Click on a topic below to begin:

• Articles and Websites Related to General Ed Reform

• After School Enrichment

• Better Food Means Better Learning (Nutrition)

• Class Size

• Drop Outs & GED

• Grant Writing

• Leadership

• High School

• Middle School

• Ninth Grade

• Paraprofessional Qualification

• Professional Development

• Teacher Certification

• Teacher Recruitment & Retention

• Teacher Quality

• Looking for a job? Job opportunities and resources may be found here.

Featured Resources

The Really Big List of Classroom Management Resources: There are classroom management techniques tailored to elementary and secondary education, discipline ideas for new and experienced teachers, tips for handling special education, suggestions for getting organized, strategies for preventing behavior problems, sample classroom rules, ways of creating a caring community, and more.
 

» Click here for more in-depth resources and information on this topic. 

Uncertified Teachers Performing Well, Study Finds - According to a new study, uncertified teachers end up performing just as well in the classroom as certified teachers and alternatively trained teachers. The study's results appear to challenge requirements under the federal No Child Left Behind Act that every classroom have a "highly qualified" teacher, instead suggesting that schools should put more emphasis on weeding out bad apples after the teachers have been hired. While alternatively certified and uncertified teachers do worse at first, they appear to improve at faster rates than traditionally certified teachers and by the teachers' third year on the job, students of alternatively certified and uncertified teachers are performing just as well as those of traditionally certified teachers.

Challenge to Teacher Ed - For-profit venture seeks to offer a new model, involving close ties to school districts and a curriculum based on the latest research.

Innovations In Education - "Alternative Routes to Teacher Certification" looks at six programs that prepare people who already have content knowledge -- such as mid-career professionals, liberal arts graduates, retired military personnel, and other college graduates -- to teach. "Alternative Pathways to School Leadership" provides examples of successful strategies to prepare candidates for school leadership positions. To receive two copies of each new book, write to Courtney Phillips at Courtney.Phillips@ed.gov or click on the link above. [Source: Office of Innovation and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education]

Check your child's Michigan Teacher Certification Status
 

KY Kentucky Teachers Taking Alternative Paths to Certifications - A growing number of Kentucky teachers are taking alternative routes to their certification - getting into the classroom while earning their credentials.

Alternative teacher-certification program debuts online - A new internet-based program that allows underqualified teachers, career changers, and other professionals to bypass teacher colleges to become "highly qualified" certified teachers made its debut Aug. 22. Passport to Teaching targets people who are interested in becoming teachers but don't want to take the time and incur the expense of completing a traditional teacher-education program. [Free registration required to read/view this article @ www.eschoolnews.com]

Attention Michigan Teachers: Information and teacher certification applications can be found at the Michigan Dept. of Ed. website at www.michigan.gov/mde.  Click on educators on the left and then on professional preparation on the left.

Looking for a job?  K-12 job opportunities may be found at www.greatschooljobs.com or www.mireap.net.

What's Wrong With Teacher Certification? - Current teacher licensing, or teacher certification, as it is commonly called, does not do what it is intended to do. It does not differentiate clearly between those who are qualified to teach and those who are not.

Paige Backs Reform in Certification of Teachers - Mr. Paige yesterday endorsed the new American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence (ABCTE), whose mission is to certify subject experts, experienced professionals and military veterans as public school teachers, even if they don't have degrees in education.

Teachers get an easy pass - Minnesota teachers hold a national reputation for excellence, but when it comes to the tests they take to get their licenses, the state allows some of the lowest passing scores in the country.

Innovations In Education - "Alternative Routes to Teacher Certification" looks at six programs that prepare people who already have content knowledge -- such as mid-career professionals, liberal arts graduates, retired military personnel, and other college graduates -- to teach. "Alternative Pathways to School Leadership" provides examples of successful strategies to prepare candidates for school leadership positions. To receive two copies of each new book, write to Courtney Phillips at Courtney.Phillips@ed.gov or click on the link above. [Source: Office of Innovation and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education]

Building Academic Success on Social and Emotional Learning: What Does the Research Say? - A new publication from the Collaborative on Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, examines the relationships between social emotional education and school success, specifically focusing on interventions that enhance student learning. The book provides both scientific evidence and practical examples in describing the benefits of social emotional learning programs, such as: skill-building linked to cognitive development; improved relationships between students and teachers; school-family partnerships to help students achieve; and increased student confidence and success. To order a copy from Teachers College Press go to http://store.tcpress.com/0807744395.shtml.

