Superintendent Yolanda Valdez takes messaging seriously. Not emoji-filled texts or IMs, but messages that convey a goal for 4,000-plus students at Cutler-Orosi Joint USD in rural California: That they will attend college. Superintendent Yolanda Valdez takes messaging seriously. Not emoji-filled texts or IMs, but messages that convey a goal for 4,000-plus students at Cutler-Orosi Joint […]
K12 educators increasingly embrace life skills curricula that promote social-emotional learning, mindfulness, problem-solving and other soft skills. Many districts no longer view such programs as "nice to have" but as essential components of overall instruction. The growing emphasis on life skills is making an impact. In schools where students demonstrated significantly improved social and emotional […]
Marc Prensky, an authority on the connection between learning and technology, coined the phrase "digital native" in 2001. In his new book, Education To Better Their World: Unleashing the Power of 21st-Century Kids (2016, Teachers College Press), Prensky says our current education system is wrong for the future—not because we haven't added technology and so-called […]
It's no secret teachers are jumping ship in record numbers, and the dwindling numbers of incoming grads don't even come close to patching the gap as the demand for teachers rises. The Learning Policy Institute reported in 2016 that enrollment in teaching programs is down 35 percent nationwide (and has been for years), and the […]
Why is there such an emphasis on personalized learning today for K12? Educators want to work with students the way they learn best, and we know that one-on-one or small-group instruction is effective. But for the sake of efficiency, schools often employ the "factory" model to teach large numbers of students in a classroom, assuming […]
Schools that offer more comprehensive instruction, increase school safety and student health, and better integrate educational technology may be eligible for new federal funds. A new grant program from the U.S. Department of Education will reward schools that improve access to music, social studies, environmental education and computer science, as well as support college and […]
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 […]
Bigger paychecks offered by wealthier suburban districts sometimes lure teachers away from St. Louis Public Schools. But a promising solution to a teacher-housing problem faced by many districts has emerged out of another challenge confronting St Louis: a collection of more than two dozen vacant school buildings on the selling block. While big city districts […]
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 […]
Five years ago, Boston Public School's John Eliot School in the city's North End neighborhood was declared an innovation school. What that meant for principal Traci Walker-Griffith was more autonomy in choosing the elementary school's curriculum for her 570 students. One of the first curricular changes she made was bringing in Everyday Mathematics. School population […]
