Gateway Public Schools--a middle and high school serving a diverse group of about 800 students in San Francisco--was founded in 1998 by parents of students with learning disabilities seeking a supportive environment for their children. As a public charter organization with a lottery entrance system, Gateway seeks to admit a student body that…

Teacher professional learning is of increasing interest as one way to support the increasingly complex skills students need to succeed in the 21st century. However, many teacher professional development initiatives appear ineffective in supporting changes in teacher practices and student learning. To identify the features of effective professional…

Teacher professional learning is of increasing interest as one way to support the increasingly complex skills students need to learn in preparation for further education and work in the 21st century. Sophisticated forms of teaching are needed to develop student competencies such as deep mastery of challenging content, critical thinking, complex…

The Instructional Leadership Corps (ILC) is a California collaborative teacher professional learning project in which expert teachers organize local professional development to spark iterative changes in practice. Launched in 2014, ILC is a joint effort of the California Teachers Association (CTA), the National Board Resource Center (NBRC), and…

The Instructional Leadership Corps (ILC) is an innovative professional learning project in which teacher leaders in California collaborate to lead sustainable professional development to support implementation of new student standards within their districts. Over more than 4 years, the ILC has served over 100,000 teachers. The responses of these…

Many educators have created successful innovative models but have had difficulty sustaining, re-creating, and scaling these models. Classrooms and schools characterized by student-centered learning practices typically deviate from the norms of transmission teaching and the many structures and procedures that David Tyack and Larry Cuban called the…

One of the mysteries of education reform is how leaders and educators can successfully instantiate, sustain, and spread student-centered pedagogical practices from a few schools to many others. Advocates for "deeper learning" grapple with this mystery as they seek to transform teaching and learning to prepare students to meet the demands…

The George Lucas Educational Foundation began in 1991 with an ambitious mission: to demonstrate how innovative learning environments in classrooms, supported by powerful new technologies, could revolutionize learning. As an organization founded by George Lucas, its members believed that the same benefits of technology that were transforming…