ISLLC Standards Found Lacking in Practices Related to Student Achievement (PDF) - The Mid-continent Regional Education Laboratory takes a look at the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) standards for licensing school principals and finds that they contain some---but not all---of the leadership responsibilities and practices that are correlated with student achievement. If you’re one of the 40 states that have incorporated ISLLC into their leadership standards, you’ll want to read this report.

Eight Elements for Superintendents Who Want to Make a Difference - Today’s superintendency calls on deep reserves from leaders who understand and seek to practice fundamental tenets of what Michael Fullan calls "system thinkers in action." The eight elements of sustainability constitute the agenda for the superintendent who wants to make a difference and has the resolve and energy to keep going: (1) Public service with moral purpose; (2) Change the entire context within which people work; (3) Strengthen peer relations across schools; (4) Increase the capacity of schools to engage in self-review; (5) Continuous improvement, adaptation and collective problem solving in the face of complex challenges; (6) Dual commitment to short-term and long-term results; (7) Taking the energy, additional time, and ingenuity required for the next breakthrough; and (8) Developing other leaders in the district.

KS In Less Than 2 Years, Principal Restores Discipline, Improves Test Scores - After Denise Wren took over one of Wichita's toughest high schools, she did more with less. A lot more. Math and reading test scores rose. Writing scores jumped 14 percentage points.

Featured Website: e-Lead.org, a partnership of IEL (Institute for Educational Leadership) and the Laboratory for Student Success (LSS), offers states and districts information about how to provide better professional development for principals The renovated site now includes over 30 programs in its selected database, in addition to other guidance and resources.

Commentary: Is Unity Possible? - One of the challenges of leadership in any organization (or country) is how to respect and incorporate diverse viewpoints and experiences while uniting behind a common vision in order to reach common goals – and not allowing the process to be derailed.

MI Everett's Principal is Named Best in the State - Dale Glynn, who has led Lansing's diverse Everett High School since 1995, is Michigan's new High School Principal of the Year. Affectionately known as "Rainbow Man" because of his inclusive nature, Glynn said the students "become my sons and my daughters."

Mentors Are Biggest Help to New Teachers, Report Indicates - Since 1999, researchers at the Harvard Graduate School of Education have followed the careers of 50 new Massachusetts teachers.

The Waiting Game - Alexander Russo looks at the struggles of graduates of the highly competitive program New Leaders for New Schools to find jobs in traditional public schools. New Leaders fellows receive the kind of leadership and management training that principals hired through traditional routes seldom enjoy. Each cohort of “new leaders” is chosen through a highly competitive application process. Those selected take courses during the summer, then spend a year in full-time “residency” at a school under the guidance of a mentor principal. The current fellows range in age from their late 20s to their mid-50s. Two-thirds are African-American, Hispanic, or Asian-American, and two-thirds are women. Most important, they are among the most confident, determined, and accomplished school leadership candidates you can imagine.

It Takes Much More Than Mentors to Help New Teachers - On Sunday, May 16, 2004, I saw a posting from azcentral.com headlining “Mentors are biggest help to new teachers, report indicates.” It cites the May/June Harvard Education Letter and the Public Education Network to support its headline and article. Both the azcentral.com posting and the Harvard Education Letter are incorrect. A definition is in order. Mentoring and induction are not synonymous. Mentoring is what a mentor does. Induction is the name given to the comprehensive process used to train, support, and retain new teachers, of which a mentor may be one component. Mentors are very important, but they must be part of an induction process aligned to the district’s vision, mission, and structure. For a mentor to be effective, the mentor must be trained and then used in combination with the other components of the induction process.

FL In This Florida District Diversity Hasn't Reached the Principal's Office - In Florida's giant Broward County school district, only 10 school principals are Hispanic. That's 6 percent, compared with nearly one in four students. Even as the county rapidly grows more diverse, school administrators are still mostly white non-Hispanics--and their grip on the principal's office can be damaging, Hispanic parents say.

OH Fewer Want to be Superintendents - Superintendents are retiring in record numbers, but schools can't fill their positions.

Seven Principles of Sustainable Leadership - A new study finds that a key force leading to meaningful, long-term change is leadership sustainability. Most school leadership practices create temporary, localized flurries of change but little lasting or widespread improvement. The study found some exceptions, however. From the first day of their appointment, some leaders thought hard about how they might implement deep, broad, and long-lasting reforms. The authors illustrate seven principles that together define sustainable leadership.

