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.

Maligned and revered, exemplified or reviled, almost every discussion about charter schools involves a tangle of differing histories, theories, values, and facts. Worse, many times the parties to the discussion aren't even aware they're operating on different planes of discourse. A sort of mental gridlock often results. But by separating…

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…

Social media is the new face of global communication, and, instead of blocking it, schools should be embracing it. Twitter presents opportunities for teachers to link students with real-time information and diverse ideological perspectives. The authors describes the use of Twitter in a high school civics class during the 2012 presidential election.

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…

The national track record for state-to-district assistance is not stellar. It is tactics in the absence of strategy and activities in the absence of accomplishment. The problem is systemic: State departments need to transform their organizational structures to facilitate rather than hinder effective assistance strategies. The starting place is…

The author, a former school board member and currently head of nationwide parent organization, assesses the competition between charter and traditional public schools, concluding that the competition and acrimony among them does not help them deliver a better education. Policies should be focused on helping both types of schools improve education,…

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…

ELLs need to practice using the language in their speech. Teachers can ask students to restate the definition in their own words and provide opportunities for students to use academic vocabulary in discussions. Chunking (instead of teaching inch in isolation, also teach foot, centimeter, and yard) helps students develop their schema and mentally…

While subdued forms of everyday prejudice may seem harmless, appearances can be deceiving. Such commonplace prejudices form the foundation upon which more extreme acts of prejudice build. And they also leave us vulnerable to costly errors of judgment that can have tragic consequences. That is why addressing prejudice in the classroom is as crucial…

The Comprehensive Assessment of Leadership for Learning (CALL) is a formative assessment that provides feedback to schools on the research-based leadership practices necessary to improve teaching and learning. Instead of focusing on an individual leader, CALL measures leadership practices in tasks carried out by actors across the school and…

The process of determining class rank does not help students achieve more or reach higher levels of proficiency. Evidence indicates ranking students may diminish students' motivation. High school educators argue that they are compelled to rank-order graduating students because selective colleges and universities require information about…

Two significant metaphors in the education discourse describing student and teacher roles in academic achievement are Student-as-Product, and Student-as-Consumer. These fail to take into account the importance of students' active engagement in their own learning. Current policy initiatives around education reform reflect these deficits as…

Two Colorado math teachers attribute their participation in a professional learning community to their ability to achieve the highest growth scores of any tested level (3rd through 10th grade) in the three tested subjects (reading, writing, and math) in their 22,000-student school district.