When beginning kindergarten, Latino students are three months behind in math literacy when compared to their white peers, says a 2017 study conducted by Child Trends, a nonprofit research organization that works to improve the lives children and families. The study, "Making Math Count More for Young Latino Children" cites poverty in Latino households as […]
The Syracuse City School District serves more than 20,000 students across 34 schools, most of which have been classified by the New York State Education Department as either "priority" or "focus" schools. These schools have the overall lowest student academic performance on state assessments, persistently low graduation rates, and had shown little improvement. As educators, […]
The assessment that prospective principals must take to obtain an administrative license in 18 states may be a barrier to non-whites and urban educators, says a 2017 study. Researchers focused on the use of the School Leaders Licensure Assessment in Tennessee and found that the exam did not provide an effective performance screen. A team […]
Stacey McNinch-Curschman, the secondary curriculum director for Visalia USD in California, knew that as her district was ramping up its training efforts around Common Core standards for mathematics in 2013, as well as its own district-level curriculum changes, both administrators and teachers would need to be continually learning and improving themselves. "If we work effectively […]
District Administration welcomed education policy expert Robert Balfanz for this web seminar about what the last 10 years of research has found when it comes to improving the most challenged and lowest-performing schools, as well as the implications of the Trump administration and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos on these efforts. Balfanz is research professor […]
Seeking alternatives to expensive professional development that takes teachers out of their classrooms and requires substitutes, Madison County Public Schools in Virginia developed a solution. Teachers want relevant professional development to be available when they have time. They want choice and immediate feedback. The district needs effective PD that is incorporated into classrooms. As director […]
Educators want more effective ways to implement new teaching methods into lesson plans. The professional development market is advancing, offering flexible and sustainable solutions rather than one-off workshops, lectures and in-service programs. Many companies offer PD tools that show teachers how to embed lessons into learning management systems, so students have universal access to educational […]
In rural eastern Kentucky, teacher Jill Armstrong connects her high school students not just with towering historical figures, but also with real-live teens from schools on the other side of the world. Armstrong, who teaches 12th-grade world history at Greenup County High School in the Greenup County School District, partnered with the City School in […]
When Polk County Public Schools started its wellness program back in the late 1980s, the district hoped to get employees moving with weekend fun runs and weight-loss challenges. "Everybody thought it was fluff" says Debbie Zimmerman, who today manages the wellness program for the 96,000-student school district in Central Florida. "How are you going to […]
Learning social skills such as sharing and teamwork in preschool has become all the more critical as kindergarten has become more rigorous and focused on academic assessments, says Jenifer Cline, student services coordinator in Great Falls Public Schools in Montana. In the past, students learned to play cooperatively and to follow instructions in kindergarten. But […]
