From Rachel Herzfeldt-Kamprath and Maryam Adamu at Center for American Progress comes a new report about the importance of reforms to early childhood education. The past decade has been significant for the growth of early childhood programs. From the increased understanding of brain development in infants and toddlers to the more rigorous monitoring of social Read more about Why We Need a Federal Preschool Investment in 6 Charts[…]
Districts across the country use wildly different salary scales for compensating teachers – and a new report from the National Council on Teacher Quality does the math on what that means for career educators. NCTQ even factors in the cost of living to come up with some eye-popping statistics. For instance: A teacher at the Read more about Smart money: What teachers make, how long it takes and what it buys them[…]
The Equity Project Charter School in New York City is well known for the salary it pays its teachers — $125,000 of public funds available to all public charter schools. The question of course is what that sort of salary for teachers can accomplish. In a new study, Mathematica describes The Equity Project (TEP) charter Read more about The Equity Project: Does Paying Teachers $125,000 Make a Difference?[…]
The Baltimore Education Research Consortium (BERC) is pleased to release its new report, Measuring School Climate: Using Existing Data Tools on Climate and Effectiveness to Inform School Organizational Health. An increasing awareness of the relationship between school climate and student outcomes is evident in conversations in the national media about suspensions and safety, and schools Read more about The Baltimore Education Research Consortium Releases New Report[…]
Let’s say you want to improve elementary literacy scores in your district. You might use a Return on Investment (ROI) analysis to compare which professional development program will most help your literacy teachers for the money invested. But is a new PD program even the best solution? You might see more ROI from recruiting and Read more about ROI: Making Every Dollar Count[…]
A coalition of 11 states will create comprehensive, high-quality, open educational resources (OER) supporting K-12 mathematics and English language arts aligned with state learning standards. This new partnership, The K-12 OER Collaborative, is being coordinated by a nonprofit, The Learning Accelerator (TLA). It aims to offer additional choice to local education agencies, significantly reduce the Read more about Coalition to Launch Effort to Create Free, Open-Source Materials[…]
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation is asking businesses to pledge their support for the Common Core State Standards in a new video. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation has announced the release of its latest video in support of the Common Core State Standards, Make Their Minds Fly. This short video and corresponding infographic Read more about U.S. Chamber of Commerce Support of Common Core[…]
A new study shows that, despite the increased use of value-added data and other forms of teacher evaluation such as student or teacher surveys, first-hand principal observation of teachers remains the most trusted and used means by which decisions are made about teacher improvement. In other words, data are available, but not being used. The Read more about Study: Teacher Data Remain Untapped[…]
A new guide from Public Impact shows how districts can design teacher career paths that will keep excellent teachers in the classroom and extend their reach to more students, for more pay, within budget. When districts design career paths of this type, they create opportunities for excellent teachers to reach more students directly and by Read more about Teacher Pay and Career Paths in an Opportunity Culture: A Practical Policy Guide[…]
Melissa Junge and Sheara Krvaric of AEI Education have written an important report highlighting the need for education leaders to understand the complexity of education laws, and as a result, the need for lawyers to help bring about effective reform. Following are some key points from the report: — Given the myriad rules and regulations Read more about Managing the law in education[…]
Two classic questions in education have been, “what do schools produce?” and “who are the workers in schools?” Education policy veteran John Merrow has some interesting answers to those questions: The familiar answers to those old questions are: 1) “Teachers are the workers,” and 2) “Their job is to turn out capable graduates.” Both answers Read more about John Merrow: What do schools produce?[…]
American Institutes for Research (AIR) has released a comprehensive study evaluating Deeper Learning opportunities and outcomes in high school. The combination of (1) a deeper understanding of core academic content, (2) the ability to apply that understanding to novel problems and situations, and (3) the development of a range of competencies, including people skills and Read more about Big Picture Learning report highlights value of Deeper Learning[…]
What students want: great teachers every year What teachers want: career advancement while teaching, collaboration, on-the-job development and leadership, sustainably funded pay increases, and the chance to help more students succeed What both need: Policies to make a statewide Opportunity Culture possible Public Impact shows states the essential policies to reach far more students with gap-closing, Read more about Seizing Opportunity at the Top II[…]
Members of the Council of Chief State School Officers and the Council of the Great City Schools said recently they will work to decrease the number of tests students take in elementary and secondary schools. The groups will form a task force to identify and eliminate unnecessary assessments. In a survey of its 67 member Read more about Do students take too many tests in their school career?[…]
The Aspen Institute and Leading Educators are out with a roadmap outlining paths teachers can take to assume more leadership roles in classrooms and schools. The Aspen Institute released Leading from the Front of the Classroom: A Roadmap for Teacher Leadership that Works, which provides practical guidance for designing effective teacher leadership opportunities. The paper Read more about A Roadmap for Teacher Leadership[…]
Nearly everyone agrees that all students deserve a quality education, and that teachers deserve reasonable job protections. But Vergara v. California threw a spotlight on a hard truth: The balance has swung too far toward job protections for adults, at the expense of the rights of children. Tenure doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing. TNTP believes Read more about Rebalancing Teacher Tenure[…]