When Kristie Autrey became curriculum director for Mitchell County School District in North Carolina, and learned the state had partnered with Learning Ally, she jumped at the chance to implement it. Learning Ally is a nonprofit library of high-quality, human-read audiobooks and a suite of teacher and student resources that integrates into the school instruction […]
Parents rate family and community engagement as the most important driver of satisfaction with their child's school—but districts frequently fail to offer them a voice in the education system, according to a recent study from Rice University. Of 7,200 public school parents surveyed, only 34 percent said they were "very satisfied" with family and community […]
Students in seventh-grade math classes are not necessarily ready for seventh-grade math. They may be rusty in concepts taught in sixth grade, or ready for high-level applications covered in high school. That is why the ALEKS¬Á personalized learning program from McGraw-Hill Education is an integral part of the math curriculum in Oak Creek-Franklin middle schools, […]
At the fast-growing Manor Independent School District located outside of Austin, Texas, over 38 percent of students are English language learners. These students are expected to master the same standards as their native English-speaking peers. Meredith Roddy, Director of Bilingual and ESL Programs, is tasked with closing the achievement gap between ELL students and native […]
The Valley Day School in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, a special education school, has introduced augmented reality to enhance students' social asset and science curriculum learning as well as to offset high frustration levels and emotional outbursts. When the school's computer lab was updated in 2017, included were prepared lessons that can be tailored to individual […]
How closely is professional development linked to student achievement? Professionalism expects learning to be in the collective. We should think of our own learning and growth as part of a mutually beneficial ongoing professional development process. A big part of that idea is that we share and become more transparent in our practice as educators. […]
Timothy Collier has been teaching high school mathematics for more than 30 years, most of them at McAlester High School in southeast Oklahoma, where he is the department chair. State budget cuts have affected McAlester High School and the district's eight other schools, especially in the area of professional development for teachers, who were facing […]
How does children's play behavior on school and community playgrounds contribute to physical, social, emotional and cognitive development? Physical activity offers rich opportunities for different types of movement patterns. It helps children with balance and coordination, muscle strength and endurance, and sensory motor development. When children are engaged in social, imaginary play, they are creating […]
David Liss was seeing a unique challenge when it came to implementing 1-to-1 technology for the 6,200 students in Nixa Public Schools, one of the top-performing districts in Missouri. "One of the things that kept coming up for us was there wasn't data to support the premise that 1-to-1 technology increased student performance" says Liss, […]
The past two decades have seen 1-to-1 computing grow in popularity, with school districts across the country deploying millions of laptops and tablets to students, excited by their potential to enhance learning. But unfortunately, with the trend came the reality that many school systems didn't adequately plan, prepare for or sustain their 1-to-1 initiatives, and […]
