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The arrival of 2013 brings us one year closer to the rollout of Common Core State Standard (CCSS) assessments, scheduled for 2014-15. As the deadline approaches, the complexities surrounding implementation of the standards and their accompanying assessments come into sharper focus. The issues listed below are hardly exhaustive, but they begin to convey the challenges of implementation facing our nation’s schools and districts. ...

Editor’s note: This post is from our partners at Special Olympics Project UNIFY. Each week in January, we will feature a new article on a topic related to the social inclusion of youth with intellectual disabilities. Through this effort, we hope to inform the public of the importance of such inclusion as well as offer educators and parents resources to implement it.

 Haylie Bernacki , the newest member of the LFA team,  is currently a student at American University in Washington, DC,  majoring in International Relations (focus on International Development)  with a  minor in Special Education. Haylie’s professional  goal is to work in international education policy, specifically special education.

Haylie presently works at Special Olympics International in the Project UNIFY division. Project UNIFY works directly with students in K-12 to enhance school climate and create school communities of acceptance and inclusion for all students regardless of ability level. She  also serves as  a board member for the National Coalition for Academic Service Learning (NCASL).  NCASL  supports state education agencies and education professionals by providing leadership and resources that lead to the intentional and sustainable use of academic service-learning as an engaging pedagogy in the instructional setting. ...

As we look ahead to what we hope to accomplish in education in 2013, it behooves us to also reflect on 2012. We reelected a president whose administration is committed to the issue (but whose policies we do not always agree with) and has granted many states waivers to key aspects of the nation’s top education law, No Child Left Behind. We moved closer to a vision in which students in Mississippi learn to the same high standards as those in Montana and Massachusetts as we worked to implement the Common Core. States and districts across the nation navigated new terrain in teacher evaluation and tenure. Educators continued exploring how to best take advantage of new learning technologies – flipping classrooms, starting one-to-one iPad initiatives, preparing for a shift to online assessments and more.  

With all that happened in 2012, what garnered the most attention from you, our readers? Here are our top five posts of 2012 (as indicated by our trusty Google Analytics tracking system). Enjoy!

5. Rethinking Principal Evaluation. Principals are second only to teachers among the in-school influences on student success. Yet we don’t hear much about how to measure their performance – and the little research that exists on the issue suggests that current evaluation systems are far from adequate.

4. Can Arts Education Help Close the Achievement Gap? Research suggests that arts education can help narrow the achievement gap that exists between low-income students and their more advantaged peers. But ...

The power of collaboration seems, at times, to be the best kept secret in education reform. Despite district variance, efforts to increase student achievement levels often see higher levels of success when all stakeholders work together. Studyville School District (the name has been changed to preserve anonymity) is just one such example. It is a story of collaboration and compromise in which stakeholders came together to design and implement a more effective teacher evaluation system. We live in an era where evaluation and accountability dominate the national education conversation and where student outcomes are being tied to merit pay and teacher performance. It is imperative, given the high-stakes nature of evaluation, that such systems are put in place with fidelity and the buy-in of all actors. ...