This brief, cowritten by Heather Mattson Almanzán and Karen Kearney of the Leadership Initiative at WestEd, provides policy makers and practitioners with information about current principal-evaluation policies and systems in six states (U.S.). The information included in this policy brief provides snapshots rather than full details about the complex and very different policy contexts in the six states’ principal-evaluation systems. When available, web sources and addresses are provided so…
A Bill of Rights and Principles for Learning in the Digital Age
January 24, 2013EdSurge discusses a Bill of Rights and Principles, newly developed by a group of people passionate about learning, serving today’s students, and using every available tool to respond better to the needs of students in a global, interactive, digitally connected world....
Digital Content: What Does the Future Hold for Education Systems?
January 23, 2013GETideas.org hosted this GooglePlus hangout on the future of digital content. The online discussion featured a panel of education experts, including Nicole Allen, affordable-textbooks advocate, Student PIRGS; Una Daly, communication college outreach director, OpenCourseWare Consortium; and Cable Green, director of global...
Explaining Inequalities in School Achievement: A Realist Analysis
January 22, 2013In Explaining Inequalities in School Achievement, author Roy Nash argues that a realist framework for the sociological explanation of educational group differences can, and must be, constructed. A move to such an explanatory framework will allow society to take into account the...
Education 3.0: Seven Steps to Better Schools
January 14, 2013In Education 3.0: Seven Steps to Better Schools, renowned educator and technology expert Jim Lengel provides a refreshing and hopeful picture of what schools should look like, including a groundbreaking seven-step process for envisioning and building them that draws on the...
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July 19, 2011In the 2007–08 school year, the New York City Department of Education and the United Federation of Teachers jointly implemented the Schoolwide Performance Bonus Program in a random sample of the city’s high-needs public schools. The program lasted for three school years, and its broad objective was to improve student performance through school-based financial incentives. The question, of course, was whether it was doing so. To examine its implementation…
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July 19, 2011In this November Learning podcast, Alan November speaks with Dr. Eric Williams, superintendent of the Yorktown School Division in Yorktown, Virginia (U.S.). The two discuss the important role of a leader in setting policy, modeling the learning process, and encouraging expanded learning opportunities for students, teachers, and school administrators for the purpose of building a solid foundation for learning in a 21st-century school environment.
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July 18, 2011This RAND research brief notes that New York City’s Schoolwide Performance Bonus Program did not improve student achievement at any grade level, perhaps in part because it provided no significant additional motivation beyond other accountability incentives.
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July 18, 2011In this Salon piece, journalist David Sirota talks with Tony Wagner about how Finland has achieved extraordinary education successes by focusing on teaching and completely de-emphasizing testing. During the interview, Wagner answers questions around the supposed effect of Finland’s homogeneous population and the real effect of poverty gap.
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July 11, 2011In May 2003, the European Council of Ministers adopted a target of reducing the percentage of low-achieving 15-year-olds in reading by at least 20% by 2010. This target was not achieved; levels of reading literacy did not in fact show significant improvement over the decade, and no less than one in five 15-year-olds in Europe has very low reading skills. In light of these results, the Council has established…
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July 7, 2011
The Connected Principals blog explains precisely why technology in the classroom cannot be optional and cannot be simply an add-on, leading by asking readers to imagine a world in which doctors were “really not comfortable with technology,” and wondering why we tolerate this view from educators.
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July 7, 2011
In fall 2010, the National Association of Elementary School Principals Foundation (U.S.) convened a task force of leading researcers, policy makers, community organizers, and practitioners to examine strategies for building an aligned system for early learning. Recognizing that principals are increasingly responsible for young children in preschool, as well as kindergarten and the early grades, the foundation charged the task force with looking across the entire early-learning landscape to better inform the work of principals and other stakeholders.