IL Portfolios the First Phase of New Principal Screening - 600 eligible candidates must document leadership experience and students' academic gains.

Leadership is an Affair of the Heart - "When I have asked teachers and principals, 'What is the guiding principle or big idea that drives the work of your school and gives direction and focus to the people who work within it?' the most common response is, 'We need to raise test scores,'" writes Rick DuFour. That's not enough. " Leaders who are most effective in generating results know how to "appeal not only to the bottom line, but also to the heart. In fact, one of the best strategies for improving results is connecting with people's deepest, heartfelt hopes." [Source: PEN]

CA Co-principals: Divvying up a Monster Job - At Polytechnic High School here, everyone wants a piece of Principal Shawn Ashley. They all also want a piece of Principal Gwen Mack. One minute, a teacher is complaining about kids loitering in the halls. The next, an aide is hauling in a boy caught in the girls’ bathroom. Then a custodian is griping about co-workers. Ashley and Mack take it all in stride.

NC Women Lead Few School Districts - The path to the superintendent's office can be difficult. Leaning slightly in her chair, Orange County schools Superintendent Shirley Carraway reflects on the path she took to her corner office in Hillsborough. The journey of a few paces from the front door was years long, navigating through male-dominated territory and leaping hurdles of preference, prejudice and perception. It's a voyage that many women don't get to make.

NY Principal Apple of His Eye - It didn't take an army of cops to turn around troubled Hillcrest High School in Queens. It took a tough principal. One day after announcing plans to flood the city's 12 most dangerous schools with more police, Chancellor Joel Klein made a surprise visit to the Jamaica school that just two years ago was one of the most violent in the city. The drop-in was designed to show that Klein thinks principals, not cops, are ultimately responsible for the safety in their schools.

CA A Buddy System for Educators - At Polytechnic High School in Long Beach, everyone wants a piece of Principal Shawn Ashley. They all also want a piece of Principal Gwen Mack. One minute, a teacher is complaining about kids loitering in the halls. The next, an aide is hauling in a boy caught in the girls' bathroom. Then a custodian is griping about co-workers. Ashley and Mack take it all in stride. Inside their office, with two gray cubicles and two names on the door, they divvy up a monster job usually heaped on the shoulders of a single principal.

Guiding Principles for Principal Professional Development - "E-Lead," a free website resource dedicated to providing states and districts with guidance about and information on the professional development of school principals, was launched through the partnership of the Laboratory for Student Success and the Institute for Educational Leadership. [Source: PEN]

Leadership Opportunity: Broad Center 2004 Urban Superintendents Academy - The Urban Superintendents Academy is a 10-month executive management course designed to prepare leaders from outside and inside the education sector to become successful urban superintendents. The Broad Center is seeking high-achieving, dynamic executives from the corporate, nonprofit, government, military and education sectors who have a passion for improving public education by serving as chief executive officers in our nation's largest urban school systems. Application deadlines are September 15 and October 15, 2003.

The Education Policy and Leadership Center (EPLC) is an independent, non-profit, non-partisan organization focused on state-level education policy and educational leadership development.  The mission of The Education Policy and Leadership Center is to encourage and support the use of more effective state-level education policies to improve student learning in grades K-12, increase the effective operation of schools, and enhance educational opportunities for citizens of all ages.

WA School Chiefs Lack Broad Authority for Reforms, UW Survey Finds - A University of Washington study being released Monday suggests the goals of No Child Left Behind -- a sweeping educational reform that holds schools and districts accountable for student achievement -- will be difficult to meet unless school superintendents are given greater authority.

An Impossible Job? The View From the Urban Superintendent's Chair - This report, the second in the Center's leadership series, finds that even the best superintendents cannot make the changes necessary to raise school performance because district governance thwarts their ability to implement reform. The research is based on surveys and interviews of 140 urban superintendents, and the final chapter outlines a number of recommendations to empower superintendents.  View the summary, policy brief, press release, or full report.

Agent of Change - A year in the life of a hard-charging superintendent shows what it takes to overhaul a school system. (You must login/register to read this article from Education Week.)

