Student Success

When Heidi Sipe, superintendent of Oregon’s poor, rural Umatilla School District, asks her elementary-age students what they want to be when they grow up, she no longer gets the answers she once did: football player, firefighter, nurse. Now the students tell her they want to be engineers. Sipe attributes the change to the district’s four-year-old […]

Kaya Henderson will step down in September as chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools after serving in the position for more than five years. She says she will spend time with family before considering other offers in education, published reports state. During Henderson’s tenure, the once-troubled district has stabilized and seen marked improvements […]

Meeting students’ psychological needs, improving STEM programs and fueling college and career access exemplify innovative solutions increasing student achievement nationwide. The 24 school systems honored in this round of District Administration’s Districts of Distinction national recognition program found creative ways to raise graduation rates and to build up administrative effectiveness. These districts, representing 16 states […]

Beth Schiavino-Narvaez has led Hartford Public Schools in Connecticut for two years. But it’s been two decades since a landmark state court case—Sheff vs. O’Neill—ruled that Hartford schools had violated the U.S. Constitution by isolating children based on race and socioeconomics. And despite new budget woes, Schiavino-Narvaez continues to fight for better schools. The school […]

Technology is a vital part of students’ lives: 92 percent of teens say they go online daily and 24 percent say they are logged in “almost constantly” according to a 2015 report by the Pew Research Center. Most of that involves social media (Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram), which is sometimes used to bully, make […]

In Florida, parents flock to after-hours tours of the Hillsborough County Public Schools’ kitchens. In Arizona, the Facebook page dedicated to the food and nutrition department of the Chandler Unified School District has over 58,000 followers—more than the school system’s total enrollment. And all across the country, parents and students use smartphones to access school […]