Students in high-poverty schools lack the supports needed to become college ready, according to a report from CLASP. Course, Counselor, and Teacher Gaps: Addressing the College Readiness Challenge in High-Poverty High Schools analyzes the nation’s 100 largest school districts, focusing on “high-poverty schools” (where at least 75 percent of students Read more
The Wallace Foundation has released seven short videos featuring six school district superintendents talking about key innovations to emerge from a major national initiative to develop larger numbers of highly effective principals – and one video that offers advice to other superintendents who might want to build their own strong Read more
The National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) explores key elements of policies that support deeper learning in schools – including policies that state boards of education must seriously consider to ensure their state’s students are prepared for college, career and civic life. In Deeper Learning: Policies for a Read more
One of education’s big problems is that the collective wisdom, insights, observations and experience of educators are pretty much squandered. That is to say, millions of educators have figured out important things about what and how to teach under different kinds of conditions — but no system exists for them Read more
Amid growing recognition that strong academic skills alone are not enough for young people to become successful adults, a new comprehensive report offers wide-ranging evidence to show what young people need to develop from preschool to young adulthood to succeed in college and career, have healthy relationships, be engaged citizens Read more
Eduardo Porter of the New York Times has an ongoing economic column that at times addresses education. An issue that he took up not long ago concerns the increasingly common phenomenon of value added testing. In particular, Porter wants to highlight the potential role of “Goodhart’s Law” related to education Read more
NCES has released two publications examining the qualifications of public school teachers: Education and Certification Qualifications of Public Middle Grades Teachers of Selected Subjects as well as Education and Certification Qualifications of Departmentalized Public High School-Level Teachers of Selected Subjects. These statistical analysis reports examine the postsecondary majors and teaching Read more
Recent studies show that the demographic characteristics of teachers can impact student achievement. These findings point to the need for more female teachers in science and mathematics, as well as more ethnic minority educators. More than three-quarters of U.S. public school teachers are female. So it’s a bit surprising to Read more
Most colleges can’t keep their doors open without an accreditor’s seal of approval, which is needed to get students access to federal loans and grants. But accreditors hardly ever kick out the worst-performing colleges and lack uniform standards for assessing graduation rates and loan defaults, according to The Wall Street Read more
Two new research studies that evaluated vast amounts of data both concluded that teachers continue to improve over the course of their careers. The prevailing wisdom from previous research, which many teachers and teachers unions have disputed, said that teachers improved in their first several years of teaching, but then Read more
The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) has offered a national certification for interested teachers since the late 1980s. There are currently 110,000 National Board certified teachers across the U.S. This blog wrote about changes the NBPTS made to its certification process to incentivize more teachers to become board-certified. Read more
Launching a major national effort to dramatically improve teacher preparation and to help teaching and learning practices evolve for the 21st century, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation recently announced the establishment of a new graduate school, the Woodrow Wilson Academy for Teaching and Learning (WW Academy). The WW Academy Read more
As more and more states have adopted Common Core in recent years, teachers have needed aligned materials and curriculum. Many schools and districts have evaluated traditional privately-created curriculum which claim to align with Common Core and have not liked what they found. As a result, some schools and districts are Read more
Surely everyone’s list of the top 50 books for educators would be different, but Nick Grantham of Fractus Learning has come up with some pretty good suggestions. Summer reading season is here, and this list has some that you have probably already read, some that you have been meaning to Read more
Massive open online course provider edX is teaming with the National Summer Learning Association to provide more than 60 free courses aimed at combatting the “summer slide.” The courses cover computer science, programming, psychology, Advanced Placement prep and more. “The summer slide is a very real challenge faced by many Read more
Evaluation systems require principals to spend increasing amounts of time observing each individual teacher. Yet other requirements of the job put demands on principals’ time that can cut into instructional supervision. In Helping Principals Beat the Clock, CTAC Senior Associate Joan McRobbie considers how to help support instructional leadership by Read more