Curriculum & Instruction

Whether and how religion should be taught in public schools is one of those perennial hot buttons in America that seems to defy consensus. So when the National Council for the Social Studies this past June released new guidelines for teaching religion in schools, it raised questions. The council’s goal, however, was not to simply […]

The race to offer a rigorous pre-college curriculum to K12 students, even in elementary school, is heating up, with the move by one of the nation’s largest districts to introduce a curriculum of international standards to its students in grade 3 through 5 this fall. Florida’s Collier County school district, with 47,000 students, will use […]

Eighth-graders in Maine in the 2017-18 school year will be the first to adhere to proficiency-based standards. The initiative is the latest implementation phase of a 2012 state law requiring standards-based assessment by 2021. Under the law, districts have leeway in how to best provide support for students in achieving proficiency. Students can expect to […]

Public educators find themselves in something of a Catch-22 situation these days. When we celebrate the great things that are going on in our schools, we are told that we are simply slaves to the status quo who don’t recognize the struggles that our system is facing. When we articulate the challenges that our schools […]

District leaders and experts weigh in on the four steps to having a successful intervention. – Plan ahead. Every system drifts. Perform regular audits of your intervention system. “If you want to have any initiative survive, you need to plan forward.” — Jim Wright, author and RtI trainer Link to main story: Intervention strategies evolve […]

More than a decade after Response-to-Intervention and Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) took root on school campuses across the country, multi-tier strategies have become the standard for identifying and assisting struggling students. Yet, the way educators use these and similar systems continues to evolve. Educators now understand far more about the neuroscience of learning […]