When Amy Arbogash took the reins of the technology department at Verona Area School District in Wisconsin in 2017, it was in the middle of a multiyear shift to personalized instruction. Students were developing their own learning plans during the rollout of a 1-to-1 iPad program. That is why the district gave Arbogash the title […]
An externship program run by the Oklahoma State Department of Education expanded this summer, allowing K12 teachers to gain professional STEM experiences they can bring back to the classroom. During the pilot last year, teachers tested soil samples and worked in a concrete-making lab, among other activities, during a paid two-week externship at an Oklahoma […]
When Jeremy Baugh took over as principal at Lew Wallace School 107 in Indianapolis in 2014, half of his staff was new. The school had struggled with teacher retention, which was reflected in student success. Only 22 percent of kindergarten students were achieving at grade level. The school's 600 students come from 37 countries and […]
Barbers Hill ISD is a suburban district along the upper Texas Gulf Coast, and it was one of the first districts in the state with a 1-to-1 Chromebook program. Following some maintenance and repair issues with students who took their laptops home after school, Barbers Hill decided its 1-to-1 program would continue only in the […]
Coaching has surfaced as a key quality improvement strategy for early childhood instruction, according to a recent report by Bellwether Education Partners. District administrators have hired full-time, in-house coaches, some of whom had previously been in a PD or education leadership role. Coaching can be delivered in person, using email or a platform such as […]
Pressure to raise achievement test scores has become the driving force behind what is taught and how. Worse, the results from these tests reveal only a fraction of the overall picture of whether students are learning—and whether teachers are effective in their jobs, says Daniel Koretz. As one of the nation's foremost experts on education […]
When hiring teachers, districts are more likely to select better candidates if they use screening tools designed to align closely with actual classroom experiences and expectations, according to a recent study of Los Angeles USD undertaken by CALDER, an education policy arm of the American Institutes for Research. A hiring process that reflects specific classroom […]
I recently heard a friend ask his student a question that captures how parents and teachers should discuss future aspirations. The question was not "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Instead, he asked the boy, "What problems do you want to solve when you grow up?" Today's students will enter a […]
The small rural district of United Local Schools in northeast Ohio has seen its math scores increase in the eight years it has used Everyday Mathematics® in its elementary school classrooms. In 2015-16, the first school year in which all sixth-grade students had used Everyday Mathematics since kindergarten, those students scored 26.8 percentage points higher […]
