Teachers, curriculum experts, and other educators work together using online tools developed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to create high-quality, useful lessons and research-based instructional tools incorporating the Common Core State Standards.

Annually, ACT provides a snapshot of the college and career readiness of ACT-tested high school graduates. This report is offered as a service to inform policymakers and practitioners about selected indicators of effectiveness and how that translates into readiness. It is designed to stimulate discussion, inquiry, and action. This report is…

This guide is designed to provide guidance to New York state school districts and teachers to help students achieve the music standards. Teachers throughout New York state met to compile these field-tested lesson plans, teaching strategies, assessments, and resources for teachers of students in pre-kindergarten through grade 12, in all areas of…

These New York State performance standards focus on: (1) personal health and fitness (students will have the necessary knowledge and skills to establish and maintain physical fitness, participate in physical activity, and maintain personal health); (2) a safe and healthy environment (students will acquire the knowledge and ability necessary to…

The English as a Second Language (ESL) standards articulate the abilities and competencies that Limited English Proficient (LEP) and English Language Learners (ELLs) must demonstrate to successfully integrate into the English academic mainstream. The standards combine the principles of second language learning with the language development…

New York State has embarked on a major effort to enhance the quality of public schooling. All schools must develop curricula ensuring that students meet minimal performance standards and provide remedial programs for those who do not. Because many school districts with low enrollments or low wealth are having difficulty complying with Board of…

Essential to the definition of an effective school is an operational definition of minimum academic mastery as the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and concepts that enable the student to be demonstrably successful in the next grade level in the same school or in any other school in the United States. An effective schools program, such as the one…

Teacher and administrator responses to the Connecticut School Interview, conducted as part of the Spencerport (New York) More Effective Schools/Teaching Project, indicate that there are a number of correlates which can be considered areas of strength, and that steady improvement has occurred in installing correlates in each building and in…

Although the topic of effective schools is a popular one among today's educators, researchers, and publishers, there still is no commonly agreed upon definition of an effective school. One definition given by Ronald Edmonds and Lawrence Lezotte is notably precise, measurable, attainable, and easy to determine. They defined an effective school as…

This report presents the results of a three-year educational partnership that supports a unique interdisciplinary team approach to professional development. The Sage Colleges collaborated with two school districts (City School District of Albany and Niskayuna Central School District) to enable educators to align content and standards; draw upon a…

This guide, "a work in progress," is one of a series designed to serve as companion documents for the New York state learning standards defined for each major curriculum area. It is intended to establish a connection between the state-mandated learning standards and classroom instruction and to further elaborate on the standards that…

Ways in which teachers can use the guidelines set out in "Standards for Foreign Language Learning: Preparing for the 21st Century" (Standards) to design classroom instruction are discussed. The Standards document is explained, some misconceptions about it are examined, its relevance for the classroom teacher is explored, and examples are…

This report presents the results of a three-year educational partnership that supports a unique interdisciplinary team approach to professional development. The Sage Colleges collaborated with two school districts (City School District of Albany and Niskayuna Central School District) to enable educators to align content and standards; draw upon a…

This document outlines the major points of the first annual status report of the Spencerport (New York) More Effective Schools/Teaching Project. Section 1 contains a list of 15 basic principles and assumptions upon which the project is based. Section 2 presents three conclusions drawn at the end of the first year and a half of the project. First,…

This document is the second annual status report of the Spencerport (New York) More Effective Schools/Teaching Project. Section 1 describes six documents developed during the project; identifies persons participating in the project; reports that the effective schools research is applicable at all levels of a suburban school system; reports that…