The OECD and its U.S. administrator, McGraw-Hill Education CTB, have recently concluded the first cycle of the OECD-Test for Schools in the U.S. This test is being marketed to local schools and is designed to compare 15-year-olds from individual participating schools against peers nationally and internationally using the OECD's PISA test as…

Effective family-school collaboration is essential for promoting students' success at school, but collaborative relationships must be proactively developed and intentionally nurtured. These relationships are particularly critical when children are struggling behaviorally or emotionally. Strategies for building effective relationships are…

A group of New York City public school teachers, angry about the depiction of public schools in 'Waiting for Superman," decide to make their own film about the realities of the current education reform movement. They persevered even though they had no budget when they started and lacked a background in filmmaking. "The Inconvenient…

A state legislator who played a key role in enacting the nation's first charter school law in Minnesota tells the story of shaping the ideas and the bill. She now looks for ways that charter schools can coexist with traditional public schools to deliver a better education for all children.

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.

The original vision of a charter school called for heavy doses of professional teacher contribution throughout all aspects of curriculum and administration. Unfortunately, that is not how charter schools have evolved. Until now. The Minnesota Guild of Public Charter Schools is the first union-sponsored entity created for the sole purpose of…

Restrictions on collective bargaining are spreading. But while reformers are right to question current labor practices in education, they're wrong to believe that bargaining prohibitions will solve the problems. A smarter approach would begin by putting down the sledgehammer wielded in Wisconsin and picking up a scalpel by pushing for laws…

Leading education thinker Sir Ken Robinson says transformation is essential to bring creative thinking into schools and recommends three major changes: Dispense with subject hierarchy, focus on curricular disciplines instead of subjects, and elevate personalization. Change will come when students take ownership of their learning to fit their needs…

While it may seem almost intuitive that offering rewards to students will yield better results, that is not how it works; the result often is the opposite. The paradox of rewards is that their effect often has a limited impact on students, who then will lose curiosity; it also makes them feel as if they are being controlled--a negative motivating…

American schools are failing to meet the expectations of a wide swath of students, many of them in low-income and rural communities. What's needed is a new pact putting their expectations at its center. The article is based on the authors' book: "Leaving to Learn: How Out-of-School Learning Increases Student Engagement and Reduces…

The student who appears lazy, intentionally oppositional, or who seems to willfully ignore admonitions to pay attention, apply more effort, or to stop talking to his neighbor or texting may not be making voluntary choices. These students' brains may be responding to the stress of sustained or frequent boredom. Functional neuroimaging and…

Moving teacher evaluation systems from measuring teachers' performance to improving their practice requires much greater attention to communication and support. In the fall of 2012, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) instituted a sweeping reform of its teacher evaluation system with the introduction of REACH Students (Recognizing Educators…

Can the nation's schools meet today's challenge of providing all students with the skills they will need to thrive in the rapidly changing economy and society of the 21st century? The authors point out in this article that a large percentage of children, overwhelmingly from low-income families, end their formal schooling without the…

This article describes an urban high school's response to gun violence, chronicling how the school's mission, full-service community orientation, and commitment to authentic cariño (caring) allowed students to respond to grief and tragedy and develop an ongoing peace building movement that seeks to transform students' lives and the…

In June 2011, the Souris River flooded the city of Minot, North Dakota, destroying schools, businesses, and more than 4,000 houses. District administrators, staff, and teachers responded creatively to provide continuity for the students over a two-year period while three schools resided in temporary locations. The author details how the schools…