Writing for Education Week, Sarah D. Sparks uncovers the troubling issue of teacher absence: More than 6.5 million students in 2013-14 attended a school where at least half of teachers missed 10 days of school or more, according to the most recent estimate from the U.S. Department of Education. Now, Read more
Brian Kisida and Anna Egalite, in Real Clear Education, write about the potential positive effects on increasing teacher diversity that they discovered through recent research. An excerpt from their post appears below: It’s long been touted that for students, having teachers that look like them leads to higher test scores. Read more
Tara Kini and Anne Podolsky of the Learning Policy Institute, ask, “Do teachers plateau early in their career or do they continue to grow and improve as they gain experience?” Through a review of research, these authors reexamine this critical question using advanced research methods. Based on a review of Read more
The National Center for Education Statistics has released The Condition of Education 2016. Listed below are several interesting highlights in this data: 1. Kindergartners’ Approaches to Learning, Family Socioeconomic Status, and Early Academic Gains First-time kindergartners who demonstrated positive approaches to learning behaviors more frequently in the fall of kindergarten Read more
The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) released a new study recently on the validity of evaluation ratings using an instrument adapted from a well-known teacher observation tool, the Danielson Framework for Teaching. The findings of the study, by Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) West, support the use of a single summative Read more
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 Read more
Charlotte Danielson is author of a number of books including Framework for Teaching, first published in 1996. She has consulted with state departments of education across the United States, as well as ministries of education abroad. She recently offered her view on how to improve current systems of teacher evaluation: Read more
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 Read more
David Brooks, an op-ed writer for the New York Times, examines the new documentary, Most Likely to Succeed and analyzes the claims it makes about the current state of the American Education system: Greg Whiteley’s documentary, Most Likely to Succeed, argues that the American school system is ultimately built on Read more
A recent article by the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research (CALDER) investigates whether STEM teacher candidates who score better on licensure tests are also more effective at improving student performance once they enter the teaching workforce. After replicating earlier findings that teacher basic-skills licensure test Read more
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 Read more
EdCentral recently reviewed what two recent surveys of teachers revealed about their opinions of new teacher evaluation systems. Excerpts from their article appear below: What do we actually know about teachers’ perceptions of their evaluation process? Two new reports offer insights into this question. In May, the Center on Education Read more
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 Read more
A first-of-its-kind study has found that students who score at the “college-ready” level on the PARCC exam are well-positioned to earn good grades in college. The findings provide early evidence that the assessment does what it was designed to do: measure college readiness. The Massachusetts Department of Education commissioned Mathematica Read more
In Real Clear Education, Kristin Cubbage reflects on what it means to be a Multi-Classroom Leader, a role her school has adopted in conjunction with Public Impact. She writes: When I became a multi-classroom leader in 2013, the position was new to our school, district and state—new to the nation, Read more
The What Works Clearinghouse, which identifies studies that provide credible and reliable evidence of intervention effectiveness, gives its highest rating of confidence only to randomized controlled trials (RCTs). But is an RCT the best way to provide useful information to consumers about complex interventions like curricula? In this American Enterprise Read more