In the aftermath of the acute phases of COVID-19, some schools are adopting trauma-informed, high-leverage practices to help educators and students cope with the psychological impact of the pandemic on learning. Given the scope of the pandemic's devastation, scattershot approaches are not enough. A systemic approach is needed to ensure that all…

Learning how leaders advance equity and justice can inspire, give mental models, and help create road maps. Eight years ago, Nancy Gerzon and the author researched professional learning in high-poverty schools that were narrowing the achievement gap for every demographic, which resulted in the book "Growing Into Equity" (Corwin, 2013).…

Iheoma Iruka is founding director of the Equity Research Action Coalition at Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute and research professor of public policy at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Her work focuses on supporting the optimal development of children from low-wealth and marginalized communities and ensuring excellence…

Test score outcomes continue to be disparate between races. Districts continue to face uneven funding with so-called urban districts receiving less than their so-called suburban counterparts (Morgan & Amerikaner, 2018). Students with diagnosed disabilities, those whose families are experiencing measures of economic distress, and those adding…

The COVID-19 pandemic found many K-12 school leaders unprepared to deal with the magnitude and duration of this emergency. Dealing with sustained crises is not sufficiently addressed in most K-12 leadership programs, nor in the National Educational Leadership Preparation (NELP) standards (NPBEA, 2018). What can be done to better prepare leaders…

The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the longstanding pattern of lower scholastic performance among marginalized groups of students negatively impacted by poverty, disability, and race. The perception among educators and citizens continues to be that practices around equal rights equate to provisions related to equity. In Arkansas, the unknown…

The importance of high-quality evaluation is underscored in Learning Forward's Standards for Professional Learning: Evaluation provides information that supports advocates, professional learning planners, and anyone who wants to know "about the contribution of professional learning to student achievement" (Learning Forward, 2011). Most…

Districts and states have worked around the clock for the past several months to put new structures in place for students to learn safely during an unprecedented crisis. Instructional materials matter for student success. They mattered before the COVID-19 crisis, and they will matter even more as schools transition into new teaching formats this…

The COVID-19 pandemic required that nearly all P-20 teaching and learning move quickly to virtual formats. In many cases, educators were teaching exclusively online for the first time in their careers. Schools suddenly needed to train and support all educators on how to teach, engage students, and support families from a distance. This created an…

Four of five teachers surveyed by "Education Week" in April said their job is more stressful than before the pandemic (Kurtz & Herold, 2020). Principals have been presented with a a host of challenges that no leadership course could have adequately prepared them for. Chief among them: How to effectively support teachers from afar as…

In March 2020, the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) began tracking U.S. districts' plans for navigating school closures and distance learning. The database, which is available on CRPE's website (www.crpe.org), draws on publicly available plans from the 30 largest districts in the country, members of the Council of the Great City…