To succeed in today’s economy, organizations must invest in the skills, knowledge and abilities of their staff – i.e. human capital – to maximize their performance. Ranging from talent recruitment, to creating workplace practices and environments that encourage employees to develop and stay, these tactics are being used by organizations Read more
National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), a non-partisan research and policy organization dedicated to ensuring every classroom has a high quality teacher, has released a new report on the effects of recent reforms of state teacher evaluation policies on teacher effectiveness ratings. The report examines teacher evaluation policies in the Read more
Chad Aldeman of Bellwether Partners recently provided a reflection on teacher evaluation reform during the Obama presidency in Education Next. Excerpts of his insightful piece appear below: When President Obama took office in 2009, his administration quickly seized on teacher evaluations as an important public-policy problem. Today, much of his Read more
In 15 years of increasing average test scores, black-white and Hispanic-white student achievement gaps continue to close, and Asian students are pulling away from whites in both math and reading achievement. For the improving groups, these long-term trends may be a major educational success story. In stark contrast, Hispanic and Read more
Every year schools must hire new teachers to replace the nearly 15 percent who leave annually. But what if schools are doing it wrong? Matt Barnum digs through some surprising research which shows that many schools and districts don’t require prospective teachers to perform a single model lesson, aren’t actively Read more
Chester E. Finn, Jr., distinguished senior fellow and president emeritus at the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, recently reflected on the illusion of college readiness for National Affairs. Excerpts from his piece appear below: Our K-12 education system has a transparency problem, and our higher-education system is complicit. While some American Read more
Concerned about retention and recruitment of teachers, principals, and administrators, Learning First Alliance member organizations are looking to build stronger pipelines and supports for these critical roles in student learning. The Educator Pipeline discusses the challenges each profession faces, and why this issue is key to our nation’s economic future. Read more
Under the Every Student Succeeds Act, states are allowed to include at least one non-academic indicator of school quality or student success within their accountability systems. The law lays out several possibilities: student engagement, educator engagement, student access to–and completion of–advanced coursework, postsecondary readiness, and school climate. In a new Read more
The National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) has released new ratings for 875 undergraduate elementary teacher preparation programs. The latest Teacher Prep Review found evidence that the nation’s top programs–those that graduate teachers well versed in both evidence-based content and methods of teaching–are not all the nation’s best known elite Read more
One of the broad intents of the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) is to encourage evidence-based decision-making as standard practice. This new, free publication from WestEd, Evidence-Based Improvement: A Guide for States to Strengthen their Frameworks and Supports Aligned to the Evidence Requirements of ESSA, provides an initial set Read more
Selecting instructional materials based on rigorous research and standards is an important and time-consuming job at the state, district, and school levels. To facilitate this process, Regional Educational Laboratory Southeast has developed a rubric for evaluating reading/language arts instructional and intervention materials for use in elementary grades (K-5). The rubric Read more
Robin Lake of the Center on Reinventing Public Education has offered six education policy ideas that just may get us through the presidential transition. Excerpts of her piece appear below: Polarization was the theme of 2016, and we’d be kidding ourselves to think that will be much different in 2017. Read more
With the spring 2017 PARCC administration season set to begin in March, the consortium has made a wealth of resources available to help parents, teachers, and students all prepare for this year’s testing. Over the past two years, more than 1,300 authentic released items from PARCC assessments have been published Read more
With the new ESSA regulations requiring accountability systems based on multiple measures, a new guide from researchers at the not-for-profit NWEA provides educators with actionable steps they can begin implementing immediately. Multiple Measures Done Right outlines the seven principles of developing coherent assessment systems that go beyond compliance to support Read more
Recognizing that effective leadership is essential to most school improvement efforts, the new federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) enables states and districts to use certain major funding sources to help achieve their school improvement goals by supporting principals and other school leaders. Because those funding streams urge consideration of Read more
If you spend more on education, will students do better? For many years, research on the relationship between spending and student learning has been surprisingly inconclusive. Many other factors, including student poverty, parental education and the way schools are organized, contribute to educational results. Teasing out the specific effect of Read more