Using data is foundational to school leadership; however, when "data" are narrowly construed as academic outcomes, important data perceived as tangential to academics can be backgrounded, ignored, or unused. Today's school leaders must also attend to data around chronic absenteeism, discipline, learning climate, and social, emotional,…

For generations, teachers in the early elementary years have urged their young pupils to use their brains. They're still offering the same encouragement, but nowadays they can know even more about what they're talking about. Recent advances in neuroscience--from detailed scans of the brain to ongoing research on teaching methods that increase…

A former surgeon has revealed that nutrition and exercise have positive effects on the school environment and also on student academic achievement. Some of the guidelines and recommendations for physical activity that can be adopted in schools are described.

A unified model of teaching and learning, representing a synthesis of internal and external forces influencing learning processes, diagrams interrelationships between the following processes: activator, situational evaluation, anticipated ends, stress, action, outcome, external evaluation, feedback, internal assessment, curiosity, and internal…

This issue of the NCEDL Spotlight Series newsletter presents findings of a nationwide survey of state policies and definitions related to school readiness. Findings indicated that efforts to minimize the misuse of readiness assessment tools may have had some impact at the state level, with respondents showing an increased awareness of recommended…

This paper addresses four of the seven themes of the 2nd International Conference on the Teaching of Mathematics--research, technology, pedagogical innovation, and curricular innovation--from the point of view that learning mathematics is learning. Research from a variety of fields including education, neurobiology, and cognitive psychology…

This report assesses where America's Great City Schools (GCS) were on the National Urban Education goals in 1996-97 and how they compared to where they were in 1990-91. The National Urban Education Goals address the unique and pressing needs of urban schools and provide an enabling set of targets on the way toward achieving national goals. This…

Discusses student learning behavior in two history classes. Suggests that many students do not understand the culture of college and inadvertently violate simple rules for success. Asserts that many students lack the knowledge of how to be successful in an academic environment and would benefit from a course serving as an "On-The-Job Professional…