With many assessment mandates rolled out by Ohio in recent years, the 6,000-student Plain Local School District ended up in a challenging situation. "Like others in the state, each time a mandate came out, we fulfilled it with a new assessment," says Cassandra Sponseller, Director of Teaching and Learning and Director of Gifted Programs for […]
STEM and the City: A Report on STEM Education in the Great American Urban Public School System Information Age Publishing Author Clair T. Berube says the future of American STEM education is here and students would benefit from science education–if only they had the pertinent resources, support systems and psychological ownership. The country's security, reputation […]
Murky state policies leave administrators in the lurch as more parents opt their children out of Common Core testing, according to a March report from the Education Commission of the States. In many states, education departments remain silent on how districts should handle parent requests for opting students out of PARCC or Smarter Balanced testing, […]
Providing students with the right academic resources is crucial to their success. Whether it's finding printed books, e-books or other research materials, new software can help librarians organize materials and make them easy to find. The software also gives students access to these materials on phones, tablets and other mobile devices. Destiny Library Manager Follett […]
Several years ago, I attended a four-day training on instructional coaching at the University of Kansas, led by Jim Knight, an expert in the field. During this training, Knight presented a comprehensive model that can easily be implemented as part of internal professional development in schools. As the academic year began at Columbia Grammar and […]
When a classroom is sweltering, nobody is productive. More and more teaching days are being lost to hot, humid weather even though there is a way to mitigate the problem: air conditioning. The challenge is justifying the cost of installation and maintenance at a time when competition for budget money is fierce. The place to […]
It's crucial for today's students to develop foundational technology skills that can be applied to their core subject learning. To accomplish this goal, districts need to coordinate the efforts of technology and academic staff to embed digital learning into the curriculum. In this web seminar, originally broadcast on March 10, 2015, a district technology leader […]
Meriden, Connecticut, is a struggling, former industrial city, once known for its silver manufacturing, lamp producers, military product development, and automotive component assembly plants. We were both born there, to parents who had little more than each other and a dream for their children. We were poor. We were the statistic. Yet, just as we […]
When the District of Columbia Public Schools' Chancellor Kaya Henderson announced in 2012 the launch of an ambitious plan to transform our schools, we were all very excited, albeit a little nervous. But the plan to invest in struggling schools, and focus significant resources and attention to raise proficiency rates across the district, made our […]
No matter the grade or skill level, the newest mathematics tools and programs aim to make learning various math concepts an adventure. Being adaptive, engaging and fun, products try to meet the needs of individual students while aligning with the Common Core and other state standards. Here are some of the latest math tools in […]
