Betsy Rogers, 2003 National Teacher of the Year, chose to go back into the trenches instead of staying on the lecture circuit. Rogers chose Brighton School, a K-8 campus of about 395 students, for her first year back on the job. She wants to show other good teachers an example of how they can make a difference for needy children in hard-to-staff…

In a demographic shift that is ahead of the state as a whole, but representative of many small towns in the region, Hispanics make up nearly 27 percent of the enrollment in the 800-student Hennessey school district, up from 18.2 percent in the 2000-2001 school year. In response to those changes, the district has adjusted how it teaches…

During workshops held in March and April of 2005, Michigan educators got a lesson in how to benchmark their work against promising practices in higher-performing schools with similar socioeconomic profiles. Teams of teachers, educational supervisors, and principals from 13 elementary and middle schools that had been struggling to make adequate…

Steps away from where a concrete wall once divided this city east from west, a group of Muslim 1st graders at E.O. Plauen Elementary School sing a phrase that is unfamiliar to most German ears. Though the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches have long provided voluntary religion classes in Berlin schools, only recently have the courts allowed an…

When teachers at Thomas Gardner Elementary School voted in fall 2003 to join Boston's network of "pilot" schools, they had no inkling of the political firestorm that lay ahead. A few months after they moved to become part of the city's nationally watched experiment with small, autonomous public schools, the president of the Boston Teachers Union…

While math has long been regarded as a universal language because of its foundation in numbers, the subject poses nearly as many hurdles for students with limited English as lessons that rely more heavily on reading, many educators say. Malinda Evans spends about an hour and a half each day teaching mathematics to her 5th graders at Navajo…

In the past few years, Viers Mill Elementary School's home-grown leadership team has overseen a striking rise in test scores, especially among its substantial minority population. The school, located in Montgomery County, Maryland, exemplifies the district's strategy of using its human-resources operations as a lever to improve student…

This article discusses a pilot project in New Mexico that gives kindergartners--and some 1st graders--20 extra days before the school year begins to learn the ropes and jump into their lessons. The project is called Kindergarten-Plus, the concept is the brainchild of former American Federation of Teachers President Sandra Feldman. According to…

Just a few years ago, a set of tests known as "dibbles" would have elicited little more than a chuckle from educators or anyone else. Today, they're taking it seriously, because the acronym DIBELS has come to symbolize the standard for early-literacy assessment throughout much of the country. Teachers in Reading First schools in more…

Through a program known as Call Me MISTER--named for Sidney Poitier's famous line in the 1967 film "In the Heat of the Night," in which he tells the Southern white sheriff that, up North, "They call me "Mister" Tibbs"--the recruitment of more young, gifted black men to teach elementary school is getting a boost.…

Five weeks after Katrina landed in Louisiana, Bonnabel and 78 other Jefferson Parish schools were welcoming students back--and far sooner than many had expected. The worst damage in Louisiana from Hurricane Katrina did not come to Jefferson Parish. That distinction was reserved for portions of New Orleans, as well as St. Bernard Parish, where…

For more than 10 years, the education community has watched the corporate ups and downs of Edison Schools Inc., the New York City company that has created controversy with its aim of making money from public schools. Long a target of those wary of such aims, the now privately held Edison made headlines with its four-year run as a public company,…

As science gets squeezed in the elementary curriculum, at least two Florida districts are trying a new approach to keeping hands-on lessons a part of pupils' experiences. This article reports how Broward and Palm Beach county districts have increased the number of science specialists working in their elementary schools--teachers who, like physical…

A study released last fall by the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, showed that, contrary to what many observers suspected, the amount of time spent on homework has not increased for children in the upper-middle grades. But it has jumped significantly for 6-to 8-years-olds, which would include…

Nearly 140 years have not erased Georgia's memory of the trail of destruction by General William T. Sherman and Union troops as they burned their way from Atlanta to Savannah during a critical campaign of the Civil War. Those weeks in late 1864 have left a lasting influence on the state's history and culture. This article deals with Georgia's…