CASEL’s latest SEL Trends brief, Empowering Youth Voice, focuses on efforts of three large urban school districts to engage students as active participants in their learning. In Chicago, every high school and 35 middle schools have Student Voice Committees, which focus on issues such as student-teacher feedback protocols, peer mentoring, and other mental health resources. Read more about Empowering Youth Voice[…]
Many public school districts are in the midst of voluntary summer learning programs, especially for children from low-income families. But program availability does not always translate to consistent student attendance. A new recruitment guide on how to market summer learning to parents and students offers guidance and detailed templates that districts and others can use Read more about Recruiting Students for Voluntary Summer Learning Programs[…]
Education is supposed to be the great equalizer, the ticket to the American dream. But if educational opportunities are not offered equitably to all students, the American dream remains out of reach for under-served youth. In Core Education’s July issue brief, we explore inequities in education such as access to effective teachers and rigorous curriculum, Read more about July Issue Brief: Education and Inequity[…]
Learning Forward has released a new report, High-Quality Curricula and Team Based Professional Learning: A Perfect Partnership for Equity. This report is based on three premises: Research has found that effective teaching and high-quality materials both matter for student learning. Effective use of curriculum requires teachers who understand it deeply and use it with intentionality Read more about High-Quality Curricula and Team-Based Professional Learning: A Perfect Partnership for Equity[…]
Recently, Carolyn Jones, writing for California’s EdSource, shared the findings of a recent research report that focuses on equitable access to math and science courses for students of color. Excerpts of her piece appear below: African-American and Latino students were less likely to attend schools that offer advanced math and science classes, new data shows. Read more about Latinos, African-Americans have Less Access to STEM Classes[…]
A new survey of research into charter school effectiveness has linked so-called no-excuses practices in urban charter schools to sizable academic gains. Published in the Winter 2018 edition of The Future of Children, a journal jointly published by Princeton University and the Brookings Institution, the survey found that spending three years in one of these Read more about ‘No-Excuses’ Charter Schools Could Close the Achievement Gap[…]
The National Network of State Teachers of the Year (NNSTOY) has released a new video series called Courageous Conversations about Race in School. Educators care deeply about all students getting the education they deserve, but they often find themselves stuck in the same unsatisfying conversations about race where people speak in generalities, point to deficits Read more about Getting Real About Equity[…]
Schools have long failed to cultivate the innate talents of many of their young people, particularly high-ability girls and boys from disadvantaged and minority backgrounds. This failure harms the economy, widens income gaps, arrests upward mobility, and exacerbates civic decay and political division. To address these issues, researchers Christopher Yaluma and Adam Tyner of the Read more about Is There a Gifted Gap?[…]
Nearly 20 percent of the country’s students are enrolled in rural schools, yet are not provided the same focus in national policy or research as students in urban and suburban school districts. “Out of the Loop,” a new report from the National School Boards Association’s (NSBA), Center for Public Education (CPE), finds that poverty, isolation Read more about Out of the Loop[…]
The National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) recently completed an analysis of what each of the 50 states intends to do to provide a more equitable education to all students, as described in their Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) plans. The analysis from NCTQ highlight strengths and opportunities, ultimately demonstrating that most states are not Read more about States Fall Short in Plans to Address Major Inequalities for Vulnerable Students[…]
A functional consensus is emerging among the nation’s boldest education leaders, producing not identical policies, but a set of vital principles that drive approaches shaped to the needs of each of their communities. It’s a set of principles born of extensive work, with the needs of students at the center. It’s worthy of the attention Read more about Chiefs for Change’s Bipartisan Vision for America’s Schools[…]
Last month, Brookings kicked off a series focused on diversity in the public teacher workforce with an article looking at patterns and trends in the diversity gap across locales, school sectors, and teacher generations. This analysis showed, among other things, that the diversity gap is not monolithic, but varies across different places. This month, Michael Read more about Teacher Diversity Gaps Hit Close to Home for Nearly Everyone[…]
Karin Chenoweth of Education Week recently wrote about lessons learned from schools with “unexpected” success. Excerpts of the article appear below: Educators in unexpected schools change the fundamental way schools have traditionally been organized. Back in 2000, Harvard researcher Richard Elmore argued that because teaching has primarily been an isolated, autonomous, and idiosyncratic practice, school Read more about For School Improvement, Demographics Aren’t Destiny[…]
NewSchools Venture Fund has released “Unrealized Impact,” a groundbreaking study on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the education sector. This study is based on input from more than 200 education organizations and nearly 5,000 individuals, and was authored by Xiomara Padamsee, CEO of Promise54, and Becky Crowe, Senior Adviser, Bellwether Education Partners. Among the Read more about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the Education Sector[…]
AdvanceED has released a collection of articles and videos exploring the impact of poverty on education. It is AdvanceED’s hope that “Education Advantage,” a three part video series on poverty and education, will spark conversation and action in education reform. This video series includes: The Poverty Paradigm (Video 1) Separate but Not Equal (Video 2) Read more about The Impact of Poverty on Education[…]
Kate Walsh recently wrote an article for Fordham’s Flypaper that discusses the good news in American education. Below are excerpts from her article: There is new clear evidence that we are making slow, gradual gains adding up to significant change. Though you almost had to read between the lines to appreciate the genuinely good news Read more about Silent Progress on Education[…]