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Editor's note: Our guest blogger today is Steve Berlin. Steve is Senior Communications Manager at the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE, a Learning First Alliance member).

For anyone reading this post, it should come as no surprise that education professionals have long agreed on these two proactive ways to improve scholastic achievement, at least in principle: dropout prevention efforts must begin before students reach high school, and it is incumbent on education entities to seek partners from outside the field to help students succeed. Further, we must consider looking beyond the “usual suspect” when it comes to partnerships because as a nation, everyone has a vested interest in students’ success.

At the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE), we have found a promising formula to help increase the high school graduation rate through our partnership with the U.S. Army. Together, we developed and launched in January 2011 the Partnership for All Students’ Success (Project PASS).  

Project PASS is designed to support students’ academic, social, and emotional needs to increase high school graduation rates and college and career readiness with the new Junior Leadership Corps (JLC) in middle schools and ...

Preparing General Ed Teachers to Succeed with Students with Disabilities

96% of students with disabilities spend at least part of their day in general education classrooms. But how prepared are general ed teachers to work with those students?

Not very. And that may be part of the reason why students with disabilities perform significantly worse than their peers – even students whose disabilities should not prevent them from reaching the same academic outcomes.*

Yesterday, the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education** and the National Center for Learning Disabilities released a white paper that lays out a new vision for preparing general education teachers to improve outcomes for students with disabilities. It also offers recommendations to federal and state policymakers, as well as providers of teacher education, as to how to make that vision a reality.

I was fortunate enough to attend a briefing on the paper, and one major theme stuck out at me: We’ve got to move beyond this notion that some general ed teachers have – and that our education system in many ways reinforces – that it’s not their job to handle all the issues that students with disabilities bring.

The paper points out that while teachers often work with a wide range of students in the classroom, their teaching license typically limits them to work in an elementary or secondary school, and as a general ed, special education or ...

Clearly we live in an age when customers have great choice in products and services, many of which can be delivered via computer applications. Education authors and former teachers and administrators Chuck Schwahn and Bea McGarvey want to integrate this reality into school learning.

They recently published a new book, Inevitable: Mass Customizing Learning, in which they discuss how schools can alter current outdated practices by utilizing customizing technologies to better meet individualized needs of students. We recently asked the pair some questions about their book and its potential for improving the schools. Check out the description Bea provided of creating a learning plan/schedule under their system at the bottom of the page after the interview.

Public School Insights:  Your book is titled Inevitable: Mass Customized Learning.  What is Mass Customized Learning?

Schwahn/McGarvey: Mass Customized Learning (MCL) is actually a very descriptive label.  From a learner’s perspective, MCL means that “every day when I go to school, I am met at my individual and personal learning level, I am able to learn in my most powerful learning modes, I am motivated to want to learn with content that is of interest to me, I feel a sense of challenge, I am successful, and I look forward to ...

Last week, the National Institute for Early Education Research released its annual report on the state of preschool. Among what we learned: Enrollment in state-funded pre-kindergarten programs has grown more than 70 percent over the past decade. But despite trends in growth, total state funds for pre-k were $30 million less in 2010 than the previous year – and would have been close to $50 million greater were it not for stimulus funds. Per-child spending fell an average of $114 last year.

The growth in enrollment makes complete sense. After all, research continues to show the benefits (both academic and economic) of pre-k education. But especially given those benefits, the decline in state funding is quite worrisome. Unfortunately, it is not unexpected – and given the current economic crisis in many states, I could be forgiven for assuming that state capacity to maintain and expand pre-k programs will shrink in the coming years.

That pessimism is one reason I was pleased to see the announcement earlier this week that several national education organizations (including several Learning First Alliance members) are joining forces specifically to support high-quality pre-kindergarten. As a sign of their ...

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Commentary: In a new report, NAACP President Benjamin Jealous and partners make compelling points about the funding tradeoff between prisons and schools.

