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[…]
Many public school districts are in the midst of voluntary summer learning programs, especially for children from low-income families. But program availability does not always translate to consistent student attendance. A new recruitment guide on how to market summer learning to parents and students offers guidance and detailed templates that districts and others can use Read more about Recruiting Students for Voluntary Summer Learning Programs[…]
Melanie Asmar, writing for Chalkbeat, recently explored Denver’s new experiment to make the first year of teaching more bearable. Excerpts from the piece appear below: Next year, Denver is piloting the role of “associate teachers” in Denver Public Schools. These teachers will teach part-time in a high-poverty school and spend the rest of their Read more about Denver’s New Experiment with the First Year of Teaching[…]
Schools have long failed to cultivate the innate talents of many of their young people, particularly high-ability girls and boys from disadvantaged and minority backgrounds. This failure harms the economy, widens income gaps, arrests upward mobility, and exacerbates civic decay and political division. To address these issues, researchers Christopher Yaluma and Adam Tyner of the Read more about Is There a Gifted Gap?[…]
Bellwether Education and the Digital Promise Innovation Clusters have released the U.S. Education Innovation Index (USEII). USEII is the field’s first foray into measuring education innovation at the city level. The index measures innovation activities and conditions of urban schools along 42 indicators in nine categories: Innovation Culture Need for Academic Improvement Collaboration and Coordination Read more about The U.S. Education Innovation Index: Prototype and Report[…]
The Johns Hopkins University School of Education, ranked first in the nation by U.S. News & World Report, and Urban Teachers, one of the most rigorous alternative teacher certification programs in the United States, have formed a partnership to train new teachers for public schools using a clinical residency model as rigorous as the Johns Read more about Johns Hopkins School of Education Forms Partnership to Train Urban Educators[…]
A recent study conducted by the Council of the Great City Schools, based in Washington and representing the nation’s largest urban school districts, gauges the scope of tests being administered to students. The findings are that the tests are, according to Denisa Superville from Education Week: redundant, misaligned with college- and career-ready standards, and not Read more about Study on Urban Schools: Students take too many Redundant Tests[…]
School equity has long been an issue in the United States. This year marks 61 years since the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case that was designed to give the federal government the authority to enforce school integration. But statistics tell us that despite this case, not that much has changed in many parts Read more about 61 Years after Brown v. Board of Education, Many Schools remain Separate and Unequal[…]
In what seems to be an increasing (and welcome!) trend, Harvard economist Dr. Roland G. Fryer Jr. has been attempting to translate his empirical research into results for schools. Dr. Fryer won the prestigious John Bates Clark medal this year in part for his research on 39 New York City charter schools. He hoped to Read more about What Makes a School Successful?[…]
The American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank that covers education issues, has a new series of videos out addressing the course of education reform in the United States. Following is an excerpt from their description of the series: Our schools are failing the most vulnerable kids. Everyone’s heard the scary statistics. But the dollars we Read more about Three new videos from AEI Vision Talks[…]
A report out recently from The Education Trust follows the true story of a student named Cornelius, from the day he started kindergarten to the day he dropped out of school. He went from learning to love reading as a child to feeling alienated in high school, struggling to complete his work and receiving out-of-school Read more about Education Trust on Helping Marginalized Students[…]
The Equity Project Charter School in New York City is well known for the salary it pays its teachers — $125,000 of public funds available to all public charter schools. The question of course is what that sort of salary for teachers can accomplish. In a new study, Mathematica describes The Equity Project (TEP) charter Read more about The Equity Project: Does Paying Teachers $125,000 Make a Difference?[…]
The Baltimore Education Research Consortium (BERC) is pleased to release its new report, Measuring School Climate: Using Existing Data Tools on Climate and Effectiveness to Inform School Organizational Health. An increasing awareness of the relationship between school climate and student outcomes is evident in conversations in the national media about suspensions and safety, and schools Read more about The Baltimore Education Research Consortium Releases New Report[…]
A new report from Urban Teacher Residency United looks at the inner workings of two highly effective urban teacher residency programs, Aspire Teacher Residency in California and the Denver Teacher Residency. Building Effective Teacher Residencies is the most comprehensive look at the inner workings of successful residency programs to date, sharing findings from a year Read more about Building Effective Teacher Residencies[…]
Members of the Council of Chief State School Officers and the Council of the Great City Schools said recently they will work to decrease the number of tests students take in elementary and secondary schools. The groups will form a task force to identify and eliminate unnecessary assessments. In a survey of its 67 member Read more about Do students take too many tests in their school career?[…]
The U.S. Education Department has recently rolled out another phase in its quest to ensure that lower income students have similarly excellent teachers as their higher income peers. What is the research behind the push for equitable distribution of teacher effectiveness? What are the issues and complexities of this work? In this month’s issue brief, Read more about October Issue Brief: Access to Effective Teachers[…]