Fostering strong relationships that break silos between learning and work and align skill-building opportunities across secondary, postsecondary, adult and professional levels is critical to building high-quality career pathways and learner-centered career preparation ecosystems. In this work, trust, common purpose and resources for sustainability…

Research has shown that traditional ways of promoting family involvement in school are often ineffective, especially among families whose approach does not align with the middle-class child-rearing practices embraced in many U.S. schools. To encourage greater family involvement, a Colorado school district is piloting a program in which educators…

Social distancing and school closures forced by the COVID-19 pandemic present extraordinary challenges for education. While the nation is just beginning to understand the impact of the last few months and what the months ahead will mean for students, families, and educators, the depth of students' connectedness to school and the quality of their…

Students, teachers, and school leaders are seeking flexibility and supports to enable powerful, personalized learning experiences both inside and outside of the traditional classroom. In personalized learning, instruction is tailored to each student's strengths, needs, and interests--including enabling student voice and choice in what, how, when,…

School district officials have faced the urgent task in recent years of ensuring that all schools, not just a lucky few, benefit from sure-footed leadership by professionals who know how to focus on instruction and improve it. The question boils down to this: How can districts develop a pipeline of great school principals? Research about a Wallace…

School district officials have faced the urgent task in recent years of ensuring that all schools, not just a lucky few, benefit from sure-footed leadership by professionals who know how to focus on instruction and improve it. The question boils down to this: How can districts develop a pipeline of great school principals? Research about a Wallace…

This manuscript describes a pilot project in which infants in Guam who refer on newborn hearing screening receive diagnostic audiological evaluation conducted by audiologists in Colorado over the Internet (telepractice). The evaluation is completed in real time using commercially-available software and personal computers to control the diagnostic…

In this article St. Vrain Valley (CO) School District (SVVSD) librarian, Holli Buchter describes what took place in the school libraries in the district when the newest elementary school, Red Hawk, opened its doors. Red Hawk asked and answered the question: "Is the Dewey Decimal Classification system still the best way for students to locate…

Under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, schools were held almost exclusively accountable for absolute levels of student performance. But that meant that even schools that were making great strides with students were still labeled as "failing," just because the students had not yet made it all the way to a "proficient" level…

From her first encounter with stereoscopic 3D technology designed for classroom instruction, Megan Timme, principal at Hamilton Park Pacesetter Magnet School in Dallas, sensed it could be transformative. Last spring, when she began pilot-testing 3D content in her third-, fourth- and fifth-grade classrooms, Timme wasn't disappointed. Students…

Monarch High School in Boulder, Colorado, is one of 25 schools piloting the High School of Business program, an accelerated business administration program developed by Columbus, Ohio-based MBA"Research" and Curriculum Center. This article describes the program which uses a heavily project-based pedagogy to teach a curriculum modeled…

The Gifted Kids Network is a Web-based, supplemental, gifted and talented programming model that includes standards-based classes, enrichment clusters, and affective programming. Students are encouraged to think critically and creatively and to question the material that is presented to them in order to meaningfully integrate topics covered into…

This brief introduces "Community Colleges Broadening Horizons through Service Learning," the American Association of Community Colleges' (AACC's) fifth national Learn and Serve America grant project and describes its grantee college programs. The goals of this grant project are to build on established foundations to integrate service…

The University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries used participatory management to reduce a special collections backlog. Without an increase in budget or staffing, technical and public services departments designed a pilot project to redeploy internal human resources in a collaborative manner. The process of backlog management is discussed.

Teachers in Denver recently approved a historic revision to the teachers' contract, in which compensation is linked, in part, to student success in the classroom. If voters fund the proposed contract in fall 2005, it could mark a new era in which teachers and communities formally accept a range of indicators that can be used to determine the…