For most school districts, internet filters are crucial for complying with the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which requires restricting students from accessing inappropriate online content. Filtering also allows districts to manage limited bandwidth. At West Rusk County Consolidated ISD in East Texas, for example, too many people running too many applications at once was […]
What sets your school apart from thousands of other schools in the country, or even the others in your district? Former educator and now marketing consultant Trish Rubin says it's up to school leaders to become the "storyteller-in-chief" by defining their school's brand. Rubin provides a step-by-step framework to the nuances of spreading good school […]
The PTA at an elementary school on New York's Upper East Side raised nearly $1 million in one school year—about $1,260 per student. In a wealthy suburb of Boston, an elementary school PTA brought in $1,680 per student that same year, while a Washington, D.C., school's PTA intake totaled $2,220 per student. These extreme cases […]
In his previous book, How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity and the Hidden Power of Character, journalist Paul Tough looked at how non-cognitive personal qualities like perseverance, self-control and conscientiousness play a critical role in children's success. Now, in the follow-up to that book, Helping Children Succeed: What Works and Why (2016, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), Tough […]
If you want to know what motivates students—and teachers and administrators, for that matter—Russell Quaglia says you have to go to the source. Quaglia has spent years collecting information about "school voice"—that is, what these three groups think about their schools. The latest incarnation of this work is the Student Voice Survey. With different versions […]
The amount and variety of payments that come into a district can be overwhelming to those who manage school funds. Fees are collected for different purposes and are routed to different places, and many districts still accept only cash or check as payment. There can be a large administrative burden in keeping these varied funds […]
In the 2013-14 school year, there were more than 1.3 million homeless students, a 7 percent increase from the previous year and more than double the number in 2006-07. While that number is troubling, researchers believe it's only the tip of the iceberg. Erin Ingram, chief author of "Hidden in Plain Sight: Homeless Students in […]
In Florida, parents flock to after-hours tours of the Hillsborough County Public Schools' kitchens. In Arizona, the Facebook page dedicated to the food and nutrition department of the Chandler Unified School District has over 58,000 followers—more than the school system's total enrollment. And all across the country, parents and students use smartphones to access school […]
The internet delivers assessments, videos and instructional content to schools, so why not phone service, too? Adding voice to the bandwidth communications stream makes sense to an increasing number of district leaders who are swapping traditional landlines for Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). VoIP runs on broadband and Wi-Fi connections so people can make calls […]
