The author, a veteran ESL teacher, describes a set of specific supports to help long-term English language learners make academic progress that he and other teachers piloted at Luther Burbank High School in California. The interventions included a daily academic support class; monitoring this group's academic progress; "cohorting" them…

The challenges one faces inside the school are connected to and compounded by things that are happening outside. In fact, schools face a number of external demands and pressures that they have to address. Moreover, without the connections, support, and expertise that come from interacting with a host of people, organizations, and institutions on…

For the past two years, the Center for Research on Educational Equity, Assessment and Teaching Excellence at the University of California, San Diego, has designed and run Student-Created Research projects in eight racially diverse urban and low-income San Diego high schools. Students undertake research projects intended to guide school improvement…

From 1998 to 2008, voters in California, Arizona, and Massachusetts passed anti-bilingual education ballot initiatives that required English-only instruction for the vast majority of the states' English language learners. The contentious political discourse leading up to the votes largely ignored the research on best practices for educating…

Carolan and Guinn assert that differentiated instruction helps diversity thrive. Observing how experienced teachers practice differentiation in real-life situations helps teachers who are reluctant to try such strategies take the plunge. The authors draw on two observational studies they conducted of five expert teachers in a high-performing,…

To understand schools from insiders' perspectives, this study shadowed 19 high school students and 8 teachers in all of their classes for two weeks. Given schools' problematic features (structural fragmentation, teacher isolation, emphasis on intrinsic rewards, and school-relevant learning) and teachers' weak sense of school ownership, the article…

A personalized education, according to Ted Sizer, means that students are known by adult professionals in the school. Administrators at a California high school with 2,000 students and very large classes initiated an adopt-a-kid program by matching adult volunteers on campus with low-achieving students. This program, along with a successful block…

As part of a long-term inquiry into the nature of staff development, 300 interviews focused on teachers' use of formal development opportunities, informal interactions with other professionals, and personally directed growth activities. The relationships between teachers' growth levels and the social systems of schools are discussed. (Author/MLF)

Searching for ways to help students feel more connected to one another and to the school community as a whole, a junior high school implemented the social house approach. Social houses divide students into multiple social units, rather than into separate academic entities. Each unit has its own identity and theme.The different groups mix during…

At a new charter school serving predominantly defiant underachievers and special-needs students, a psychology teacher was challenged to implement founders' brain-based principles. She succeeded by establishing a climate of relaxed alertness, immersing students in meaningful experiences, and guiding them in processing their experiences. (MLH)