Educational evaluation in too many states and school districts, if done at all across an institution, has been reduced to crunching test scores in only the subject areas and grade levels tested. While measuring student achievement in reliable and valid ways is an important part of the mission of education, it is not enough. What's also needed is a…

Imagine being part of a school district where children choose to come in early from recess to do schoolwork, a place where student engagement is so contagious it has overtaken the faculty and staff, a district where the focus is truly on every child every day. Many would contend such an ideal culture simply does not or cannot exist in today's…

Pay for performance is not a new idea, and reformers should not ignore the dismal record of merit pay over the past century. Initially adopted with a flourish of expectations during several waves of popularity in the past, every plan eventually fell into disuse. These plans proved to be unexpectedly costly and cumbersome to run. They often…

As resources shrink, the need to do more with less becomes critical. As a business CEO turned superintendent, this author has seen firsthand that many options exist, but none are fun, easy, or politically rewarding. He contends that the challenge of managing declining resources is not the choice between doing less for children or discovering new…

School and district leaders are commonly faced with diverse student needs and interests that could be effectively addressed with a course that is not currently offered in local schools. Virtual schools have grown up over the past 15 years in different policy and budget ecosystems, but most online course programs can be classified in one of six…

This article presents 10 programs that run education missions abroad. One of these programs is the Chinese Bridge Delegation sponsored by Hanban (Office of Chinese Language Council International). It aims to learn about Chinese culture and language, and establish ties with schools and educators in China.

One of the biggest obstacles to overcome in creating and sustaining an administrative professional learning community (PLC) is time. Administrators are constantly deluged by the tyranny of the urgent. It is a Herculean task to carve out time for PLCs, but it is imperative to do so. In this article, the authors describe how an administrative PLC…

This article discusses how school districts in California collaborate with higher education to boost college readiness and access. In Long Beach, educators from all three major institutions of learning--elementary, middle and high schools, the local university and the community college--worked together to align standards and expectations across…

Between 69 percent and 90 percent of English language learners (ELLs) in middle and high schools were born in the United States and have been in U.S. schools since kindergarten still have not achieved the academic proficiency to succeed in an all-English mainstream program. Various ELL program options are available for school districts to…

This article describes how a school district's use of a transparent tool coalesced support for systemic improvement. The author was looking for a way to push improvement in his 4,000-student school system when he discovered the balanced scorecard, a strategic tool for performance management. The author details how the balanced scorecard helped him…

Schools in America, especially in communities far from urban centers, are working harder to find highly qualified and culturally proficient staff to prepare students successfully for an increasingly interconnected world. Apart from offering teachers more professional development and hiring educators with international travel experience, public…

Ten years ago, the Atlanta Public Schools had low and declining student achievement, demoralized teachers, crumbling buildings, high turnover among superintendents (average tenure of two years) and disaffected parents pulling their children out of the system. More than 60 percent of the city's high school students missed at least two weeks of…

This article features a school built on multiple intelligences. As the first multiple intelligences school in the world, the Key Learning Community shapes its students' days to include significant time in the musical, spatial and bodily-kinesthetic intelligences, as well as the more traditional areas of logical-mathematical and linguistics. In…

The effort to leave no child behind is a major threat to high-ability students, whose cognitive and affective needs are increasingly falling by the wayside from default, according to gifted education advocates. They argue that the No Child Left Behind Act, with its unprecedented, high-stakes focus on students performing below grade level, leaves…

About 1,500 schools nationwide pay an estimated $200 million in federal funds to private enterprises claiming to provide better literacy instruction than the disappointing Title I results of the past 34 years. Programs run by Kaplan Inc., Success for All Foundation, Sylvan Learning Systems, and Reading Recovery Council are described. (MLH)