know those teachers — the high-fliers, the irreplacables, the inspiring ones. One of our central concerns in education reform should not just be teacher retention, but retention of the “right” teachers. In this Issue Brief, we explore the many ways schools are offering exceptional teachers with opportunities to Read more
Roughly 180 teachers, principals, and education advocates met at the US Department of Education’s (ED) headquarters last week to make connections and engage in conversations about how educators will lead the transformation of their profession. Educators drilled down on a number of topics and made recommendations for the next steps Read more
Using financial analyses, Public Impact shows how redesigned teacher roles that extend the reach of excellent teachers to more students free funds to pay those teachers up to 130 percent more, within current budgets. Multi-classroom leadership can pay teachers up to about 130% more Elementary subject specialization can pay teachers Read more
New state-level data on charter schools and teacher certification are now available on the State Education Reforms website. The State Education Reforms website, which draws primarily on data collected by organizations other than NCES, compiles and disseminates data on state-level education reform efforts in five areas: (1) Accountability (2) Assessment Read more
The Obama Administration recently announced the President’s plan for the creation of a new, national Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) Master Teacher Corps comprised of some of the nation’s finest educators in STEM subjects. The STEM Master Teacher Corps will begin with 50 exceptional STEM teachers established in 50 Read more
The first public draft of the common science standards is facing criticism for “lack of clarity and coherence” and omitting key content knowledge in favor of “an overdose on scientific ‘practices.’” However, these critiques are not being viewed as unfriendly—rather, the two organizations offering the feedback (the National Science Teachers Read more
The Center for American Progress has released a report on student surveys regarding how challenged they feel at school. Along with the report, CAP has provided an interactive map breaking down key results by state. Popular assumption is that the nation’s teenagers are drowning in schoolwork. Images of sullen students Read more
Last week, Nancy Flanagan of the “Teacher in a Strange Land” blog for Education Week reflected on her recent experiences reviewing books on teacher leadership. She became disturbed as she realized the implicit assumption of many books focused on teacher leadership is that it is school leaders who nurture teacher Read more
What does it mean to be “college ready?” This is the question that became the center of debate at the June meeting of leaders from the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), one of the consortia tasked with creating assessment systems for the new Common Core. Read more
In the latest edition of the Wallace Foundation’s Perspective, the focus is again on school leadership. In “The Making of the Principal: Five Lessons in Leadership Training,” the authors seek to discover what it will take to ensure that all public schools have leaders equal to the challenges facing the Read more
An analysis of reforms in the Baltimore City Public Schools (BCPS) finds that the district has come a long way in a short time in terms of improving student achievement, granting schools more autonomy, and creating an environment friendly to innovators and new school providers. Baltimore and the Portfolio School Read more
Preparing all students to succeed in today’s increasingly complex world requires a shift from a teacher-centric culture to learner-centered instruction that recognizes students’ individual learning needs, according to a new report from the Alliance for Excellent Education. The report, Culture Shift: Teaching in a Learner-Centered Environment Powered by Digital Learning, Read more