Teacher residency programs (modeled after the clinical residency model in medical training) show great promise in helping local school systems build a highly capable and diverse teaching workforce. Jointly run by districts and nearby universities, these programs recruit teaching candidates, pair them with carefully selected mentor teachers, and…

Providing students with choice can be a powerful means of supporting student engagement. However, not all choice opportunities lead to improved student engagement. Teachers can increase the likelihood that students will value choice by analyzing how students associate feelings of autonomy, competence, and relatedness with the choice provided them.…

District administrators who want to build capacity for data use in schools may be well-served by starting in the central office. This case study of the Boston Public Schools shows how central office administrators can leverage their own data inquiry cycles to improve the ways they support schools in using data. Using the Data Wise Improvement…

The author reframes the concept of motivation through the observation of a student who is a recent immigrant and seems unmotivated because he is not doing well in his classes. Instead of a lack of motivation by the student, the author finds the system failing to engage the student by enacting four conditions of a motivational framework:…

Early college high school models are designed to encourage and assist traditionally underrepresented groups of students- low income, Latino, and African-American- to persist in and graduate from high school while earning college credit. Some of the models target high school dropouts, with the aim of helping them acquire the education and training…

This article reports on a study of teachers who have engaged in systematic research about their practice. It describes the inquiries of two urban teachers into challenges and dilemmas common to many who work with diverse groups of students. The accounts presented reveal how teachers are able to construct new knowledge about teaching when they…

There's been much commitment and extensive legislation intended to make schools inclusive for all students but not much real progress in improving student outcomes. The authors review and assess several schools that have succeeded at making schools inclusive and effective for all students, including those with disabilities and draw some inferences…

Half of all teachers might be moonlighting, working at a part-time job in addition to their main job as teachers, and that has consequences for their teaching jobs. Moonlighting interferes with their daily instruction and with their ability to collaborate with other educators. Moonlighting also can contribute to a less positive attitude about…

Case studies of two high schools that have been turned around from failing to successful show different ways in which failing high schools can be made to succeed. Both high schools concentrated on first helping incoming freshman, and both reforms were driven by data. They differed in staffing and the focus of their first year of reform.

Many low-income children do not have the opportunity to develop the computer skills necessary to succeed in our technological economy. Their only access to computers and the Internet--school, afterschool programs, and community organizations--is woefully inadequate. Educators must work to close this knowledge gap and to ensure that low-income…

The philosophies behind teachers education programs and the classrooms where their students have their field experiences may be very different, especially in elementary classrooms since passage of NCLB. For students at Berea College, an institution with a unique history and mission, the disconnect can interfere with the prospective teacher's…

The California history and social science standards-based reform has been touted as the "gold standard" for state history curricula. But the standards, framework, and tests that constitute this reform provide inconsistent and contradictory criteria for teaching and assessing history and social science. An examination of the political…

If school leaders are to bring about successful reform, they must thwart the forces that have conspired against it since the 19th century. In this article, the author identifies six "conspirators" against thoughtful school practice and offers practical suggestions for rooting them out. The six conspirators are: (1) The tendency to view schools as…

For the past few years the authors have worked in urban public elementary schools to implement literacy instruction that emphasizes higher-level reading, writing, and thinking, while also maintaining instructional focus on the skills of decoding, word recognition, and fluency. Their efforts have involved implementing an initiative called In2Books.…

Lesson study, the dominant form of professional development for teachers in Japan, has spread rapidly in the U.S. since 1999. In this article, the authors discuss the growth and success of lesson study at Highlands Elementary School in California's San Mateo-Foster City School District and identify conditions needed for scale-up. They also discuss…