The requisite knowledge and skills of principals are in a constant state of flux. Principal preparation programs need to proactively create systems and structures for continuous improvement and create pathways for information-sharing in order to remain responsive to the needs of local districts. James Coviello, Joan I. Birringer-Haig, and…

Districts are struggling to accelerate students' learning, support their health and wellness, and close the achievement gap. Labeled "worst" in 1987, by 2017 Chicago Public Schools was among the nation's most improved school systems. Chicago's story embeds many lessons about system change. Sharon Greenberg and Anthony S. Bryk illustrate…

Teachers are dedicated, wise, and thoughtful change agents who need more time to identify problems they see in their schools or classrooms and work individually and collectively on solutions. They need both more time for individual planning and time to collaborate with colleagues who teach the same grades or the same subjects. A productive day of…

In 2012, things were not looking good for Grant Beacon Middle School in Denver, Colorado. Enrollment numbers were declining, students were not reaching required academic levels, and the Denver Public Schools district designated the school as on watch. By implementing a plan that emphasized expanded learning opportunities--adding five hours to the…

In the last decade, the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) has mandated proficiency requirements for teacher candidates at nationally recognized universities and published a position statement recommending teachers use 90% or more of the world language during instruction. The author explains reform is more successful…

A public, Catholic, and charter school in Boston all work together to share their strengths and learn from each other in an effort to deliver the best education for all of their students. The arrangement is called the School Performance Partnership, and it is a grantee of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Instead of doing less with less during these fiscally challenging times, school districts can seize the moment to usher in school transformation that will leave the schools, families, and communities better off. They could follow the lead of districts such as Baltimore City, Syracuse, and Charlotte-Mecklenburg to think outside traditional cost…

Three words used frequently in debates about education actually cloud the issues. Those words are standardization, rigor, and reform. Standardization is often confused with standards, though they are not the same thing. Similarly, rigor is confused with relevance, and reform with renaissance. Those three words are used because they sound tough and…

If our schools were a research project, we'd say that while some aspects of our schools are highly valid, our overall academic systems aren't reliable. If educators are to meet the challenge of leaving no child behind, schools will have to improve with much greater reliability. In the mid-1990s, a group of British secondary schools decided to work…

In the future, teachers will become "teacherpreneurs," that is, teachers who develop their pedagogical talent, "sell" their expertise, and find innovative solutions to challenges facing their students. Unions will become professional guilds, and teachers will use new technologies to meet all their students' needs.

In this article, the authors explain a method that helps policymakers and educators to identify the forces and trends affecting education today and to project how they might conceivably play out in the future. They suggest that by asking "What if?" in a disciplined way, it might be better to imagine the possibilities of tomorrow in order to take…

If schools are to improve, they must abandon the business-oriented rhetoric of the accountability movement and concentrate on what we know will improve student achievement: improving the quality of instruction in all classrooms. To accomplish this, educators first must define high-quality teaching and measure how closely teachers in the classrooms…

Everyone wants to use programs that have been proven effective. But when programs are used by large numbers of schools, the effects are often inconsistent. A three-year study by the Consortium for Policy Research in Education at the University of Pennsylvania examined how programs are adapted by schools. The researchers found that the…

In his February 2004 Kappan article, Mike Schmoker called into question the effectiveness of many of the major reform efforts of the past two decades. In particular he made the case that strategic planning efforts and whole-school reform efforts have been mostly ineffective because planning cycles are too long and implementation is too complex and…

Despite the norms of privacy that pervade teacher culture and the assumptions of behind-closed-doors independence, teachers actually "need" their colleagues, whether they like it--and them--or not. Teachers are inherently dependent on one another since no one of them alone constitutes their students' education. Students move from teacher to…