"Turnaround" has become the new buzzword in education. From states and districts paying for principals to be trained as turnaround specialists to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's call to turn around the country's 5,000 lowest-performing schools, the concept of rapid, large-scale reform in individual schools--not just incremental…

Multitasking impedes learning and performance in the short-term and may affect long-term memory and retention. The implications of these findings make it critical that educators and parents impress upon students the need to focus and reduce extraneous stimuli while studying or reading. Course-based quizzes and tests can be used for more than…

Thirty exemplary 4th-grade teachers in six states were interviewed to determine the factors that influenced their development. The teachers cited three influences on their development: specific kinds of professional development, collegial support, and a sense of engaged autonomy. They valued professional development that provided a systematic way…

Mainstream education often misunderstands the ways that some rural black families display involvement in their children's lives. Teachers may tend to attribute children's academic struggles to what they perceived as a lack of care, concern, and involvement of the families. Such views could keep children from reaching and exceeding their potential,…

Tunica County, Mississippi, in the heart of the delta, has been home to stagnant academic achievement even as federal and state funds increased. A teacher-focused professional development program through the University of Mississippi helped yield higher scores and national recognition for an elementary school. It also revealed some learnings:…

Each culture's values shape its education practices. A comparison of U.S. and Portuguese practices in including children with disabilities in regular classrooms illuminates much about both our systems. The Portuguese value interdependence, and their education system promotes shared responsibility by students in a class to help the education of a…

Four common schools of thought in the curriculum arena are the linear, holistic, laissez faire, and critical theorist approaches. When teachers identify which approach they are most apt to use, they can consciously incorporate other styles into their practice. The author holds copyright to this article. Distributed by Phi Delta Kappa with…

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…

New York City's Department of Education offers a course called Digital Literacies, in which overage and undercredited high school students in more than 60 schools develop key skills needed for life after high school, whether it entails further education, employment, or, more commonly, both. With a "blended learning" design, it is more…

Eleven educators came together in spring 2012 for a wide-ranging discussion of teacher evaluation and professional development in the era of high-stakes testing and data-based accountability. The participants in this conversation are alumni of the Mid-Career Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate…

Data from a recent study show that investing in science teachers' professional growth and teaching ability is a wise choice. However, the professional development must have the right content (the science discipline that teachers are actually teaching), at the right time (when they are assigned to teach that science discipline), and in a stable…

Thousands of teachers are exploring the boundaries of their practice together on Twitter, in blogs, and at seminars, and they represent a new generation of educators who are actively redefining how innovation occurs in the schoolhouse. For many of these educators, exposure to adjacent possibilities--the first step toward innovation--starts in the…

Students in remote communities face many challenges to get an education. This is especially true for indigenous and native people. To train teachers for these populations, the authors used web-based conferencing, which avoids some of the technological challenges of communicating with students in these communities. The virtual classes also were…

Research on teacher quality is not definitive. But, we know that developing high-quality teachers requires a multipronged approach: We need to recruit promising teachers. We need to retain and reward effective early career teachers. We need mechanisms to dismiss those who don't improve. We need to focus teacher preparation on the foundations of…

Ontario embraced a provincial lead improvement plan that was designed to improve its 5,000 schools by focusing on literacy and numeracy, improving high school graduation, and improving public support for education. Its primary strategy was developing networks of educators and building their capacity for growth.