Does our teaching keep up with our preaching about equity? Some of the teachers most vocally outspoken about social inequities, says Henry Seton, end up reproducing these inequities in their own classrooms. Seton shares two critical steps for ensuring this doesn't happen.

Teachers are frequently told to use "research-based strategies." At the same time, they face unreasonable workloads, with inadequate time and resources to engage with the research and evaluate it themselves. In the same professional development workshops that elevate the importance of research, teachers are also told to focus on…

"There are no shortcuts for true equity," says authors and consultants Shane Safir and Jamila Dugan. Equity work is hard, on-going work--and it means not falling into ineffective traps and tropes. Find out what these traps are and how to avoid them.

Traditional PD sessions share information on new practices, but teachers often can't translate that information effectively to implement the new practice in their classrooms. A better way is to show a teacher a model of excellent practice by a colleague and help her reflect on the "gap" between her practice and the model, then plan…

Charter schools--what was their original promise? They would enroll diverse groups of students. They would give teachers the room and power to innovate. They would be educational laboratories that would find new ways to reach students, and they would share those lessons with other public schools. But charter schools haven't lived up to their…

Few school leaders are experiencing a shortage of data. Most are actually drowning in data, with a wealth of test scores, student demographic information, and an increasing load of "formative" assessment data that may or may not be worthy of the name (Popham, 2008). The challenge is facing both an overabundance of data and a scarcity of…

Young teacher applicants to the Teach Plus Policy Fellows Program indicate that contrary to the opinions of those who believe they are in teaching only for the short term, they actually want to find a way to continue teaching. Their description of the profession they seek--one that makes a difference, challenges them, engages them as leaders, and…

Schools have recently begun to place increased emphasis on the use of rigorous research evidence in guiding instructional decisions. Turning education into an evidence-based field is easier to advocate than to achieve, particularly in an environment of competing claims about what works. In this article, the author discusses the factors which…