Report on Effective Leadership Now Available

Report on Effective Leadership Now Available - Effective Superintendents, Effective Boards: Finding the Right Fit looks at the relationship between school boards and superintendents and how it affects student achievement.  This report is available for free (pdf) on the Web and $10 for a hard copy at https://www.ewa.org/cgi-bin/formengine.cgi?form=orderform.  (An Education Writers Association Special Report)

Beyond Instructional Leadership: The Learning-Centered Principal - "When I entered the principalship a quarter century ago, the research on effective schools warned that without strong administrative leadership, the disparate elements of good schooling could be neither brought together nor kept together. I heeded the message. I was determined to rise above the mundane managerial tasks of the job and focus instead on instruction—I hoped to be an instructional leader."

Target Stores and Tiger Woods Restructure Start Something Scholarship Program - Target Stores and the Tiger Woods Foundation have restructured Start Something, a program that helps young people pursue their dreams and goals and encourages youth leadership and community stewardship.

CA Chief San Diego school reformer to leave - Superintendent calls departure 'mutual'.

Read the article "A Compass in the Storm" - Guiding principles for a new age of business and school partnerships.

Leadership dilemmas can only be answered through spiritual and philosophical traditions - "I’d like to offer just a few simple practices that I personally can’t live without if I’m to maintain a sense of focus and peace as a leader...."

By looking inward, any individual has the capacity to rise to greatness - "Leadership is a mysterious and elusive concept. What we read as history is really the creation of myths. From an ordinary person, society creates a Napoleon or Gandhi, a Martin Luther King Jr. or Joan of Arc, someone who acquires mythic status as a shaper of destiny." - Deepak Chopra

A Way to Engage, Not Escape - "In a time when educational leaders are told to focus on numbers-driven, outcome-based, bottom-line accountability, the idea of spirituality in leadership can seem quaint, irrelevant and downright squishy. What possible use can spirituality have for leaders, other than perhaps to serve as a brief and unreal respite from the rough-and-tumble world?"

Five principles for welcoming soul into school leadership - “What are the ‘inner’ skills and strengths you have cultivated and sustained that make you a strong leader today?” I asked Bob Adams, the superintendent in Aurora, Colorado.

Professional Development                      Click here for information on Grant Writing.

» Click here for more in-depth resources and information on this topic. 

Dropouts Establish Patterns Early On - Warning signs of high school academic woes can be seen in students as young as 11 and addressed, researchers say.
 

MI State Grad Rate At 75% - More than four out of 10 students didn't graduate from Detroit Public Schools (DPS) in 2007, according to data released today by the Center for Educational Performance and Information (CEPI).
 

MI Michigan CIS-Schools Partner to Fight Dropout Epidemic - Michigan's six Communities in Schools (CIS) programs, which use adult role models to prevent children from dropping out, could help relieve the budget strain on K-12 education because of the program's attractiveness to private donors, advocates say.
 

MI Hearings Scheduled to Address Michigan’s Dropout Crisis - Solutions sought to raise graduation rates. Finding ways to fix Michigan’s dropout crisis is the focus of public hearings beginning in May, part of a statewide initiative to increase the number of high school graduates to stabilize a weak economy.

Detroit Schools Graduation Rate: 32% - Just 31.9 percent of Detroit students graduate in four years, according to the first major study in Michigan conducted using a method now mandated by the federal government.

Reviews from the What Works Clearinghouse: Dropout Prevention (March 2007, Research Reviews) - The What Works Clearinghouse of the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences has published reviews of two dropout prevention interventions: Middle College High School and Twelve Together.
 

MI Dropout Numbers Not Always Verified - Data used by state and federal policymakers to set education policy, and by parents in making location decisions, could very well be inaccurate, according to an audit released today.

Whatever It Takes: Reconnecting Out-Of-School Youth - This new report documents what committed educators, policymakers, and community leaders across the country are doing to reconnect out-of-school youth to the social and economic mainstream. It provides background on the serious high school dropout problem and describes in-depth what twelve communities are doing to reconnect dropouts to education and employment training. It also includes descriptions of major national program models serving out-of-school youth.

Drop Outs: In this three-part series, the Los Angeles Times examines why so many students drastically limit their prospects by dropping out of high school.

PART ONE: Back to Basics: Why Does High School Fail So Many?
PART TWO: Algebra: A Formula for Failure in L.A. Schools
PART THREE: Trail to Graduation: 'It's Like You're Climbing Everest'

Big IDEAs: Dropout Prevention Strategies - Big IDEAs: Dropout Prevention Strategies is the quarterly e-mail newsletter of the National Dropout Prevention Center for Students with Disabilities. You can browse back issues of Big IDEAs on the Center’s Website.
 

