Curriculum & Instruction

A leading gifted-and-talented expert once believed the number of students who performed above grade level was between 5 and 15 percent. But a new study shows the number is much higher, says the expert, Jonathan Plucker, a National Association for Gifted Children board member. The analysis, conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, revealed that […]

A new series of toolkits designed to help administrators meet next-generation high school standards has been released by the Alliance for Excellent Education, a national education policy and advocacy organization for underserved secondary school students. The toolkits (available for free download as PowerPoint documents) de-mystify the Every Student Succeeds Act, explaining many of the law’s […]

Facing a ballooning teacher shortage in recent years, Clark County School District in Nevada launched a social media and email recruiting strategy, sending messages to self-identified school teachers over LinkedIn and reaching more than 2.5 million on Facebook. “When you have a staffing crisis, you have to come up with something different to do” says […]

Alaska recently graduated its first class of Russian dual-language students who began the program in kindergarten. That’s just one example of the growing diversity of language-immersion programs in U.S. schools. While Spanish remains a constant, there is an increased demand nationally for dual-language programs in Portuguese, German, French and Mandarin, says Pete Swanson, president of […]

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 […]

Teacher Ron Hustvedt is selling a smart product. In his classroom at the Salk STEM Magnet School in Elk River School District in Minnesota, Hustvedt encourages his history students to buy into his brand of inquiry-based learning. This year’s National Council of the Social Studies Outstanding Teacher of the Year at the middle school level […]