To support efforts for a transformational kindergarten year, the U.S Department of Education (Department) is launching a multistate community of practice: Kindergarten Sturdy Bridge Learning Community. State educational agencies (SEAs)and local educational agencies (LEAs) will have the opportunity to participate in peer learning, receive technical…

There is enormous urgency to actively develop sound plans that address equity, social and emotional well-being, and academic excellence in schools. This blueprint is founded on the belief that all students can succeed when learning is supported by equitable systems. To achieve equity, individuals and systems must truly value all students and their…

The editors offer Six Promising Principles to guide successful practice by social work educators in international settings, including research, travel and study programs, technical assistance and training, and interdisciplinary efforts. These principles inform the content, which illuminates the specific role of U.S. social work educators in…

Educators and policymakers have increasingly turned their attention--and $2.8 billion in funding-- to community school strategies as a way to mitigate the learning of the COVID-19 pandemic. A healing-centered community school implements a whole child approach to teaching and learning to address the fundamental physiological and safety needs of…

In this "FastFacts," a state requested recommendations about research and practical resources to inform technical assistance conducted with state education staff on formative assessment. The Center on Enhancing Early Learning Outcomes (CEELO) responds by describing what is currently known on this topic. Formative assessment is one key…

With this new tool, ACTA [American Council of Trustees and Alumni] is working to expand its outreach to governors nationwide on behalf of higher education reform, focusing on key issues of quality, cost, and accountability. ACTA has worked with governors and education leaders from across the country, and that experience has proven that innovative…

The Race to the Top--Early Learning Challenge (RTT-ELC) discretionary grant program supports states in building statewide systems that raise the quality of Early Learning and Development Programs and increase access to high-quality programs for children with high needs, so that all children enter kindergarten ready to succeed. This document is a…

The reasons minority students are subject to exclusionary discipline more often than others are varied, but many experts agree that they often have little to do with the students themselves. Large rates of suspensions and expulsions tend to result from discipline policies in need of revision that are exacerbated by numerous administrators and…

The Bradley PDS Partnership, about which we report in this article, was established in 1995 to promote academic and professional development for P-12 students, pre-professionals, practitioners, and professors. For twenty years, the partnership has been generously funded by the William T. Kemper Foundation-Commerce Bank, Trustee. In a grant…

To what extent school improvement processes can be initiated and sustained from the outside has been a relevant question for policy-makers seeking to increase quality in education. Since 2008, the Chilean Government is strongly promoting the use of external technical support (ETS) services to support school improvement processes, as part of the…

Thirty exemplary 4th-grade teachers in six states were interviewed to determine the factors that influenced their development. The teachers cited three influences on their development: specific kinds of professional development, collegial support, and a sense of engaged autonomy. They valued professional development that provided a systematic way…

In this article, James J. Gallagher proposes that understanding the political issues and the debate surrounding the education of gifted students is based on the recognition that education policy (including rules, regulations, financial allocations, etc.) reflects social policy. Hence, society prioritizes needs so that the most important of these…

The ascendance of large-scale disasters, catastrophes, and traumas as a concentrated focus of academic inquiry in counseling psychology is timely, and this special issue and subsequent investigations represent welcome areas of scholarship. The observations and comments herein salute the authors for responding to a post-Katrina discovery by…

One objective of the U.S. Department of Education's (ED) School Improvement Grants (SIG) and Race to the Top (RTT) program is to help states enhance their capacity to support the turnaround of low-performing schools. This capacity may be important, given how difficult it is to produce substantial and sustained achievement gains in low-performing…

This is the second brief in a series, "Building a Post-Care Service System in Child Welfare: Lessons Learned from the Frontlines of Implementation Science in Catawba County." This brief describes how implementation science principles informed technical assistance strategies used in Catawba County to support the full and effective use of…