Preventing Dropouts Helps Nation’s Economy - Four words changed Josh Baker’s life: You can play football.

IN Paying the Price for the Dropout Epidemic - Two facts are closely linked: Indiana was 44th in the nation in job creation last year, and it's 46th in the educational attainment level of its population. The first number won't rise until the second is confronted.

CA Dropout Numbers Called 'Crisis' - A study by the Harvard Civil Rights Project and the Urban Institute found that California's reported graduation rate of 87 percent dramatically underestimates the actual number of dropouts. Researchers found that the actual graduation rate is probably closer to 71 percent. Rates for minority students were even lower: 57 percent for African Americans, 60 percent for Latinos and 52 percent for Native Americans. Rates for minority males dropped even further, according to the study.

Math Emerges As Big Hurdle For Teenagers - Researchers from the United Negro College Fund went to West Virginia last year and asked 62 high school dropouts in the federal Job Corps program a simple, open-ended question. “What was it about school,” they wanted to know, “that caused you to quit?”

Looking for your Michigan GED Transcript? Click here to download the Michigan GED Transcript Request Form (PDF; size=61k).

One-third of a Nation: America's Escalating High School Dropout Crisis (PDF) - "This is a story of losing ground," writes author Paul Barton. "At the same time that the dropout rate is increasing and out-of-school education and training opportunities are dwindling, the economic status of young dropouts has been in a free fall since the late 1970s. Employment and earnings prospects have declined and even for those who work full time, earnings have dropped steadily to averages around the poverty line for a family with children."
 
Book Review: Dropouts in America - The one essential fact that emerges from this collection of essays by scholars with Harvard’s Civil Rights Project is that the high school dropout rate is much worse than most people suspect. [Free login/registration required to view this article.]
 

MI Commentary: Raising Dropout Age Won't Fix the Core Problem - Forcing troubled students to stay in school until they're 18 may create more headaches for schools.

MI Nichole M. Christian: Give School Kids 2 More Years at a Better Chance - People will probably argue into the next millennium about the true number of kids who drop out of school in Detroit and other Michigan cities. Is it 20 percent who start high school but never graduate, or as high as 50 percent, the current belief about Detroit? State School Superintendent Tom Watkins would prefer to take the debate in a more provocative direction. Whatever the numbers, he says, the damage adds up to the same: Kids are being lost.

OH Mall Schools Offer New Chance - In teenage parlance, they "fell out." In their teachers' words, the students were "at risk." All agree - if it weren't for the nontraditional schools inside Randall Park Mall here and Southern Park Mall in Youngstown, Northeast Ohio would have hundreds more high school dropouts.

CANADA Dropouts Face Bleak Job Future - Christopher Hayes reaches into the back pocket of his blue jeans and pulls out a crumpled piece of paper. It's his pay stub from the previous two weeks' work. His net take-home pay after working 84 hours is $547.98. That's a meager $7.75 an hour, the dejected 20-year old points out. For Hayes, who has only a Grade 10 education, the prospects of finding a well-paying job are slim.

TX HISD Taps $435,000 For Dropout Prevention - Money will go to hire 10 specialists; officials laud effort at college prep. In approving the plan Thursday, Houston Independent School District trustees said they want the money to make a difference in a district where as many as 30 percent to 40 percent of all students drop out.

TestPrepReview - TestPrepReview.com is a free service "created to provide free practice test questions for students in a variety of career situations." Includes online review for ACT, SAT, GED, LSAT, GMAT, MCAT, ParaPro, Nursing, and many more.

GED: Testing Out - The GED booms among teenagers, but is it a good idea? The two girls from the Merrimack Valley both believed the GED was their ticket out of high school.

TX State Undercounts Dropouts, Expert Says - Boston professor says Texas should look at completion numbers. Annual school ratings surged over the past decade in Texas with the help of a faulty formula used to count dropouts, a Boston College professor said Tuesday during a court challenge to the state's school finance system. [Free login/registration required to view this article.]

MA After-School Program, Support Turns Teen Around - A knee injury kept Phil Pham of Worcester from playing football anymore. He became depressed and says he would have dropped out of high school if it weren't for an after-school program.

