Pre-K programs for students with special needs vary widely in quality and scope. Some states and districts have long included students with special needs in pre-K classes alongside their more typically developing peers.
Editor’s note: DA’s new HR column will appear quarterly There is a kind of professional development that we rarely see but that many of us in school leadership could use. Some would call it coaching or mentoring, but what I’m describing is more specific—individualized instruction in an alternative setting off campus. I had just such […]
Barely 5 miles from the hustle and bustle of LaGuardia Airport in Queens, students at John Browne High School in Flushing are plowing and tilling a field, tending to chickens and picking apples to sell. While John Browne is the only New York City high school with a dedicated agriculture department, many other urban schools—such […]
Andrew Smith, chief strategy officer in North Carolina’s Rowan-Salisbury School System, is leading a digital-first initiative that three years ago aimed to give an iPad or a MacBook Air to all students—and their teachers—from grades 3 through 12. Rowan-Salisbury became 1-to-1 by the 2014-15 school year. Three years into a digital-first initiative, Andrew Smith, chief strategy […]
School district leaders in the southern United States looking to tackle equity challenges have some help on the way. Administrators who want to make changes, such as creating healthy eating initiatives or discipline reform, can apply for a fellowship designed to give them more effective resources to help eliminate racial and economic disparities across their […]
In some districts, the principal’s office may as well have a revolving door for its high turnover rate. According to one report, more than half of principals leave after three years, especially in urban areas. In 2011, the philanthropic Wallace Foundation launched a $75 million initiative to help six urban school districts cultivate effective school […]
School superintendency is a family business for the Prusators. Todd Prusator leads Community Consolidated School District 231 in a small community 70 miles west of Chicago. His two brothers, Bob and Jeff, also are Illinois superintendents, all within about 30 miles of each other in the northwest corner of the state. The three brothers, who […]
As we face a new year with a new president, Newsletter Editor Ariana Fine looked back on 2016 to consider the biggest and most influential stories in K12 education. Will they continue to be important in 2017? Will school leaders find better solutions? Will we see improvements? Here is a sample of what she found […]
Just a few years ago, CIOs—if they were involved in data analytics at all—would run a report, export it into an Excel document and create a chart or a graph to share with teachers and district leaders once a week, or at the end of each semester. Now it’s all about creating systems that aggregate […]
An Ohio student’s overdose in 2015 proved to be the final straw for Belpre School District Superintendent Tony Dunn. The communities surrounding the district had seen a high rate of opiate abuse over the past decade. As use trickled into schools, district leadership concluded that drug testing was necessary. Belpre High School enacted a mandatory […]
