Professional reading has long been a practice of leaders in many disciplines. Education is no exception. However, to be truly innovative, educational leaders can discover amazing professional insights in the areas of business, politics, psychology, sociology, technology and the military. Here is a list of non-education books that today's educational leaders recommend to their peers: […]
Parents rate family and community engagement as the most important driver of satisfaction with their child's school—but districts frequently fail to offer them a voice in the education system, according to a recent study from Rice University. Of 7,200 public school parents surveyed, only 34 percent said they were "very satisfied" with family and community […]
I believe in the validity of vocational programs. However, I do have concerns about the context of what is being taught to these students in a rapidly changing economy. Vocational education at the secondary level has a long and storied tradition in the history of the United States. It is an institutional framework that meets the needs […]
The past two decades have seen 1-to-1 computing grow in popularity, with school districts across the country deploying millions of laptops and tablets to students, excited by their potential to enhance learning. But unfortunately, with the trend came the reality that many school systems didn't adequately plan, prepare for or sustain their 1-to-1 initiatives, and […]
Describe preparation versus prevention when it comes to a school district's safety plan. You can only prepare for general incidents; you can't prepare for the specific. Preparing a safety plan gets everybody on the same page. Whether it's a bus accident, bomb threat or intruder alert, prevention comes through debriefing after an emergency occurs. You […]
One education researcher calls it "the academic death penalty": A grade of zero on a 100-point scale, a mark that spells disaster for a student's class average. "It's such an extreme score in a percentage grading system" says Thomas R. Guskey, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Kentucky. "To recover from that […]
Educators know that most dyslexic students will need interventions and accommodations throughout school, but best practices continue to evolve as more is learned about this reading disability.
In the Ventura USD in California, one low-achieving middle school at risk of closure was instead transformed into the De Anza Academy of Technology and the Arts (DATA), a high-achieving magnet school. A significant component in DATA's dramatic turnaround has been its innovative project-based and collaborative learning environments and makerspaces, which employ technology as a […]
Leaders know the necessity of upgrading digital devices. The longer we put it off, the more likely a system will fail. The upgrade is part of the modern digital world. The digital age brings a comparable call to action for administrators, who must upgrade their leadership brand. Maintaining trust is a key reason for a […]
When the New York City Department of Education announced in September that all public school students will now receive free lunch, it joined a growing number of cities around the country trying to ease food insecurity and end the phenomenon of "lunch shaming." Previously about three-quarters of the city's 1.1 million public school students qualified […]
