Learning Forward's Professional Learning State and District Planner is a guide to help state, district, and school leaders implement professional learning to support high-quality curriculum and instructional materials. Grounded in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) definition of high-quality professional learning as intensive, data-driven,…

The California Next Generation Science Standards (CA NGSS) Toolkit for Instructional Materials Evaluation (TIME) is a suite of tools and processes for evaluating and selecting instructional materials aligned with the CA NGSS. This 11th report in the NGSS Early Implementers Initiative evaluation series is intended for school and district…

This is the second of three whitepapers on designing curricula for diversity. It provides the step-by-step process for using the Equity and Inclusion for Curriculum Design (EI-CD). Additionally, it describes how the framework can be used to design and adapt STEM+CS [science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and computer science] curriculum…

Project SYNC (Systems, Yoked through Nuanced Collaboration) details perspectives of a community of stakeholders committed to the enhancement of early childhood (i.e., prekindergarten through grade 3) education. Although there is a growing number of public-school programs informed by the Montessori philosophy, Montessori educational experiences…

Main idea and summary are essential elements of reading comprehension. We report results from Grades 4 and 5 student performance on two years of state-mandated standardized reading testing which indicate that students perform statistically significantly lower on main idea and summary questions on the tests than any other question category. In this…

The objective of this study is to better understand the process by which K-12 school districts select curricula materials in four critical subject areas: Mathematics, English Language Arts, Science, and History and Social Studies. This research has two primary goals: (1) to understand the process by which K-12 school districts select and adopt…

In this qualitative research project, I investigated curricular decision making and the relationship among teacher philosophies, textbook materials, and classroom practice. Participants included 5 experienced 5th-grade teachers who used a comprehensive social studies textbook package, "History Alive! America's Past". Information was…

This report summarizes results from Spring 2014 focus groups held with a sample of Austin Independent School District dual language program classroom teachers to find out their opinions about the dual language program.

This study describes key challenges and necessary supports related to implementation of the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM) identified by rural math educators in the Northeast. The research team interviewed state and district math coordinators and surveyed teachers in Maine, New Hampshire, New York and Vermont, to assess their…

Concerned about the persistently high dropout rates from big-city secondary schools, education leaders are trying a new approach to increasing the graduation rate--multiple pathways to graduation. Multiple pathways initiatives are relatively new and far from proven. Even the most advanced examples face significant issues, i.e., the need to…

This Facilitator's Guide is based on What Education Leaders Should Know about Virtual Education, an online course designed by the Center on Instruction and the New England Comprehensive Center. The Facilitator's Guide demonstrates step-by-step how to build the course on a learning management system (LMS) and provides instructions on all phases of…

The Legal Education Goals and Learning (LEGAL) project in the Dade County Public Schools, Florida, is an elective course for students in grades 7-12. Because extensive annual evaluations of this project since 1976 had been extremely favorable, the size and scope of the 1984-85 evaluation was reduced. It investigated the extent to which LEGAL…

This paper examines the development of computer software in the United States and the processes used by school districts to evaluate software for purchase. Topics considered include major software development trends, development criteria, and production costs; software selection and evaluation, including selection processes, and evaluation and…

This report describes a 1979 survey of 389 Iowa school districts which was conducted to determine the state of instructional materials selection policies in each district. Respondents, usually high school library media specialists, furnished data in three areas: (1) the current state of their district media selection policies, (2) selection policy…

Replicating a 1979 study, a survey of school library media specialists in 440 Iowa school districts was conducted in the spring of 1983 to determine the influence of a model policy published by the Iowa Department of Public Instruction (DPI) on the development, adoption, and provisions of school district policies for the selection of instructional…