A focus on teaching social-emotional skills—persistence, resilience, communication and other non-cognitive abilities—has led to an obvious jump in reading and math scores in Nevada's Washoe County School District. Washoe's students are now "less likely to be suspended, more likely to attend school, and they graduate at a much higher rate than students who didn't have […]
Here are three approaches to social-emotional learning Washoe County Schools, Nevada District social-emotional learning standards address five crucial competencies—self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills and decision-making. The district has defined indicators for development in each area, such as "demonstrates knowledge of personal strengths, challenges and potential." Each school in the district has a social-emotional learning […]
In a perfect world, every child would have access to food, shelter and clothing. They would have loving, attentive parents. They would arrive at school eager, focused and ready to learn. Unfortunately, our pre-K through 5 school, like a growing number of U.S. public schools, does not reside in that world. At Highland View Elementary […]
For centuries now, we have come to believe that there is only one way for students to learn—come to school, sit at a desk, be taught by a teacher, and be tested. We’ve operated schools as if they were industrial factories, with teaching and learning practices that mimic assembly-line and batch-processing manufacturing. But we can […]
For decades, the J. Sterling Morton High School District in the Chicago suburbs was in bad shape. It had a gang problem. Some students underperformed on state tests and were no longer accepted to their first-choice colleges. And the district faced a deficit of millions of dollars. In 2008, when Michael Kuzniewski became superintendent, he […]
Four years of development in Michigan has produced an arts platform where educators can share a curriculum and better methods for assessing student work. The instructional materials align with state and national standards, including the Every Student Succeeds Act, which emphasizes the arts as part of a "well-rounded education." Arts can teach students valuable soft […]
When Christopher Marczak joined Maury County Public Schools in Tennessee as superintendent in fall 2015, he quickly realized that while every school in his district of 12,000 students was doing the best job possible, each had a vastly different approach to teaching literacy. "There were no systemic solutions" says Marczak. "Yet I wanted to get […]
Social emotional learning helps students learn the coping skills critical for dealing with themselves, other people and their schoolwork. While SEL has become more mainstream over the past few years, you have been researching it since the mid-1970s. What piqued your early interest? In those years, we did a lot of work with at-risk populations. […]
By revamping the much-maligned No Child Left Behind law of 2001 with the Every Student Succeeds Act in 2015, the federal government gives states more control over their own school accountability standards. Under ESSA, lawmakers maintained annual NCLB testing. But teachers' unions had sought to eliminate the "highly qualified teachers" provision, which ESSA did. It's […]
Educational publishers say they understand the draw of free or one-off materials for purchase online. But they caution administrators: Just because you can build a car from parts and tutorial videos from the internet, it doesn't mean it makes sense. Many publishers employ experts who have doctorates in instructional and curriculum design—which they say is […]
