“In the past, workers with average skills, doing an average job, could earn an average lifestyle. But, today, average is officially over.”—Tom Friedman

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are about more than the old average. The adoption of these standards means that all students are now on a pathway to college and career-readiness. CCSS represent a real and fundamental shift in instructional intent from high school completion to…

Read More

On Wednesday, March 28^th, The College Board held a Webinar, “School Leaders for Common Core Standards: Changing School Culture and Climate,” where panelists Dick Flanary, Senior Director of Leadership Programs and Services and Mel Riddile, Associate Director for High School Services at the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) joined moderator Natasha Vasavada, Executive Director of Research and Development at The College Board, to discuss the cultural…

Read More

Recent evidence tells us that new teachers are more common today than they have ever been in the past twenty years. For example, 15 years of classroom teaching experience was the norm in 1987-88 but by 2007-08, it was more common for the typical teacher to only have one year of experience in the classroom.[1] It is more important than ever that new teachers receive proper support to…

Read More

We don’t come across rigorous research on teacher professional development at the high school level as often as we’d like. So, when we read the positive findings from a randomized control trial of the web-mediated professional development strategy, My Teaching Partner—Secondary (MTP-S), we thought it would be interesting to blog about it.[1]

MTP-S is a program that targets the motivational and instructional qualities of teachers’ interactions with…

Read More

The U.S. Department of Education recently announced the launch of their online School Turnaround Learning Community (STLC) to support states and districts working with School Improvement Grant (SIG) recipients and other low performing schools working to turn around their performance.  As of August 1, 470 members have joined this online community of practice.

According to the STLC site, “The goal of the STLC is to provide states and…

Read More

On July 18, 2011, the newly revised Standards for Professional Learning were released by Learning Forward (formerly known as the National Staff Development Council). These new standards outline the characteristics of professional learning that lead to effective teaching practices, supportive leadership, and improved student results.

The revisions to the standards reflect new research and findings pertaining to effective professional learning that have been published in the ten years since the…

Read More

This is one in a series of blog posts about the recent Midwest High School SIG Conference, held May 18-19, in Chicago.

At the recent Midwest High School SIG Conference, Phil Jankowski, principal at Armada High School in Armada, Michigan, described the processes used at his high school to evaluate teachers.

At Armada, teachers are evaluated based on a standard lesson observation with pre- and post-conferences…

Read More