The NAACP recently released a report—“Misplaced Priorities: Over Incarcerate, Under Educate”—which, as the title suggests, argues the federal and state governments are misplacing priorities in their allocation of funds to prisons rather than education. In the report and in recent interviews, NAACP President Benjamin Jealous and other sympathizers (including some fiscally conservative groups and prison groups) make compelling points about this funding tradeoff.

An Edweek article quotes Jealous saying that this “multidecade trend of prioritizing incarceration over education is not sustainable.” The report cites data from the Pew Center on the States among other sources that backup his assertions about allotment: ...

We all know that reading and math standardized test scores do not truly represent how good a school is. But thanks to No Child Left Behind (NCLB - the current iteration of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, ESEA), that is just about all we consider when judging a school’s performance. Under current accountability systems, whether a school promotes civic-mindedness, good physical health or social or behavioral outcomes like self-regulating behavior or an ability to work in teams – or any of the other outcomes that society expects of its public schools – doesn’t actually count towards anything.

So of course, schools focus their efforts on the things that matter. Research confirms that since implementation of No Child Left Behind, curriculum in many places has narrowed. Schools are spending more time teaching basic reading and math at the expense of the arts, social studies, physical education and science.

We at the Learning First Alliance have long called for a broader approach to assessment and school accountability. Individually, many of our member organizations do as well. So we were very privileged to have the opportunity to co-host, with the Sandler Foundation, an event to release a new report by RAND Education that examined expanded measures of school performance.

In this report, RAND examined what measures of school performance that states currently use in accountability systems, trends outside the accountability context in ...

Editor's note: Our guest blogger today is Melissa Whipple, a District Resource Teacher for the San Diego Unified School District. In her current role, she coaches school staff to help them understand the value of family and community engagement and how to leverage it to boost student performance. She also serves as an Adjunct Professor at USD, teaching a master’s course demystifying Family, School, and Community Partnerships.

I have been teaching in many capacities since 1975, and it seems to me that most educational leaders want to skip to immediate implementation of educational changes or reforms without first building relationships.

They seem to be in such a hurry to prove themselves as change agents or visionary leaders or reformers, they fail to understand that taking time to build consensus and positive relationships with others is just as important (if not more so) as the content of their proposed reforms. John Wooden once said, "It is what we learn after we know it all that matters." I couldn't agree more.

Unfortunately, many educational leaders tend to lead with their mouths (telling others what is going to be done and how) rather than leading with their ears (listening to other points of view and figuring out how best to work in ways that develop a sense of shared responsibility for student success) and proceeding accordingly. It seems the message is, "Just do what we say. Don't worry, we have done all the thinking for you and we have all of the answers. Remember, it is our way or the highway." This doesn't go over well.

In my district, we have had a revolving door of superintendents and their imported administrative teams (we have had four complete turnovers in the last 10 years) who seemed qualified and also personally charming, and yet they each failed to understand that ...

All of us can agree that the United States needs to carefully examine our efforts in STEM education (science, technology, engineering and math) with an eye towards improving rigor, expanding reach and ensuring that more of our students are both interested and proficient in these subjects.  Certainly, from an economic health and employment standpoint, we should all be concerned with raising the bar on STEM standards while nurturing the effectiveness of the professionals who teach these subjects.  However, agreeing on the “what” that needs to be done is always easier than agreement on the “how” to get the job done. ...

Today is Earth Day. Last year on Earth Day, Arne Duncan spoke about the important role of schools in the nation’s transition to a green economy, and in the State of the Union Address President Obama reiterated the integral link between schools and creating an economic climate that is both profitable and environmentally-conscious. By providing students with an understanding of earth processes and human impact, together with imparting critical thinking skills and math and science knowledge to students, public schools can contribute significantly to these goals.  

Earth Day provides an opportunity to teach about these important topics in a fun way. I have fond memories of Earth Day from elementary school. My school had a general environmental focus, and Earth Day was like Christmas. The whole school would take the entire day off to learn about the earth and sustainable living. Different classrooms and communal areas of the school were assigned to host workshops led by community members and ...