Nonacademic Skills – The Building Blocks for Learning

Brooke Stafford-Brizard, an adviser for Turnaround for Children, recently created a student-development framework for nonacademic skills. Building Blocks for Learning is grounded in the concept that, like academic skills, nonacademic skills are developmental and can be taught. This resource serves to guide practitioners at all levels, informing teacher-student relationships, classroom instruction, and school design. Policymakers at Read more about Nonacademic Skills – The Building Blocks for Learning[…]

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Facebook Helps Develop Software that puts Students in Charge of their Lesson Plans

Recently, Natasha Singer and Mike Isaac reported for The New York Times on Facebook’s new personalized learning platform. An excerpt of the article appears below: Facebook is out to upend the traditional student-teacher relationship. Facebook and Summit Public Schools, a nonprofit charter school network with headquarters in Silicon Valley, announced that nearly 120 schools planned Read more about Facebook Helps Develop Software that puts Students in Charge of their Lesson Plans[…]

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How to Turn Around a Failing School

To understand how to turn around a failing school quickly, using as few resources as possible, Alex Hill, Liz Mellon, Jules Goddard and Ben Laker studied changes made by 160 UK academies after they were put into remedial measures by the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (OFSTED) up to seven years Read more about How to Turn Around a Failing School[…]

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Social and Emotional Learning Standards Under Development

Eight states are now on track to develop new statewide social and emotional learning (SEL) standards and policies – thanks to a new partnership with the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL). That two-year partnership is being funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. On April 11, 2016 CASEL released a Request for Read more about Social and Emotional Learning Standards Under Development[…]

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ESSA’s Well-Rounded Education

With the enactment of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), states will now have greater control and increased opportunities when developing plans that are customized and targeted to address the needs of their students. As ESSA includes expanded guidelines and objectives that are new from what many states are familiar with as part of previous Read more about ESSA’s Well-Rounded Education[…]

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The CLASS Project: Empowering Educators, Raising Student Achievement

Against a statewide backdrop of sliding student achievement levels, widening education inequities, and high levels of teacher dissatisfaction, the CLASS Project—an Oregon nonprofit initiative—has made sharp gains in all of these areas while simultaneously improving the working relationships between various education system stakeholders. But what exactly IS the Creative Leadership Achieves Student Success (CLASS) Project? Read more about The CLASS Project: Empowering Educators, Raising Student Achievement[…]

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Teacher Pay Around the World

Dick Startz, in the Brookings blog, provides comparative information on teacher pay around the world. It turns out, the U.S. doesn’t look so generous. Following are excerpts from the blog: American teachers are underpaid. More specifically, American teachers are underpaid when compared to teachers in the nations we compete with. Let me begin with a Read more about Teacher Pay Around the World[…]

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A Simple Cure For Education’s Jargonitis

Merriam-Webster defines jargon as “the technical terminology or characteristic idiom of a special activity, group, profession, or field of study.” NPR Ed recently set out to define the most commonly used terms of education jargon in language regular people could understand, using a text editor that restricts you to the 1,000 most common words in Read more about A Simple Cure For Education’s Jargonitis[…]

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Maintaining Focus on Student Success

A recent paper titled Not another meeting: How performance management routines help education systems deliver on their goals for students asks what data from the field can tell us about the ways in which leaders keep their systems focused on their goals through regular conversations about progress. This paper considers five years’ data from “capacity Read more about Maintaining Focus on Student Success[…]

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Organizations in Which Teachers Can Do Their Best Work

In a two part blog on the best ways to organize an educational system, Mark Tucker outlines his vision and details the specific methods that can be used to achieve this vision. Mr. Tucker writes: NCEE, the organization I head, runs the biggest and most successful program for training school principals in the United States, Read more about Organizations in Which Teachers Can Do Their Best Work[…]

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School Quality Reviews

Helen Ladd writes in the Brookings blog about an alternative to school accountability – an inspection and review system for schools: Inspection and review systems use professional inspectors to make periodic visits to schools – and ideally also to districts. The inspectors review school documents, talk to school leaders and teachers, and may also survey Read more about School Quality Reviews[…]

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Suburban Schools: The Unrecognized Frontier in Public Education

Urban schools have been the center of investment and concern in public education for the past two decades. Yet many suburban districts now rival urban districts in the challenges they face, having experienced dramatic population changes in just the past decade, with fast growing numbers of English Language Learners and students living in poverty attending Read more about Suburban Schools: The Unrecognized Frontier in Public Education[…]

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Through a Student’s Eyes

      Do teachers really know what students go through? To find out, one teacher followed two students for two days  and was amazed at what she found. Her report  appeared on the blog of Grant Wiggins, the co-author of  Understanding by Design and the author of Educative Assessment. Alexis Wiggins’ article is excerpted Read more about Through a Student’s Eyes[…]

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Eyes on the Prize: System-Wide Goals to Drive Student Success

In the first of a series of research briefs focused on the biggest implementation challenges facing American education today, EDI looks at what data from the field can tell us about education leaders’ capacity to anchor their work in clear student outcome goals. Eyes on the prize: The capacity of education leaders to use system-wide Read more about Eyes on the Prize: System-Wide Goals to Drive Student Success[…]

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Want to Fix Education? Give a Kid a Tutor

In the late 1970’s, education research was deemed a pseudoscience by many in the field due to a lack of clear data and results that pointed to effective practice. In response, researchers began designing field experiments to test the effectiveness of programs and practices. In recent years, as concern over U.S. educational performance has increased, Read more about Want to Fix Education? Give a Kid a Tutor[…]

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Policy Change is not the Only Path to School Reform

A recent opinion blog, written by Michael J. Petrilli, President of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, discusses the education sector’s exhaustion with policies on education reform. Mr. Petrilli writes: It strikes me, and several others with whom I’ve spoken in recent months, that education reform is at a turning point. It’s not just the new Read more about Policy Change is not the Only Path to School Reform[…]

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