The capacity to navigate conflict and solve problems will persist as an essential skill of the future, even if today's students will be doing jobs that haven't been invented yet. What are we doing in schools right now to ensure students have these skills? For nearly a decade, a program called Speak Truth has taught students to use their voices,…

Joseph Mahoney, Joseph Durlak, and Roger Weissberg compare results from four large-scale meta-analyses of student outcomes related to participation in universal, school-based social and emotional learning (SEL) programs. Their examination includes 356 research reports with rigorous designs and outcome data at post or follow-up from hundreds of…

The authors describe a promising approach to engaging high school students in intergroup dialogues, relying on "near peers"--in this case, local college students--to facilitate a series of classroom discussions about racial identity, differences, and opportunities to connect. Early results suggest that the approach had significant…

Dealing with difficult behavior is a matter of awareness of the factors involved in prediction, prevention, and instruction. This means three things: Teachers know, or can be assisted in thinking through the environmental events and contexts that are associated with higher probabilities of problem behavior. Second, teachers can actively manipulate…

While in general agreement with the Gallup Poll's expression of what is wrong with the schools, the North Carolina high school students surveyed see the major source of difficulty as lack of personal commitment by all those who are most closely involved in public education. (Author/IRT)

Emphasizes curricular planning that considers social problems as seen by youth, helping young people to examine their basic assumptions about society in relationship to human values and social policies. (JK)

Calls for increasing the severity of punishment ignore the nonschool origins of discipline problems and fail to consider the role of the schools themselves as a contributing factor to the problems. (Author/IRT)

United States has produced a generation of students who engage in problem solving without regard for common sense or the text of the problem. Three factors bear the blame: societal beliefs about mathematics, the typical math curriculum, and deficiencies in teacher preparation. New conceptions about learning should help spawn curriculum,…

Two University of Missouri researchers say much econometric research on the money/achievement connection is deeply flawed. Data from the "School District Data Book" and Second International Mathematics Study show that money's impact is enormous. In other research, principals' high expectations are pivotal, and children's drawings are…

Research into criminal activity in United States schools has provided evidence that helps explain students' and teachers' attitudes toward schools. Information on changes in disciplinary conditions is incomplete but suggests that discipline continues to be a major problem severely limiting educational efforts and that educators must take more…

Student perspectives on school and learning are remarkably similar to teachers' own views. Teachers want to be respected and to work with students who care and exhibit humor, openness, consideration, and active involvement in subject-area content. Students say they want these same things, including a safe, tension-free environment. (seven…

For all the fractious debate in America over the state of public schools, those on the political Left and Right agree that the "achievement gaps" are real. But what do most people mean when they say "achievement gaps"? Gaps in standardized test scores, of course. The gaps consist of the differences between the test scores of…