Years ago, it was easy for districts to ignore what high average daily-attendance numbers can conceal: kids, sometimes lots of them, who miss weeks of school every year. The 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act has changed that calculus. For the first time, the law requires states to report chronic-absenteeism rates, and more than two-thirds of […]

Recently, I reread Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, and I was struck by how he viewed success in the United States. We forget that much of individual success is built on hard work with a focus on what we enjoy doing. We see successful people and call them "lucky." Gladwell's stories about success impacted me as an […]

Today's most progressive language instruction covers more than speech. Educators now work to build students' fluency in the culture behind the words. Global competency, also called "interculturality" has emerged as a priority in districts seeking to develop students' understanding of both their own and other cultures, says Jacqueline Van Houten, world language instructional lead for […]

Leaders at Madison County Public Schools spent two years creating and improving tiered student support systems. For this work, we earned the Virginia Department of Education's Distinction in Implementation of Behavioral Interventions in 2017. We developed multilevel approaches to improve student academic performance, behavior and attendance. Teachers worked diligently to develop effective classroom systems by […]