Improving the Quality of Teachers and Principals
By The Hunt Team
“This is an excerpt from the overview of a five-part re:VISION special series on improving the effectiveness of the nation’s teachers and leaders. The Hunt Institute’s re:VISION focuses on critical issues in education policy – highlighting key research for policymakers and prompting discussion of solutions within states and across the nation. The ‘teacher effectiveness series’ is intended to provide state-level policymakers with a digest of existing research and current state efforts around teacher preparation, evaluation, compensation, and school leadership. Each of the briefs in this series will provide a deeper exploration of the challenges states are facing in the area of educator effectiveness reform and offer considerations for policymakers.”
A talented, well-trained, and committed workforce is the life-blood of any enterprise. Ask any successful business or military leader. The most successful companies spend considerable time, energy, and resources to identify, recruit, and hire the best and brightest; then they work at keeping them through optimal working conditions, incentives, and pay.
The military invests mightily in developing and honing the skills of its members; it pays for additional education and it invests in talent. The security of our country depends on it.
Read More →“Racing to the Top” to Prepare Turnaround Principals … What’s Next?
By Kathleen M. Brown, Ed.D.
Four years ago, North Carolina was awarded one of only 12 federal Race to the Top (RttT) competitive grants, bringing nearly $400 million to the state’s public school system. Approximately $17.5 million of these funds were specifically earmarked to “increase the number of principals qualified to lead transformational change in low-performing schools in both rural and urban areas.” As such, the policy objective undertaken by North Carolina’s Regional Leadership Academies (RLAs) was to recruit and prepare more than180 “turnaround principals” serving more than 30 counties in three vastly different and very distinct regions of the state -the Northeast (NELA), the Piedmont Triad (PTLA) and the Sandhills (SLA). Findings to date indicate that:
Read More →Preparing Turnaround Principals: North Carolina’s Regional Leadership Academies
By Kathleen M. Brown, Ed.D.
Developing school leaders who are equipped with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed to effectively lead low-performing schools has become a critical goal for local education agencies (LEAs) intent on dramatically improving student outcomes. North Carolina’s Race to the Top (RttT) plan acknowledges the pressing need for high-quality leadership in low-achieving schools; the component of the plan that focuses on ensuring equitable distribution of high-quality teachers and leaders identifies, among other things, a need for increasing the number of principals qualified to lead transformational change in low-performing schools in both rural and urban areas.
Read More →Moving the Common Core State Standards from Adoption to Implementation to Sustainability
This post originally appeared on November 6, 2012 on ASCD’s Inservice blog.
By David Griffith, ASCD Public Policy
If you’re an educator in one of the 46 states that has adopted the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), you’ve not only been learning about the standards and what they mean for you and your students, but you’ve most likely begun implementing them as well.
As you’ve been busy moving forward, you probably still have a great deal of questions. Does your district or school have the technological capacity to administer the new computer-based assessments? How can you better leverage technology for teaching to the standards? How can you take your understanding of the standards and translate them into effective lesson plans? What are the best professional development resources on the Common Core, and how can they help you?
Read More →Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools: Emerging Practice in Implementing the Common Core State Standards
While many educators have heard of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) by this point and understand the “what” and the “why,” many are still eager for help with “how” to make the shift to the Common Core. In a recent Education Week webinar, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ (CMS) Deputy Superintendent Ann Clark and Director of Humanities Rebecca Graf discussed their district’s approach to building capacity, training educators, and supporting teachers.
Read More →Kentucky Leadership Networks – Growing Leaders, Scaling Student Achievement
In April 2009, Kentucky legislators passed Senate Bill 1, ushering in a new era of education reform in Kentucky and calling for the development of summative, statewide accountability assessments and new, world-class standards. Soon after, Kentucky became the first state to adopt the Common Core State Standards. Plans for implementing the new standards began immediately, and reality quickly set in—college and career readiness for all Kentucky students could not be realized by new standards and assessments alone. Rather, the Commonwealth needed to address root causes that impact student achievement and take advantage of the opportunity to make systemic changes to their standards, assessments, accountability, teacher pre-service training and professional development programs.
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