Instructional time policy is critical to education service delivery because it sets minimum, and sometimes maximum, requirements for learning time. Each state defines instructional time differently, and states have varying requirements in policy. Education Commission of the States (ECS) has released three papers that provide an easy reference for top-level information on instructional time, including Read more about Instructional Time Policy 101[…]
Writing for Future Ed, David Rosenberg, a partner at Education Resource Strategies, offers a commentary on how school districts can change the way they administer online learning to improve schools. Through ERS’ work with district leaders to develop COVID Comeback School Models, the organization has identified three key decisions district leaders must make about remote Read more about Key Decisions for More Effective Distance Learning in the Fall[…]
Building trust is a major theme of Stand for Children’s free, new guidebook, Preventing a Lost School Year, which was created to help district leaders plan for academic and social-emotional learning in the coming school year. The 2019-2020 school year was severely disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic and, without the right preparation and intervention, the Read more about Preventing a Lost School Year[…]
Writing for The 74, Adam Pisoni explores ways that scheduling for the return after COVID can make schooling more equitable. Excerpts from the piece appear below: As educators across the country struggle to wrap up the current COVID-ravaged school year, administrators and schedulers are hard at work determining what the 2020-21 school day will look Read more about Changing How Schools Draw Up Their Schedules Can Make Classes More Equitable Next Fall[…]
Writing for the Fordham Institute, Michael Petrilli explains the opportunity we have to explore the benefits of a high school schedule that looks more like a college model. Excerpts from the piece appear below: While there’s much to rue about what the pandemic has taken away, it’s possible to glimpse a future in which technology Read more about Half-Time High School May be Just What Students Need[…]
Writing for Future Ed, Karen Hawley Miles envisions a future for public schooling that makes the most of current flexibilities. Excerpts from the piece appear below: Let’s not repeat the mistakes the education sector made in responding to the last major disruption of the education system. In the wake of the 2008 recession, many school Read more about What Post-Covid Schools Could Look Like-Starting This Fall[…]
The Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy and Chiefs for Change released a report that outlines relevant research and provides key recommendations for reopening K-12 schools when public health officials deem it is safe to do so. A bipartisan network of state and district education leaders, Chiefs for Change, turned to the Institute for its Read more about The Return: How Should Education Leaders Prepare for Reentry and Beyond?[…]
Writing for AEI, John Bailey and Frederick Hess, in collaboration with a group of former state education chiefs, federal policymakers, district superintendents, and charter school network leaders, have released a blueprint for how to address the challenges that lie ahead in reopening America’s schools. The authors deliberately decided to work with mostly former—rather than current— Read more about A Blueprint for Back to School[…]
In Igniting the Learning Engine: How school systems accelerate teacher effectiveness and student growth through Connected Professional Learning (which we blogged about here: https://www.coreeducationllc.com/blog2/igniting-learning-engine/), authors profiled four school systems that, with an intensive focus on improving the quality of instruction through professional learning, have seen above-average results with a relatively high-need student population. Making the Read more about Finding Time for Collaborative Planning[…]
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[…]
Time is one of the resources most valuable to educators, but school schedules do not always allocate time to the activities that our schools purport to value most. Schedules can be better designed to foster planning and collaboration, flexible instructional blocks to differentiate content to student need, and opportunities for small group instruction and student-directed Read more about April Issue Brief: Scheduling for Success[…]