High Schools Producing the Most Dropouts Identified (PDF) - Graduation is hardly a given for freshmen in 2,000 of America's public high schools. Using data compiled by the National Center for Education Statistics, researchers compared the number of freshmen in each school to the number of seniors there four years later. The results indicate that the dropout crisis is fueled by the 20 percent of high schools in which graduation is not the norm. Nearly half of the country's African American students and two out of five Latino students attend one of these "dropout factories," compared with just 11 percent of America's white students.

NY Higher 'Degree' of High School Kids Seek GED - The number of Big Apple students under 21 who have enrolled in alternative high-school GED programs has skyrocketed 40 percent, a new state report shows.

CA On GED Exam, the Dropout Had an Answer for Everything - Zach Olkewicz posted a rare perfect score after leaving school to care for his ailing father last year. He joins the 14 million people who have taken the General Educational Development test since it was introduced in 1942 for U.S. servicemen returning from World War II who wanted to go directly to college without heading back to high school. [Free registration/login required.]

Universities Not Doing Much to Stem Dropout Rate - There is nothing wrong in principle with Americans who choose not to go to college, or who drop out soon after they start, but it would be nice if their decisions stemmed from careful reflection rather than frustration with large institutions that don’t care much about them.

Many High School Freshman Have to Repeat 9th Grade - The first year Daniel Rodriguez was in ninth grade, he failed English and science and was suspended "countless times," he said, for fighting with classmates.
 

MI Schools Struggling to Address Drop out Rate - Michigan schools don't know how many students are dropping out of high school or where they're going when they quit, leaving thousands of teenagers lost in the state system designed to track them.

MO YouthBuild charter school won't reopen in fall - A St. Louis charter school aimed at teaching dropouts does not expect to be open next fall, shuttered by the difficulties of paying for special education and helping students at risk of failing.

FL High school dropout rates fall for 3rd year - High school dropout rates fell in Miami-Dade County for the third consecutive year, improving across all demographic lines and firming the district's national reputation for keeping students in school with a variety of targeted and innovative programs.

Retention efforts pay off for CAPS - Efforts launched last year by Cadillac Area Public Schools to reduce the district’s drop-out rate already are showing results.

Excellence in the Classroom - A new volume from The Future of Children concludes that good teachers make a difference. According to the 15 leading scholars who contributed to the journal, the most promising way to improve teacher quality is to broaden entry requirements, identify and promote effective teachers, provide additional pay to successful teachers who work in challenging schools, and promote meaningful professional development.
 

New Way of Rating Teachers is Sought - Lawyer Sandy Kress, an education adviser to President Bush and key architect of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, wants lawmakers to devise a system for rating individual teacher effectiveness, a controversial and trailblazing approach he says one day will allow Texas to match the best teachers with the students who most need them. Nationally, policymakers have shown little appetite to tackle the teacher quality gap, though many researchers consider it the most significant explanation for the persistence of test score differences between the haves and have-nots.
 

NY Commentary: Transform Teaching Now - For all the NY City students working to meet rigorous new academic standards, nothing is more important than having a good teacher. Teaching is a tough job, requiring a high level of talent, drive, knowledge and skill. But a new study of graduating college seniors found that students who major in education - the future teachers of America - have lower levels of literacy than all other students studied.

The Move to Get a Top Teacher in Every Major Class - After more than 25 years giving science tests to her middle-school students, Rebecca Pringle may have to pass one herself to prove she's qualified to teach the subject.

Check your child's Michigan Teacher Certification Status
 

TEACHER QUALITY: Understanding the Effectiveness of Teacher Attributes - Teacher quality matters. In fact, it is the most important school-related factor influencing student achievement. Moreover, teacher compensation represents a significant public investment: in 2002 alone, the United States invested $192 billion in teacher pay and benefits. Given the size of this investment, there is remarkably little research to guide such critical decisions as whom to hire, retain, and promote. In the absence of a strong, robust, and deep body of research, the debate in this field is largely ideological. As schools struggle to meet the national standards set by the No Child Left Behind Act, a new Economic Policy Institute study suggests that, when it comes to teacher quality, the Act may be taking the schools in the wrong direction by, among other things, de-emphasizing the importance of courses on how to teach. An executive summary of new research by University of Maryland professor Jennifer King Rice, sketches what is known about the kind of training and experience teachers need to teach effectively and for their students to succeed in school. The book analyzes nearly 80 studies in the link between teacher attributes and performance, and looks at a variety of areas, including certification, teacher test scores, coursework and degrees. [Source: PEN]
 

Do Teachers Make the Grade? Educators Recommend Scrapping Teacher Tests - A group of Pennsylvania's top education leaders will release a report next week calling for significant changes in state laws and school district practices to improve the quality of teachers in the state's public schools.

