While the demands of teaching continue to escalate, teacher development has changed relatively little over time, leaving many of today's teachers feeling underprepared, overwhelmed, or demoralized with few opportunities to make real change. Teacher leadership holds promise for both addressing challenges within schools and empowering teachers.…

In the past decade, research-practice partnerships (RPPs) have grown in number and reputation. Stephanie Brown and Annie Allen describe the varied ways partnerships facilitate more sustained and productive relationships between researchers and practitioners. They share key findings from a comparative case study of three different types of RPPs…

Although many schools around the world have claimed to embrace the Professional Learning Community process, it would be more accurate to describe the current state of affairs in many schools as PLC Lite. Educators rename their traditional faculty or department meetings as PLC meetings, engage in book studies that result in no action, or devote…

What can educators do to help students care about their learning and become more invested in their own success? Chase Nordengren describes how a school district created a goal-setting culture in all classrooms at all grade levels. The district began with a complex, research-based, prescriptive program that teachers found did not work well with…

In response to local districts' needs for certified teachers with community roots who understand local schools and students, the authors developed an innovative alternative route for paraprofessionals based on a traditional bachelor's program. Their goals were to provide a rigorous, research-based program that allows paraprofessionals to get a…

The authors of this article are engaged in an ongoing pilot implementation and study of the Los Angeles Unified School District's (LAUSD) Educator Growth and Development Cycle, known as EGDC. LAUSD implemented the EGDC pilot in the 2011-12 school year, focusing on a small subset of volunteering school administrators and teachers. The district's…

So what if we just turned every course in our Superintendent's Program into a form of practicum? This question was asked by two former superintendents in response to nationwide calls to reform school leadership training and who found themselves leading a university executive leadership program. It triggered a comprehensive redesign of their…

The most efficient and effective framework for organizing mental health services in schools is through a multitiered system of support. This framework typically features three increasingly intense tiers intervention providing a continuum of care for all students in the school, not simply those identified as having a disability. Tier 1 universal…

In 2008, the Bartholomew Consolidated School Corporation began the social studies textbook adoption process. Concurrently, the Indiana State Board of Education wrote a memo encouraging schools to look at digital resources; BCSC did not hesitate. This article describes why BCSC chose to move to a digital format at the secondary level, the process…

In South Carolina a practicum-based copperative internship program for potential administrators has been developed. It gives students a unique opportunity to put into practice administrative concepts. (MD)

The emerging approach to talent development differs from traditional gifted education in several ways. Instead of stressing acceleration or enrichment, the Levels of Service model blends many services and activities with other school activities to respond to students' individual talents, strengths, and sustained interests. Teachers do not compete…

All programs for the gifted and talented should incorporate visual and performing arts, so that students' natural interests and creative abilities are not stifled. Many gifted and talented high school students not classified as artistically talented can achieve in discipline-based curriculum areas stressing nondiscursive art-making activities.…

A recent Rockefeller Foundation report concluded that a lively life in the humanities depended on vigorous engagement with reading, writing, and cultures. Collaboratives for Humanities and Arts Teaching (CHART), created to foster humanistic education, targets classrooms of average students from impoverished urban and rural districts. Such…

Suggests an educationally sound approach for creating programs of minimal essentials for which a school can be held accountable. The program is teachable and reasonably limited. (IRT)

Pennsylvania's attempt to implement competency-based education in the public schools is a well-meaning but misguided effort to improve the schools. It will succeed only in diverting vast amounts of time, energy, and intelligence away from more important and more attainable goals. (Author/IRT)