The Innovative Assessment Demonstration Authority (IADA) program, written into the Every Student Succeeds Act, gives up to seven state educational agencies the opportunity to launch innovative assessment pilots in their public schools, with the goal of eventual statewide implementation. As of August 2020, the U.S. Department of Education had…

As originally envisioned, charter schools were intended to be laboratories of innovation. Offered broad flexibility in exchange for performance-based accountability, they were well-positioned to test, validate, and adopt new practices in a public school environment. Thus far, however, charter schools have only partly delivered on this mission.…

The move to online instruction and service delivery has created both a critical need and a unique opportunity to investigate the innovative uses of technologies and practices. In the fall of 2020, NASPA launched the Virtual Innovation Awards: Excellence in Delivering Virtual Student Services. Over 100 submissions were vetted by an advising…

School districts across the country have long been finding ways to give greater autonomy to schools, theorizing that providing school leaders with authority over the decisions that most directly affect their students will enable them to better meet students' needs and, in turn, improve student outcomes. Charter schools, which are public schools…

NuVu is an off-the-grid, independent "micro-school" in Massachusetts, whose 60 students are stretching the boundaries of what constitutes education in America. Instead of switching between subject-driven classes that teach a common curriculum, they follow a fluid schedule in two-week blocks, and apply math, reading, problem-solving, and…

Last spring's sudden shift to remote learning in response to the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted K-12 education in an unprecedented way. Upon Education Secretary Betsy DeVos's waiver of federally mandated state testing for spring 2020, it also triggered the first nationwide break in state testing in half a century. With students returning to school…

Almost immediately after schools closed due to the coronavirus outbreak in spring 2020, we began to see anecdotal evidence that charter schools were reacting quickly and serving students well. This paper offers evidence that smaller networks and schools that represent over 65% of the charter school landscape were able to respond quickly and take…

This article presents a case for the benefits of knowledge exchange in the academic library. The authors define knowledge exchange and use the concept as a framework for describing a peer learning experience rooted in best digital practices education. Their partnership enabled the authors to extend their professional roles while developing…

The squeeze for time to plan lessons and complete other administrative tasks shapes a school's professional environment and, ultimately, affects the quality of instruction. As teachers are largely separate from other educators during instruction, lack of time for collaboration can be very isolating. More than half of lower secondary school…

This article describes the use of student feedback questionnaires by history teacher license candidates in a classroom-based approach called "Conferring with Students." During the past five years, at a large public university in Massachusetts, 125 teacher candidates wrote their own feedback surveys, received responses from more than…

Precious moments in life for an educator are taking time to reflect upon his or her teaching practices to evaluate effectiveness and overall impact. Often this reflection is a weekly if not a daily process for educators using a reflective practitioner model (SchÖn, 1983). For professors, many universities have opportunities for tenured faculty to…

The report on which this brief is based describes performance assessments and their value for guiding and evaluating high school students' learning, as well as informing colleges and universities about what students know and can do. It explores state and local policies that support the use of such assessments, along with emerging higher education…

In 2014, the Springfield Public School district in Massachusetts had tried just about every strategy in the turnaround playbook to improve a set of struggling middle schools, but these efforts failed to generate the desired improvement. In 2015, drawing inspiration from national efforts to infuse schools with enhanced autonomy and accountability,…

Living-learning communities combine curricular, co-curricular, and residential components of college life. They are a relatively new variation on the residential education that has been part of the undergraduate experience at America's independent colleges and universities for centuries. Research suggests that living-learning communities have a…

Creative Youth Development (CYD) is a long-standing practice that fuels students' potential by intentionally integrating creative skill-building, inquiry and expression with positive youth development principles. In CYD programs, young people create original work through arts experiences and apply their creative skills to solve problems. These…