Today, well more than a decade since the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and because of its demands for states to keep statistics on students’ access to highly qualified teachers, we know much more about the impact of high-quality teaching on student achievement. We also know that teacher characteristics once Read more about Attaining Equitable Distribution of Effective Teachers in Public Schools[…]
The impact of “Opportunity Culture” schools could be students gaining years of learning, and teachers earning hundreds of thousands more over their careers. In a major policy brief out, Public Impact estimates what a state would gain by implementing “Opportunity Culture” models statewide, using North Carolina as an example for analysis. Opportunity Culture models redesign Read more about Projected Statewide Impact of “Opportunity Culture” School Models[…]
In 2011, President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan provided states with flexibility from certain requirements under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, or ESEA, currently known as the No Child Left Behind Act. The flexibility process requires states to develop and implement new educator-evaluation systems to help identify effective teachers. While some Read more about State Oversight of District-Designed Teacher-Evaluation Systems[…]
With America’s public schools unlikely to return to past funding levels in the near future, the District Management Council (http://www.dmjournal.org/spending-money-wisely/) released a policy guide this week to help districts thrive, rather than just survive, within the constraints of their new fiscal realities. In the main report, “Spending Money Wisely: Getting the Most From School District Read more about School Districts Get Advice on ‘Doing More With Less’: Report reflects new realities[…]
Written for state legislators, governors, and their staff, this policy snapshot provides an overview of the latest research, information, and policy trends for establishing and supporting effective induction programs. Induction is a term that is often associated with mentoring of new teachers, and for good reason, but it is important to understand the definition of Read more about Supporting New Teachers: What We Know About Effective State Induction Policies[…]
A new scientific report looks at the way people learn, experience and think across disciplines and finds that often, cognitive style can prove too narrow or limiting. Those findings, published in the latest issue of Psychological Science in the Public Interest, could prove enlightening for those working in the fields of business or education. For Read more about Cognitive Styles and Education[…]
Jenny DeMonte and Robert Hanna at the Center for American Progress have written a timely paper on recent efforts to distribute the best teachers more evenly to those students who need it the most. This research has become possible due to new teacher evaluation processes that make it easier to compare the effectiveness of teachers Read more about Looking at the Best Teachers and Who They Teach[…]
Most analysts in the education policy conversation agree that teacher quality is the most important in-school variable shaping students’ educational outcomes. It’s a huge lever—new technology, fancy curricula, and better content standards are almost meaningless without a great teacher to make them work. A new report from Third Way offers some insight into the challenges Read more about New Report on College Students’ Perceptions of the Teaching Profession[…]
A new report from Catalyst Chicago focusing on teacher preparation in Illinois highlights the discrepancy between increasing numbers of minority students and stagnant numbers of minority teachers but cites limited success in enrolling more Latino teacher candidates. The Latino demographic, however is the only group that enrolled at increasing rates between 2003 and 2010. Fewer Read more about Across all Races, Teacher Preparation Losing Students[…]
For the past few months, Marc Tucker, of the National Center on Education and the Economy, has written a series of blog posts in which he lays out his plans for comprehensive reforms to bring more accountability to American education. Tucker began back in February with a post entitled, “NCLB, California and Accountability in all Read more about Marc Tucker: Designing a Better Accountability System[…]
Education can scratch the surface, or it can go deep – providing students with not just subject knowledge, but the skills required to master that subject. Skills such as inquiry, critical thinking, and collaborative problem solving equip students with the tools they need to succeed in college and the workforce—tools that set the foundation for Read more about Preparing Teachers for Deeper Learning[…]
The New Digital Learning Playbook: “Understanding the Spectrum of Students’ Activities and Aspirations” is the first in a two part series to document the key national findings from Speak Up 2013. For the past eleven years, Project Tomorrow’s® annual Speak Up National Research Project has provided schools and districts nationwide and throughout the globe with Read more about Understanding the Spectrum of Students’ Technology Activities and Aspirations[…]
High school students everywhere may rejoice to hear the latest research on school start times for students in their age group. A new report from the Education Commission of the States (www.ecs.org) says school begins too early for these students, a point about which there should be no dispute. Following are three key takeaways from Read more about Should High Schools Open Later?[…]
Like so much else in the world of teacher preparation, progress at readying new teachers for vastly different K-12 content expectations can probably best be described by one adjective: inconsistent. There are already a huge range of traditional and non-traditional teaching preparation/certification programs, each with its own particular view on education, curriculum, content requirements, geographic Read more about Common Core Standards Pose Teacher Prep Challenge[…]
If you spend time in almost any major school district in America today, you will notice that the students often do not look much like the teachers. In fact, in some areas, the students don’t look anything like their teachers. There is a significant demographic gap in the largely white teaching profession and an increasingly Read more about America’s Leaky Pipeline for Teachers of Color[…]
Jane Best and Courtney Cohen of McREL have written a helpful document looking at some of the hot button education issues today, but with a unique focus on rural education. While a quarter of all American students are enrolled in rural public schools, many rural teachers and administrators believe that education stakeholders are slow to Read more about Rural Education: Examining Capacity Challenges That Influence Educator Effectiveness[…]