STEM Studio at Hofstra University is a clinical practice site that brings together public school pupils and preservice teachers in settings with three features that lead to enhanced learning of all participants: classroom structures using multidisciplinary STEM tasks as platforms for learning; design challenge templates for diverse student…

This article opens with a thought provoking question--When it comes to defining teacher leadership, how much do we limit ourselves by assuming that the way teachers work today must always be the way teachers work? The author points out that pioneering groups of public school teachers across the United States are advancing a new definition of…

The authors, two high school teachers, endorse the Common Core State Standards saying they will improve teaching and learning. The Common Core, they say, not only help students acquire the skills for success in life after high school, but they offer consistency in a student's educational journey and let employers know what to expect.…

Committed to being a charter school with a professional learning community that empowers teachers, New Mexico's South Valley Academy (SVA) staff transformed its state evaluation process into a practitioner action research process (Anderson, Herr, & Nihlen, 2007). While teachers self-diagnose growth needs and play active roles in improving…

Responding to the need for game-changing innovation that will catapult student achievement, some school districts seek assistance from school development organizations that specialize in helping schools. But such work presents problems when schools try to adopt and adapt innovation and outside partners face challenges in encouraging schools to…

Improving classroom practice requires more than simply having good ideas. Educators must focus on developing technical, human, and social capital both inside and outside schools.

Alabama Best Practices Center (ABPC) was formed to help educators spread innovation and scale up successful teaching and learning practices. ABPC is the professional development arm of A+ Education Partnership, a statewide business/community/education nonprofit founded in 1991 to advocate for excellent public schools. Since 1999, ABPC has…

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…

Extended learning opportunities have emerged as a useful way to rethink how schools are organized and funded. That includes reconsidering who teaches and how they go about their work. That effort should be guided by four key policy considerations and goals: 1. Reengineer the role of teacher. 2. Rethink K-12, higher education, and community-based…

Strapped for cash, a Massachusetts high school creates its own venture capital fund to incentivize teachers to create programs that improve student learning. The result has been higher test scores and higher job satisfaction. One important program is credited with helping close the achievement gap at the school, while others have helped ambitious…

In praise of isolation: Who says professional learning communities (PLCs) are a better way? The author says the PLC trend is but the latest education fad that is not helping teachers or students. PLCs, says the author, represents an administrative, clinical ideal of collaboration. He blames legions of high-paid consultants, and says that all along…

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.

Good times are not just around the corner. Rather, at least for the next half-decade, educators are facing what Secretary Duncan has termed the "new normal." After three generations in which national, nominal per pupil spending went up every single year, learning to operate in an environment of flat or declining spending is a new challenge for…

Exponential change is making our education system obsolete. New inventions will replace not only textbooks, but everything we currently think of as school. Teachers will need to rethink their roles as advances in teaching machines allow lessons to be customized to every child wherever that child might be. What is taught also will change because…

It would be wrong for the United States to provide universal prekindergarten education for three reasons. First, the overwhelming majority of three- and four-year-olds already have access to various forms of preschool. Adding a publicly financed program would be costly and unnecessary. Second, a universal program still would not reach the neediest…