Building Family and Community Demand for Dramatic School Change

Posted on June 13, 2011March 3, 2020 by coreeducation

District-led, dramatic change efforts in failing schools-including turnarounds and school closures-often face strong resistance from families and communities. Resistance may be based on district-community tensions, failed past school improvement efforts, or a lack of understanding about what is possible in schools. In this new presentation by Public Impact, nine strategies are proposed to address these Read more about Building Family and Community Demand for Dramatic School Change[…]

Time for Deeper Learning

Posted on June 8, 2011April 26, 2012 by coreeducation

Policy and practice at the local, state, and national levels should support the concepts of “deeper learning” to help all students meet higher expectations and be prepared for college and a career, according to a new policy brief from the Alliance for Excellent Education. The brief, “A Time for Deeper Learning: Preparing Students for a Read more about Time for Deeper Learning[…]

Lessons Learned from Top-Performing Nations

Posted on May 27, 2011April 27, 2012 by coreeducation

Released by the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE), Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: An American Agenda for Education Reform explains why as the performance of students in one nation after another surpasses that of American students, and the states, in response, institute one reform after another, student performance remains stagnant. According Read more about Lessons Learned from Top-Performing Nations[…]

Baseline Analysis of SIG Schools

Posted on May 26, 2011April 27, 2012 by coreeducation

The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) has released the Department’s first report on the revamped School Improvement Grants (SIG) program, “Baseline Analyses of SIG Applications and SIG-Eligible and SIG-Awarded Schools.” This baseline report provides an overview of the state policies and practices for SIG implementation as well as a description of the first round of Read more about Baseline Analysis of SIG Schools[…]

Evaluating Teacher Evaluation Systems

Posted on May 24, 2011April 27, 2012 by coreeducation

Although much of the impetus for new approaches to teacher evaluation comes from policymakers at the state and national levels, the design of any particular teacher evaluation system falls to the roughly 16,000 school districts and 5,000 independent public charter schools in the country. A new report from the Brookings Institution, Passing Muster: Evaluating Teacher Read more about Evaluating Teacher Evaluation Systems[…]

Private Enterprise and Public Education

Posted on May 23, 2011April 27, 2012 by coreeducation

What is the role of private enterprise in American public education? AEI is launching a new education project to explore this question. Frederick M. Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), announced the launch of a new AEI research project to examine the role of for-profit companies in public education. Read more about Private Enterprise and Public Education[…]

School Improvement Grantees: A Portrait

Posted on May 18, 2011April 27, 2012 by coreeducation

A new interactive map from Education Sector looks closely at the 843 schools that have been selected as school improvement grantees so far, and how they are spending the money. Schools improvement grantees can receive $6 million per school over a three-year period. The combined grants are expected to serve 594,117 students. Grantees are found Read more about School Improvement Grantees: A Portrait[…]

1,000 Scientists in 1,000 Days

Posted on May 8, 2011April 27, 2012 by coreeducation

Scientific American is about to make connecting scientists and schools a whole lot easier, thanks to their new 1,000 Scientists in 1,000 Days program. They’re recruiting “scientists who are willing to volunteer to advise on curricula, answer a classroom’s questions, or visit a school—for instance, to do a lab or to talk about what you Read more about 1,000 Scientists in 1,000 Days[…]

Teacher Turnaround Teams in Boston

Posted on May 1, 2011November 2, 2014 by coreeducation

Successful school turnarounds have long been elusive and have depended on finding talented teachers and leaders to engage in the transformation of school cultures and teaching norms. A newly piloted model out of Boston shows some promise for staffing school turnaround and providing career ladder options for experienced teachers. The Teacher Turnaround Teams (T3) program, Read more about Teacher Turnaround Teams in Boston[…]

The False Promise of Class-Size Reduction

Posted on April 17, 2011April 27, 2012 by coreeducation

Class-size reduction, or CSR, is enormously popular with parents, teachers, and the public in general. The latest poll results indicate that 77 percent of Americans think that additional educational dollars should be spent on smaller classes rather than higher teacher salaries. Many parents believe that their children will benefit from more individualized attention in a Read more about The False Promise of Class-Size Reduction[…]

State Strategies to Improve Chronically Low-Performing Schools

Posted on April 15, 2011April 27, 2012 by coreeducation

A new issue brief released by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices offers lessons drawn from its State Strategies to Improve Chronically Low-Performing Schools project, which sought to address underlying causes of failing schools: weak leadership; inadequate skill levels among teachers; and insufficient high-quality teaching materials. In 2009, the project gave Colorado, Maryland, Read more about State Strategies to Improve Chronically Low-Performing Schools[…]

American Achievement in International Perspective

Posted on April 4, 2011April 27, 2012 by coreeducation

The latest results of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) garnered all the usual headlines about America’s lackluster performance and the rise of competitor nations. And to be sure, the findings—that America’s 15-year-olds perform in the middle of the pack in both reading and math—are disconcerting for a nation that considers itself an international Read more about American Achievement in International Perspective[…]

Alignment of Reform Efforts

Posted on March 31, 2011March 3, 2020 by coreeducation

The PIE Network’s most recent report, “Schools in High Gear: Reforms That Work When They Work Together” is a set of essays written by the network’s policy partners, leaders from the five policy organizations that support the network. The policy partners span the ideological spectrum but come together around the core ingredients for education reform. Read more about Alignment of Reform Efforts[…]

Theories of Action for Teacher Effectiveness

Posted on March 30, 2011May 10, 2022 by coreeducation

What makes teachers effective, and how do you measure and cultivate it, especially in high-minority, high-poverty schools? At the recent Civil Rights Research Roundtable, convened by the Warren Institute, researchers proposed very different answers – and often viewed their theories of action as mutually exclusive. Two major theories of action emerged at the roundtable, as Read more about Theories of Action for Teacher Effectiveness[…]

Lessons for Online Learning

Posted on March 15, 2011April 27, 2012 by coreeducation

In the spring 2011 issue of Education Next, Erin Dillon and Bill Tucker equate online learning with charter schools. Is online learning the next “cure-all” that will be implemented without any real way to assess its effectiveness? Their article, “Lessons for Online Learning” studies the lessons learned from the charter movement, such as focusing on Read more about Lessons for Online Learning[…]

Tag: school reform