Learning to teach is hard. Student teachers are still learning the content, and most are struggling with both teaching equitably to all students and keeping pace with district curriculum guidelines. It is challenging for student teachers to integrate their own ideas about good teaching with those of their teacher education programs. How…

Mary Amanda Stewart is conferred the 2013 Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award for her enterprising and timely work in the field of education research. Stewart's dissertation highlights the ways in which Latino and Latina immigrant youth who are newly arrived to the U.S. possess many skills, including managing transnational relationships…

Schools, more and more, have emphasized the acquisition of knowledge, which seems to have come at the expense of wisdom and positive ethical values, which have not been emphasized. Nonetheless, wisdom and ethical values are what's needed to be taught in schools. But acting wise, or ethically, is a complicated process involving eight sometimes…

Chula Vista Elementary School District, the largest in California, dramatically raised its student achievement while taking on increasing proportions of English learners by focusing on what it calls teacher talk--the way lessons are developed, delivered, and executed.

Passage of the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) in 2000 established requirements for public libraries and schools to adopt Internet filters on their computers in order to receive federal funding. That has firmly, if unintentionally, established the World Wide Web as a no man's land in public education, where few are allowed to…

The author, a 5th-grade teacher, offers strategies intended to assist and encourage ELL students to participate in academic conversations. They include insisting that children take part in conversations despite their apprehension and teaching them the language they need to communicate their ideas. One strategy is Think, Pair, Share--a simple…

No one has clearer ideas about what is lacking in a teacher education program than a recent graduate of that program grappling with his or her first year of teaching. Researchers analyzed interviews with first-year, middle school math teachers, their principals and formal mentors to get their views on how their preservice training could have…

The author recalls his long ago work with an immigrant student that the school system declared to have a learning disability. Instead, it was the system that was unable to learn how to connect with the child and his family, a task that simply required listening and a walk across the street.

For a "Kappan" issue focusing on the job of the principal, this is an essay from a retired, longtime principal and superintendent. "I have notebooks full of advice that I've collected over the years: tips, mantras, cautions, and quotations appropriate for any occasion," the author says. "I learned to focus less on…

By encouraging a single-minded focus on instructional leadership, the training, socializing, and mentoring of school leaders has unwittingly fostered a culture of caged leadership. Leaders are expected to succeed via culture, capacity building, coaching, and consensus--no matter the obstacles in their path. Those are all good things, the author…

The author compared NCLB-prompted standards-based reforms with earlier reforms and found that earlier manifestations of standards-based reforms may have been more productive and constructive. NCLB, with its emphasis on accountability through high-stakes testing, has produced many perverse results alongside documented achievement gains, the author…

There is a pantheon of literature and popular panic pointing toward the academic ascent of girls and the decline of boys. On the contrary, the reality is different: Boys are learning and succeeding in many places. Two studies find that the places where boys excel have several common characteristics, including teachers who relate to the boys…

The author tells how he employed leadership skills to help turn around a failing school loaded with at-risk students. Dayton's Bluff Elementary School was one of the worst in St. Paul when Von Sheppard took over as principal in 2001. Changing the staff and attitudes at the largely low-income, minority majority school in a tough neighborhood…

The idea that principals should focus more closely on teaching and learning did not emerge prominently until the mid-1990s. Then educators and policy makers began to realize that school leadership matters to student achievement. In a dozen years of working with states, districts, researchers and others, the Wallace Foundation has pinpointed five…

A lot has changed in the principalship since the principal was the head teacher in a school. Current principals are building administrators and that is likely to continue, the authors posit. Nonetheless, they report their study focusing on leadership's role in formative assessment concluded that in order to lead learning the principal must…