Research has shown that ninth grade is uniquely important for student success, yet despite increased investments, leaders aren't always equipped to meet ninth graders' distinct needs. The transition from middle to high school is both critical and complex, as students encounter significant changes during this time, including taking on more advanced…

In an era of unparalleled disruption and low teacher satisfaction, residency programs offer a critical opportunity to reimagine what's possible for our nation's teachers. These programs have been shown to help districts fill hard-to-staff subject areas, boost teacher retention rates, and nurture more diverse pipelines of educators. And when new…

To help address funding and teaching resource disparities across districts in the state, Texas leaders developed the Teacher Incentive Allotment (TIA). The Allotment aims to make the teaching job more appealing and sustainable, particularly in rural areas and in areas with a high concentration of economically disadvantaged students. This document…

The fourth school year impacted by the pandemic is more than halfway complete, and school district leaders across the country are working hard to invest remaining ESSER dollars strategically to support learning recovery. With the ESSER spending window closing soon, however, many leaders are spending funds to meet the deadline, rather than…

Highly effective principals are critical to their school systems, contributing to both student outcomes and teacher retention. But despite some stabilization during the pandemic, teacher and principal turnover rates are rising again at the district and school levels, especially at high-need schools. And our recent original research underscores an…

Developing schedules is one of the most challenging undertakings that school and district leaders do every year. It's also one of the most important. School schedules often have significant inefficiencies that impact student experiences and outcomes, like course offerings that don't align with student needs; mismatches in resources across schools;…

As the COVID pandemic has led many Americans to reevaluate the status quo and expand their sense of possibility about new ways to organize work, it's time to reimagine the fundamentals of the teaching job. Reimagining the teaching job demands that leaders at all levels reconsider the ways in which people, time, and money in schools and school…

Reimagining the teaching job requires redesigning the underlying economic structures of the job with new staffing plans, redistributed schedules, competitive compensation models, and adjusted conceptions of what counts as "learning time." This document outlines actions that build toward longer-term transformation, rather than short-term…

The full financial impact of COVID-19 is now unfolding for school districts, and it is a story of much more than PPE, hand sanitizer, and laptops. Looking ahead at the bigger picture, we see that the magnitude of cost pressures to come will far outweigh even the costs that districts have incurred to date. Particularly for large, urban school…

In most K-12 school districts across the country, the beginning of the 2021-22 school year has been different from what school and district leaders expected and were planning for. Many spent the spring and summer sowing the seeds of their ESSER plans, allocating federal investments to high-impact strategies designed to bear fruit for years to…

Childrens' learning has been massively disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, bringing the need for more opportunities for differentiated, high-quality learning, stronger relationships with the adults in their school, and streamlined access to social-emotional support -- especially for the country's lowest-income students, Black and Latinx students,…

As students and educators conclude a school year like no other, district leaders are looking ahead to 2021-2022. Planning has already been underway for months, and now, with an infusion of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding, district leaders are faced with key decisions about how to invest those funds strategically.…

Districts across the country are planning how to invest huge influxes of one-time ESSER funds -- targeting funds toward meeting urgent academic and social-emotional recovery needs, as well as redesigning better, more equitable approaches to teaching and learning. But short-term investments are often not enough to generate meaningful long-term…

Before COVID, the shortage of qualified, skilled teachers was among the top challenges facing education leaders. And with the stress of the pandemic, survey data showed that almost half of the public school teachers who left the profession since March 2020 cite COVID-19 as the main reason. As school systems ramp up hiring for next fall, concrete…

With the new school year now well under way, staff, students and families are still in desperate need of a clear strategic direction and set of tools for promoting equity and excellence in a moment of crisis. Nationally, we see school systems stepping up in new ways to provide this clarity, and seizing the moment afforded by these unusual…