Like most districts, increasing the graduation rate is a top priority in the School District of Palm Beach County. And with 187 schools and 183,000 students, the Florida district has a large challenge. The key to tackling this issue is improving the quality of teaching, says Karen Whetsell, Assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning for […]
Principal selection has not significantly changed since the 1950's and is often unsystematic. While the role of the principal has evolved greatly over the last 60 years, the methods used for selection have remained stagnant. In the 1950's, principals' duties centered primarily on staffing and facility management. Today, school principals may be responsible for tens […]
Sir Ken Robinson's 2006 TED talk, "How Schools Kill Creativity," still ranks as the most watched video of the series, viewed more than 30 million times. In that presentation Robinson said that we are all born with immense natural talents, but by the time we've been through an education system, far too many of us […]
The U.S. public school system's focus on struggling students leaves high-achieversÁ'especially minorities, the economically disadvantaged and English-language learners Á'without a challenging enough education, experts say. A lack of federal funding and patchwork policies across states often leave decisions on identifying and serving gifted students to district administrators. An estimated 3 million to 5 million academically […]
Whether you have just begun your blended learning journey, or it is a path you have been traveling down for several years, it's important to stay dynamic and reflective on your practice in order to ensure that your blended initiative is having a positive impact on student success. In this web seminar, originally broadcast on […]
A living, breathing teacher is the best tool to assess a written essay. However, DA found a few tools that can do almost the same job, pointing out narrative, organization and purpose of an essay. We used an authentic essay that a fifth-grade girl in Connecticut wrote about her very big mastiff dog named Bam […]
Students in Port Angeles School District in Washington get a taste of the real world of science from their local river. For the past 10 years, they have been working like true scientists collecting and analyzing data gathered from the Elwha River, which is in nearby Olympic National Park near the Pacific coast. Between 2011 […]
Transforming school libraries into communal learning "playgrounds" offers students technology support, remote access to research resources and expanded opportunities for creative exploration. Librarians can collaborate with teachers to develop lesson plans that incorporate a multifunctional library's media programs, books and other online resources. For instance, students in a history class at New Canaan High School […]
Principals shifting their roles from building manager to instructional leader need more extensive PD to ensure top performance from teachers and students, according to a new policy brief from ASCD. Race to the Top's requirements linking teacher evaluations to student test scores is largely responsible for the change in the principal's responsibilities, says Susan Race, […]
Millions of students took Common Core tests this springÁ'and while it was business as usual in many districts, the spreading opt-out movement left some administrators caught between concerned parents and state requirements. The largest opt-out numbers are from New York, where by mid-April over 177,000 students had refused to take Common Core math and ELA […]
