Focusing on the Essentials
Money and time are the resources in greatest demand in shortest supply for school leaders.
Getting Better All the Time
Much of the research discussed in these columns has focused on how under-performing schools have been making dramatic improvements through the collaboration of school boards, senior leadership, building- level administrators, teachers, and community members.
If You Hate Standards, Learn To Love The Bell Curve
The politically correct blood sport among educational commentators these days is the jeremiad against the evils of academic standards and testing.
Technology Is Transforming What Happens When A Child Goes To School
or a ten-year-old, Amartya is a thoughtful chap. One Monday morning at the Khan Lab School (KLS) in Mountain View, California, he explains that his maths is “pretty strong” but he needs to work on his writing.
Improving Student Attendance
Learn how to improve student attendance
To paraphrase educational philosopher Yogi Berra, “Showing up to school is 90% of the game; the other half is mental.”
Academics and the Arts
Learn how academics and the arts support each other.
Leaders set priorities. With multiple demands on limited school resources and classroom time, an essential job of every school leader is allocating resources to produce the greatest student success.
Closing the Implementation Gap
Domino's Pizza estimates that it delivered more than 1.2 million pizzas on Super Bowl Sunday.
Coaching Myths and Realities
Remember when the coach was the man on the sidelines wildly gesturing his team on to victory? Now the proliferation of instructional coaches, leadership coaches, and life coaches has made the term coaching less precise.
How Do You Change School Culture?
Consider the following laments that I have heard recently from school leaders: “We can't change the grading policy—it's part of our culture.”
Leadership Leverage
School leaders are often held accountable for things beyond their control.
Lessons from Shamombo
Several weeks ago, I traveled to rural Zambia to dedicate a school that (1) my colleagues and I had built there.
Preventing 1,000 Failures
What would preventing 1,000 course failures mean for your school system? For administrators, it would mean 1,000 fewer repeated courses that have to be worked into students' schedules.
Teachers Step Up
As this issue of Educational Leadership makes clear, teacher leadership is a concept that extends far beyond a slogan and has become an integral part of education reform.
New Ways to Hire Educators
Two variables that profoundly influence student achievement are the quality of instruction provided by teachers (Darling-Hammond & Sykes, 1999; Education Trust, 1998) and the quality of leadership provided by school principals (Davis, Darling-Hammond, LaPointe, & Meyerson, 2005; Leithwood, Louis, Anderson, & Wahlstrom, 2004).
Making Strategic Planning Work
For some people, the term strategic planning brings to mind a disciplined and thoughtful process that links the values, mission, and goals of a school system with a set of coherent strategies and tasks designed to achieve those goals.
Making the Best Even Better
Much of the research discussed in these columns has focused on how under-performing schools have been making dramatic improvements through the collaboration of boards of education, senior leadership, school administrators, teachers, and community members.
Metarubric for Assessing Creativity Rubrics
Metarubric for Assessing Creativity Rubrics are free resources that measure product, process, collaboration, practice and error. A complementary rubric provides indicators for the research base, multidisciplinary perspectives, clarity of guidelines, and source materials.
Model Teachers
How do educators learn? The answer to this question will vary depending on how we define the word learn.
Motivating Unmotivated Students
"I can't force them to study!" said the exasperated teacher. "I've heard the last group chant of 'All Children Can Learn' that I can stand.
Students can’t Google Everything: Why knowledge matters
Michael Gove, secretary of education in Great Britain, certainly has a flair for oratory.