To help all students reach their potential, district leaders must ensure that every student has consistent access to excellent teaching. Opportunity Culture compensation and career path structures help make that possible, and this guide shows how. "Teacher Pay and Career Paths in an Opportunity Culture: A Practical Policy Guide" shows…

Charol Shakeshaft and Margaret Grogan have just finished a book called "Women and Educational Leadership" for a leadership series published by Jossey-Bass. For those engaged in the preparation and development of school leaders, women's leadership is thus recognized along with Distributed Leadership, Turnaround Leadership, Ethical…

In response to increased performance expectations, schools and districts are turning to nonsupervisory, school-based, instructional teacher leader roles to help improve teachers' instruction and enhance student learning. Increased opportunities to learn about teacher leadership may facilitate the implementation and institutionalization of…

Education researchers frequently seek out districts, schools, and teachers as partners for professional learning projects. They share their ambitious vision--a new model of professional learning that will support an empowered community, instructional improvement, and student achievement. The authors, along with other members of their research…

The Boone Hope Foundation has given away over $130,000 in gift cards, rent checks, and eyeglasses--all targeted to help students with emergency needs related to food, clothing, shelter, and healthcare in its rural Iowa community. This is the story of teachers from a typical Midwestern school--relatively small and certainly not affluent--who have…

While many books outline the attributes of successful school leaders, few describe how those traits manifest in daily practice. "The Daily Practices of Successful Principals" goes beyond the outward picture of excellence and provides a compendium of daily practices used by successful principals in various settings. Written by former administrators…

Leadership by teachers is essential to serving the needs of students, schools, and the teaching profession. To that end, the Teacher Leadership Exploratory Consortium has developed Teacher Leader Model Standards to codify, promote, and support teacher leadership as a vehicle to transform schools for the needs of the 21st century. The Teacher…

Programs in teacher leadership have emerged as a growing number of teachers look to advance their careers and stay in the classroom. Exactly how many teacher-leadership degree programs exist is difficult to determine since no organization tracks them separately from other master's offerings in educational leadership. But a review of U.S. education…

Many school systems recognize that principals need instructional leadership partners because a principal's work is too large and complex for a lone, heroic individual. During the past several years, researchers from the Center for Teaching and Policy at the University of Washington have examined how principals are leading teaching and learning in…

Mathematics specialists play a significant, meaningful, and integral role in supporting elementary school teachers in this mathematically connected world. These teacher leaders (coaches, resource teachers, math leads, and so on) work closely with all members of the school community--students, teachers, and administrators--and have a range of…

The importance of teachers' influence is confirmed by a recent survey the author and his colleagues conducted of more than 300 teachers and administrators representing a mix of urban, rural, and suburban schools. In analyzing responses to an open-ended question about the greatest influences on respondents' professional practice, they found that…

In Oakwood City School District, differentiation is--and has been for a number of years--their primary academic goal. In Oakwood, the Core Team, a group of teacher leaders and administrators that has been instrumental in the implementation of differentiation, has used Tomlinson's (2007) "fire and light" metaphor to identify strategies to ensure…

Collaborative inquiry groups, such as professional learning communities and lesson study groups, are proliferating in schools across the United States. In whatever form, the potential for impacting student learning through this collaborative work is expanded or limited by the nature of teachers' conversations. Polite, congenial conversations…

Since PreK-12 student achievement is the primary focus of schools, all teachers are called to serve as teachers leaders and improve learning on their campuses. Rather than waiting until they have gained experience, teachers can begin acquiring the knowledge, skills, and dispositions of teacher leaders during their preservice programs. Drawing upon…

Teachers have the greatest school-based effect on the achievement of any child in their classrooms, but highly effective principals can positively affect the achievement of every student in their schools. The difference between a highly effective principal and an average one is equal to two-to-seven months of extra learning per year for each child…