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 […]
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 […]
Try to stay calm. Don't start cursing. Keep your hands off the cops. But know that you have rights—like remaining silent, dissenting to a search and taking note of witnesses. Such knowledge can prevent police interactions from escalating out of control when teenagers get pulled over for a motor vehicle stop or otherwise encounter law […]
New teaching techniques and learning technology top the agenda at this fall's conference of the National Council for the Social Studies. Technology is quickly becoming a popular tool in social studies classrooms as teachers find ways to make history come alive for their students, who simultaneously learn about content and improve their technology skills, says […]
"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 project for young children with physical challenges enabled a group of high school students in Howard County Public Schools' allied health and engineering academies to tailor motorized miniature cars to improve accessibility for some of the district's preschool students. "We wanted to empower our little ones to experience new things in school while creating […]
State Sen. Julie Morrison of Illinois sponsored a law requiring students in all driver's ed classes to receive instruction on how to interact with a police officer during a traffic stop. The goal is to teach them how to respond properly when pulled over, and help them avoid panicking or doing anything that might escalate […]
The 2015 passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) reverses the trend of federal authority over K12 education. The new law returns state and local authority to levels that have not been seen in decades. One of biggest changes is that ESSA increases fund transferability for key federal programs. Under NCLB, state and local […]
When the Office of Special Education Programs revised its accountability operation in 2014 to shift the balance from a system focused on compliance to one that emphasizes results, we wondered how it would impact us at the local level. Would this Results Driven Accountability framework be just another set of requirements to implement, or would […]
The Duval County School Board reconceived six schools to focus on early learning, autism, arts, military leadership and advanced studies. Last summer, Superintendent Nikolai Vitti spearheaded the program and boundary changes to improve low performance and offer stronger educational options to attract students back to traditional public schools. "Clearly, we have communities and parents that […]
