Teachers are frequently told to use "research-based strategies." At the same time, they face unreasonable workloads, with inadequate time and resources to engage with the research and evaluate it themselves. In the same professional development workshops that elevate the importance of research, teachers are also told to focus on…

Many students enter upper grades unprepared to make decisions and take charge of their work, especially with writing assignments and organizing their thinking in any written piece. With good intention, many teachers make lots of decisions for students on organization and development a piece of writing. Gallagher and Kittle share how they let…

The author, a district chief academic officer, discusses his immersion into the research on the science reading and how it informed his views on how reading instruction needed to change in his district. He emphasizes the importance of adopting a cohesive curriculum aligned to the research on early reading, particularly in the areas of phonics and…

Carol Ann Tomlinson and Michael Murphy explore how educators can create an empathetic school--"a place where our central and shared goal was to understand the experiences and perspectives of those who share our space and making decisions based on what would serve them best."

School leaders rightly tend toward collaboration and consensus-building when it comes to important decisions affecting students. But there are moments when, perhaps to their own surprise, they may find themselves willing to "go to the mat" on an important decision, whether consensus has been reached or not. Smith, a professor and chair…

Teacher-led inquiry cycles--in which small groups of teachers study and address a promise--hold promise as a method of professional development, but only if they receive enough support. In particular, they need access to outside expertise that can help them meaningfully change instructional practices--often a difficult step for teachers working on…

Planning a lesson that sets all students up to learn successfully involves making a great many decisions about what to do throughout the lesson. To make this planning less overwhelming, the author focuses on a part of lesson planning that doesn't always get much attention: the first 10 to 15 minutes of a lesson. He walks readers through key…

"Data-drive instruction can distort the way reading is taught, harming the students who need high-quality instruction the most," Susan B. Neuman concludes from her research team's two years of observation in nine low-income New York City schools. She describes how some students are reminded that they are "failures" every day by…

All around us are examples of people and organizations with good information making bad decisions. Consider the case of Blockbuster. Less than a decade ago, Blockbuster had 8,000 stores in 17 countries and millions of customers. It was awash in data, including customer surveys that said people disliked going to video stores and hated late fees.…

Riley asserts that some findings of cognitive science conflict with key principles of personalized learning--that students should control the content of their learning and that they should control the pace of their learning. A personalized approach is in conflict with the cognitive science principle that committing key facts in a discipline to…

Teachers may well have developed a more robust understanding of classroom assessment options, but they can still be caught off guard by misapplications of well-intended practices. Three issues, in particular, have created potential assessment missteps: the heightened rigor of the new content standards, the emphasis on using assessments for…

As the mother of two sons who went through adolescence and a practicing neurologist, Frances E. Jensen offers a valuable perspective on teenage behavior. Dr. Jensen explored the neurological research--including insights gained from recent advances in functional magnetic resonance imaging--and found that the adolescent brain is both more powerful…

Across the United States, decisions championed in the name of school "reform" are segregating students on the basis of race and class. Traditional public schools that serve low-income students of color have been closed, consolidated, or co-located with charter schools. The officials initiating these reforms claim they will benefit…

The wallpaper effect describes a phenomenon in which educators try to make data-drive decisions but rely exclusively on summary data (the outer layer of the wallpaper) for their information. These summary data may obscure reality--the layers and layers of systemic practices and policies that establish the conditions under which students learn.…

How important is it that every student in a school is excited about learning? Should a student be allowed to use all his/her strengths in learning? Do you know someone who wasn't a particularly good student but has been very successful in life? What these seemingly unrelated questions have in common is an appreciation for the range of talents that…