Among high school students who consider dropping out, half cite lack of engagement with school as a primary reason, and 42 percent say that they don’t see value in the schoolwork they are asked to do. In What Teens Want from Their Schools: A National Survey of High School Student Read more
Tests are one important tool state and education leaders, teachers and parents rely on to help schools ensure students are on track for learning what they need for success. Tests signal the knowledge and skills that are deemed most important, show how schools and students are progressing, and help identify Read more
The Education Commission of the States is out with a new policy snapshot that explores competency-based education and provides an overview of current and previous legislation related to this approach. The main goal of competency-based education serves to award credit/degrees to students for meeting specific skill competencies agreed upon by Read more
School improvement planning has become more prevalent and important due to increased calls from federal and state governments, state education agencies (SEAs), and the general public for more accountability in education. In many cases, the school principal is responsible for conceptualizing, drafting, and submitting the plan. However, there are very Read more
The bipartisan Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) was signed into law in December 2015, replacing No Child Left Behind (NCLB). The passage of ESSA turned control of the country’s K-12 education system back over to the states, giving local legislatures more flexibility surrounding decisions about standards, assessments and other accountability Read more
Kevin Mahnken of The 74 recently reported on a new RAND report that demonstrates how districts can build effective principal pipelines for very little cost. Excerpts of his piece appear below: Excellent principals don’t have to be a luxury reserved for affluent communities, according to new research from the RAND Read more
A study released from the Learning Policy Institute demonstrates how well-designed teacher professional development programs significantly improve student achievement, challenging the logic behind the Administration’s proposal to eliminate funding for those programs. The new report, “Effective Teacher Professional Development,” reviewed 35 scientifically rigorous studies conducted over the past 30 years Read more
Education researchers at Pearson teamed up with the Partnership for 21st Century Learning (P21) to conduct a review of the research literature on the importance of collaboration skills for employers, as well as how to teach and assess these skills in K-12 and higher-education classrooms. The ability to work in Read more
By September of this year, states will be submitting their state plans to meet the new standards under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). As part of the equity requirements of the policy, states are required to formulate policies that ensure historically disenfranchised students are not disproportionately taught by ineffective Read more
In the Carnegie Commons blog, authors Jennifer Russell and Maggie Hannan explore how Networked Improvement Communities (NICs) can build educators’ capacity to use improvement science to learn from practice. Improvement science offers methods to guide disciplined inquiries that generate knowledge to improve practice. Improvement research—the inquiry processes that lie at Read more
Sarah Sparks, writing for Education Week, reviews the research on teacher stress and how it can impact students. Excerpts of her piece appear below: In one 2016 study, University of British Columbia researchers tracked the levels of stress hormones of more than 400 elementary students in different classes. They found Read more
In the past, it was common for teacher candidates to spend long hours in university classrooms before ever encountering a child. Student teaching was the ultimate capstone where prospective teachers finally had a chance to apply years of accumulated theory. Now, however, teacher preparation programs are reconfiguring themselves to infuse Read more
Ben Jensen of the The National Center on Education and the Economy examines how the U.S. can improve teacher preparation by learning from Finland, Japan, Shanghai and Hong Kong and how these top-performing countries prepare teachers for the classroom. These four systems arm teachers with a rich understanding of the subject Read more
Public Impact has released a new suite of tools that guide districts and schools to achieve excellence in teaching and learning as Opportunity Culture schools. The tools are based on four years of data that illuminate what school designs and implementation actions work, and what do not, to achieve strong Read more
A project of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, KIDS COUNT is the premier source for data on child and family well-being in the United States. KIDS COUNT examines hundreds of indicators to provide information that supports smart decisions about children and families. The graphic below shows the overall child wellbeing Read more
Great leadership is at the heart of every high-quality public school. Within schools, leadership is most effective when it’s distributed among a team of individuals with different skillsets and experiences but a shared mission to spark and sustain a school-wide culture of learning and improved outcomes for students. These types Read more