The Next Generation Science Standards embody a new vision for science education grounded in the idea that science is both a body of knowledge and a set of linked practices for developing knowledge. The authors describe strategies that they suggest school and district leaders consider when designing strategies to support NGSS implementation.

What does it take to transform a large, bureaucratic institution with a fractured culture and a compliance orientation into a nurturing, collaborative, vision-directed organization? This report and the accompanying research brief endeavor to answer that question by examining a humanistic and systems thinking approach to cultural change that took…

Drawing on the author's experience as director of a long-lived school-university partnership, this essay describes how one such organization can "do it right" and enhance the development of teacher leadership in schools. It also provides a cautionary tale about how that same organization can "do it wrong" and achieve the…

Background/Context: As implementation of the Common Core Literacy Standards moves ahead, teachers, students, and schools are discovering that the standards demand a great deal of them in order to achieve the vision of college, career, and citizenship in the global-digital world outlined in the standards. To accomplish the goals and high…

Drawing from two international measures, Trends in International Mathematics and Science Studies (TIMSS) and Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), this brief provides a snapshot comparison of the United States to other education systems. Specifically, this brief addresses how the U.S. compares to other countries in overall…

To assist system administrators as they pursue their own teacher leadership initiatives, this profile from Leading Educators and the Aspen Institute details the steps Denver Public Schools (DPS) took to design and implement its Differentiated Roles pilot. Specifically, it examines the initiative's opportunities and challenges within the context of…

The term "talent development" has historically been associated only with gifted education in the K12 education world. But for the past 30 years, husband and wife team Joseph Renzulli and Sally Reis have been steadily increasing the pool of educators trained to apply talent development practices to mainstream instruction through the Renzulli…

Many students with reading difficulties in grades 4 through 12 experience challenges in understanding and learning from text. Some of these learners have demonstrated reading challenges from the early grades and have not acquired successful reading skills. Others were adequate readers in the early grades when word reading was the focus and when…

Understand how teachers use technology to implement Common Core, increase their instructional effectiveness, and support student learning. This brief describes the experiences of a small group of Kentucky teachers who participated in a study in which they applied technology solutions to support their own learning and that of their students. The…

This article provides a field-based example of a series of outreach programs that have been designed in response to current recommendations found in the K-12 outreach literature. These programs begin with university mathematics and science faculty members teaching a 10-day summer workshop to elementary and middle school teachers. Following this…

Despite the key role that principals play in leading schoolwide change, districts' efforts to support principals are often limited, particularly in rural settings. In this article, we report the preliminary findings of a cross-district mentoring program for nine midcareer rural school principals. The collaboratively developed human resource…

Like authors who create settings as integral components of engaging narratives, thoughtful literacy coaches and other educators who plan and implement professional development consider elements of settings to engage teachers in continuous learning. Many teacher educators, researchers, administrators, literacy coaches, and K-12 teachers understand…

Maryland's school finance system experienced a restructuring in 2002 with the passage of SB 856, the "Bridge to Excellence Act." The "Bridge" Act set the funding amount for "base" students, brought state funding for kindergarten students on par with students in grades 1-12, and collapsed about 50 school funding…

The article describes three programs--the Concerns Based Adoption Model, the Mid-Coast Teacher Training Center, and the National School Volunteer Program--designed to assist public school personnel in making changes to meet the mandates of P.L. 94-142 (the Education for All Handicapped Children Act). (SBH)

The key to the successful problem-solving process is the educational engineer, whose role is to make specific practical applications of knowledge gained by research. An educational engineer program is offered to the schools by a regional service agency in Pennsylvania. (Author/IRT)