Mind the Gap: Will All Students Benefit From 21st Century Learning?

In an economy driven by technological innovation and a complex social landscape, schools must invest in instructional approaches that allow students to express more agency over their learning and create space to apply what they learn to solve real-world problems. Based on a two-year study of personalized learning in 39 schools across the country and Read more about Mind the Gap: Will All Students Benefit From 21st Century Learning?[…]

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Teachers at Work: Designing Schools Where Teachers and Students Thrive

Schools are the engines of economic and social mobility, where the virtues required for citizenship are wrestled with and practiced, and where the foundations of a robust and dynamic citizenship, democracy, and economy are nurtured. Teachers are the heart, soul, and muscle of our schools. Research has pointed time and time again to teachers as Read more about Teachers at Work: Designing Schools Where Teachers and Students Thrive[…]

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Project Management: An Essential Skill for Students

Janice Walton recently wrote a piece for Getting Smart, focused on the need for students to practice and apply Project Management skills in the K-12 classroom. She writes: One of the keys to successfully integrating a project-based learning experience into the classroom is project management. A teacher first must effectively plan for and manage the Read more about Project Management: An Essential Skill for Students[…]

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Leading Trauma-Sensitive Schools

Schools play a significant role in supporting the health and well-being of children and youth, including those affected by traumatic experiences. In a trauma-sensitive school, all aspects of the educational environment—from workforce training to engagement with students and families to procedures and policies—are grounded in an understanding of trauma and its impact and are designed Read more about Leading Trauma-Sensitive Schools[…]

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What Students Can Show Us About How School Is Letting Them Down-and How to Fix It

Three years ago, TNTP set out to understand how so many students could graduate from high school unprepared for the lives they want to lead. To find out, they followed nearly 4,000 students in three large urban districts, one small rural district, and one charter network with three schools in separate cities to view school Read more about What Students Can Show Us About How School Is Letting Them Down-and How to Fix It[…]

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How High School Teachers can Better Engage their Students, according to Teens

If students are going to get the most out of school, they need to be engaged. Research shows, for example, that disengaged students are more likely to suffer a range of bad consequences, such as failing a course, repeating a grade, and dropping out. Yet however much rhetoric we may hear about building a “student-centered” Read more about How High School Teachers can Better Engage their Students, according to Teens[…]

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Video: How Schools can Support Students who have Experienced Trauma

In the latest video from Turnaround partner Digital Promise’s Research@Work series, Turnaround for Children Founder and Senior Science Advisor Pamela Cantor, M.D.explains how childhood trauma impacts the developing brain, learning and development. Dr. Cantor shares that while traumatic experiences and prolonged stress can have harmful effects, because the brain is malleable, there are many opportunities Read more about Video: How Schools can Support Students who have Experienced Trauma[…]

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Why do high school expectations matter?

Another student gets good grades, graduates from high school, and earns admission to a public university, but realizes too late that high school coursework did not provide the academic preparation needed for college and must be repeated- this time costing college tuition. All students deserve the opportunity to take courses that prepare them to enter Read more about Why do high school expectations matter?[…]

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Outstanding Learning for All, Secure & Healthy Learners, and Culture of Equity

To close achievement gaps, education leaders must adopt more complete approaches to outstanding learning for all, secure and healthy learners, and a culture of equity within low- and moderate-poverty schools. A shortfall in any of these three areas within a school magnifies the impact of unequal access to resources-educational, personal, and sociopolitical-outside of school. In Read more about Outstanding Learning for All, Secure & Healthy Learners, and Culture of Equity[…]

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Career Readiness and Cross-Sector Competencies

A new white paper from America Achieves focuses on the role cross-sector competencies play in career readiness. Getting Real about Career Readiness: A Focus on Cross-Sector Competencies is the first in a series of multi-media white papers from America Achieves Educator Networks on promising education practices for preparing students for the changing world of work. Read more about Career Readiness and Cross-Sector Competencies[…]

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Continuous Improvement in Practice

Calls for “continuous improvement” commonly arise in discussions about school improvement in the K-12 education system. But educators have various definitions of continuous improvement, and few know what continuous improvement looks like in practice. To advance this conversation, a new brief from WestEd helps to define continuous improvement both in theory and in practice, and Read more about Continuous Improvement in Practice[…]

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Empowering Youth Voice

CASEL’s latest SEL Trends brief, Empowering Youth Voice, focuses on efforts of three large urban school districts to engage students as active participants in their learning. In Chicago, every high school and 35 middle schools have Student Voice Committees, which focus on issues such as student-teacher feedback protocols, peer mentoring, and other mental health resources. Read more about Empowering Youth Voice[…]

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What Predicts College Completion? High School GPA Beats SAT Score

Preston Cooper, writing for Forbes, has reviewed a new article by Matthew Chingos of the Urban Institute that finds high school GPA to be a better predictor of college completion than SAT score. For excerpts from the article, see below:  For obvious reasons, students who exhibit better academic preparation in high school are more likely Read more about What Predicts College Completion? High School GPA Beats SAT Score[…]

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Latinos, African-Americans have Less Access to STEM Classes

Recently, Carolyn Jones, writing for California’s EdSource, shared the findings of a recent research report that focuses on equitable access to math and science courses for students of color. Excerpts of her piece appear below: African-American and Latino students were less likely to attend schools that offer advanced math and science classes, new data shows. Read more about Latinos, African-Americans have Less Access to STEM Classes[…]

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Introducing a Framework for High Quality Project Based Learning

A growing number of educators around the world believe that project based learning (PBL) is an important instructional approach that enables students to master academic skills and content knowledge, develop skills necessary for future success, and build the personal agency needed to tackle life’s and the world’s challenges. Projects are an easy way to engage Read more about Introducing a Framework for High Quality Project Based Learning[…]

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College Success Awards: Celebrating high schools that prepare students to succeed in college

GreatSchools has released a first-of-its-kind award recognizing and celebrating high schools that excel in ensuring students are prepared for college based on school-level postsecondary data collected and shared by their states. The award also underscores the need to open up new sets of data so we can shine the light on success and find the Read more about College Success Awards: Celebrating high schools that prepare students to succeed in college[…]

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