Why and under what conditions might students value their science learning? To find out, the authors observed approximately 400 science classes. They found that although several teachers were amazingly adept at regularly promoting the value of science, many others missed out on important opportunities to promote the value of science. The authors…

The key practices that improve struggling schools, writes Chenoweth--a researcher who's studied successful high-poverty schools and their leaders--aren't a mystery. From both decades of research and the craft knowledge of educators who've jumped in and turned around schools, we know these practices generally yield improvement: (1) a…

Charter schools--what was their original promise? They would enroll diverse groups of students. They would give teachers the room and power to innovate. They would be educational laboratories that would find new ways to reach students, and they would share those lessons with other public schools. But charter schools haven't lived up to their…

What drives decisions about what gets taught, how, and to whom? In some districts, teachers base these decisions on the organization of textbooks, the timing of pacing charts, or lesson plans from prior years. Often, they base curricular decisions on content that needs to be "covered." In contrast, in many of the United States'…

James is 14 years old. Tall, handsome, funny, athletic, attuned to others, he is one of the popular, high-status students in his large freshman class. He can also be remarkably caring and attentive with his close friends. But James has a dark side. Sometimes he uses his social skills to manipulate others, and he draws a bright line between those…

"Let's keep this in perspective," writes Jeff Anderson." The Common Core State Standards are a guiding document." Anderson cautions readers to look beyond such artificial boundaries and dive into pedagogy, process, content knowledge, and research that reveals best practices for teaching writing. Educators, he notes, need…

Imposing a penalty for late or incomplete homework assignments, Dueck says, neither inspires learning nor provides accurate grades. Dueck lists four rules that a teacher must follow if penalties for inadequate homework are to be efficient in prodding students to do that work. The usual homework penalty structures violate each of these four rules.…

"Mastery is a term that all educators use and believe they understand well. But when pressed to describe precisely what it means to 'master' a concept, skill, or subject, everyone has a different definition," assert Thomas R. Guskey and Eric M. Anderson. The father of the mastery learning approach, Benjamin S. Bloom, left the…

Education has a long-standing practice of turning worthwhile learning goals into lists of bits. One might even say that this practice is the original sin in curriculum design: take a complex whole, divide it into small pieces, string those together in a rigid sequence of instruction and testing, and call completion of this sequence…

As standardized assessments tied to the Common Core standards approach for K-12 students, U.S. teachers correctly feel that how we test students will change. Will students be ready for tests of proficiency done on computers? Gullen debriefed with 500 students in various grades who had just taken pilot assessment items connected to the coming…

"It's demoralizing to see your life's work pilloried almost daily in the news." This comment is typical of the anger and disappointment expressed by many of the more than 2,300 Chicago teachers surveyed by Deborah Lynch in 2011-2012. Lynch set out to explore how the accountability policies pursued by Chicago's board of…

Why does professional learning for educators have such a mixed history? Why is it so hard to find solid research evidence of professional development programs that actually improve student learning outcomes? Part of the answer, writes Thomas R. Guskey, is that professional learning experiences for educators are rarely well planned. Consequently,…

"Poverty" is an uncomfortable word. Teachers are often unsure what to expect from kids from low-income households and what to do differently as a result. Well-known author and educator Eric Jensen points to seven differences that show up in school between low- and middle-income children. By understanding what they are and how to address…

What's the best way to turn around a persistently low-performing school? Is it better to simply replace the principal and teachers, or is it necessary to reopen under new charter management? Maybe policymakers are asking the wrong question, writes Halley Potter. What if, instead of replacing the adults at the school, we changed the mix of…

"Residential segregation's causes are both knowable and known," writes Richard Rothstein. According to Rothstein, those causes are "20th century federal, state, and local policies explicitly designed to separate the races." Even seasoned policymakers are convinced that the residential isolation of low-income black children…