Educators in Virginia's Fairfax County Public Schools intend to remove the obstacles that prevent students who have severe social anxiety from attending school, a phenomenon known as "school refusal behavior." The initiative, called Aspire, is housed at Quander Road School, a small district-run-and-funded therapeutic day program designed as an alternative setting for high school students […]
Jay County—a rural district in Indiana—has the highest child poverty rate (35 percent) in the state. We've suffered like most of the rural areas. While our unemployment rate is just a little over 4 percent, there aren't a lot of high-paying jobs. Many of them are low-level manufacturing and agriculture jobs, so people are leaving […]
Atlanta's film industry has in recent years boomed to third place behind Los Angeles and New York City, and incoming studios noted a major skills gap when looking for videographers, scene constructors, prop creators and costume designers. Leaders of Fulton County Schools in Georgia responded. Three years ago, administrators met with studio executives to develop […]
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 […]
"When do you do what?" The counselors at Mooresville High School of Mooresville Graded Schools near Charlotte, North Carolina, heard that question often from college-bound students during the fall application season. The college planning software the district used prior to spring 2016 helped the 1,876 Mooresville students prepare documents, but did not provide information or […]
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 […]
Illinois Sen. Kimberly Lightford sponsored a new state law that eliminates zero-tolerance discipline policies in schools. Designed to reduce the number of days students are restricted from classrooms for certain offenses, the legislation requires schools to explore other disciplinary options, such as counseling and extracurricular programs, before a student can be suspended more than three […]
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 […]
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 […]