MI Study: Urban Teachers Less Qualified - "When you go to any teacher college around this state, a larger proportion of teachers want to teach in the suburbs...Teachers are humans. Teachers like to get paid as much as they can."

Hasty Hiring, Heavy Duties Found to Plague New Teachers - New research on beginning teachers suggests that more than a third are hired after the school year starts, and that most are jumping into jobs where they are expected to shoulder the same responsibilities as their more experienced colleagues.

FL Law Aims to Lure Teachers to Low-performing Schools - Florida's school leaders have cajoled, lured with high-money bonuses, and even forced good teachers into low-performing schools with limited success. Now, a new law, passed last year, requires a four-step career ladder for teachers and prohibits poor and high-minority schools from having more first-year and out-of-field teachers than a school district's overall average.

The Teacher Shortage & its Implications For Recruitment Policy - If districts are to meet No Child Left Behind's requirement for a "highly qualified" teacher in every classroom by 2005-06, they need to reform underlying human resource operations and take a strategic approach to teacher recruitment. This report examines the way districts responded to the teacher shortage problem between 1999 and 2002.

Hasty Hiring, Heavy Duties Found to Plague New Teachers - New research on beginning teachers suggests that more than a third are hired after the school year starts, and that most are jumping into jobs where they are expected to shoulder the same responsibilities as their more experienced colleagues.

Many High School Freshman Have to Repeat 9th Grade - The first year Daniel Rodriguez was in ninth grade, he failed English and science and was suspended "countless times," he said, for fighting with classmates.
 

The Lost Freshmen - Many area students are ill-prepared for high school, with thousands repeating ninth grade.

Ninth Grade: A School Year to be Reckoned With - Nationwide, the rate at which ninth-grade students don't get to 10th has tripled in the past 30 years, according to a new study by Boston College.

NC Ninth Grade Key to Attrition: 'Academies' Help Curb Dropout Rate - Many North Carolina students hit a brick wall in ninth grade. They fail too many classes to be promoted. They're held back. Some of them just drop out or will quit eventually.

Book Release: Learning After School: A Step-By-Step Guide to Providing an Academic Safety Net and Promoting Student Initiative - Asked why after-school programs were so important, former Education Secretary Richard W. Riley replied “children’s minds don’t close down at 3 PM and neither should their schools.” Now, a new book, Learning After School, offers a step-by-step guide for schools to maximize student learning by harnessing after-school time.

MI Easy College Prep Classes Get the Boot - The quality of Advanced Placement programs is coming under scrutiny at a time when educators are pushing to strengthen the academic level of high school class offerings.

Students Thrive in an Alternative to College - A growing trend might give educators a clue about how to change their high schools. As high school becomes little more than a memory for thousands of recent Tampa Bay area graduates, some have begun to wonder what they will do with the rest of their lives. Others already have a pretty good idea, and it doesn't involve a traditional path through college.

Transforming High Schools for All Youth - The National High School Alliance released "A Call to Action: Transforming High School for All Youth," a framework of six core principles and recommended strategies for guiding leaders at all levels in the complex process of transforming the traditional, comprehensive high school. The Call to Action representing the collective knowledge of the National High School Alliance’s forty-three partner organizations and communicates. The six core principles, cited as "inter-related and non-negotiable," are as follows: (1) personalized learning environments; (2) academic engagement of all students; (3) empowered educators; (4) accountable leaders; (5) engaged community & youth; and (6) integrated systems of high standards, curriculum, instruction, assessments and academic supports beyond the school day.

High School Redesign A Step Closer to Reality - The push for remaking the American high schools became one step closer to reality as the nation’s governors released their Action Agenda for Improving America’s High Schools and called for a fundamental redesign of the American high school, including alignment with postsecondary institutions.

Tests Are History at This High School - The 9-year-old Met School defies convention, with no letter grades, no required classes, and "advisors" instead of teachers who work with the same small group of students for four consecutive years. Instead of taking tests, the 580 students present "exhibitions" of their work. With 100% of its seniors accepted each year to college, the Met's "one student at a time" approach to learning has caught the attention of educators around the country.

Is a Smaller School Always a Better School? - School districts across the US are seizing on size as the key to reform. But some experts worry that the rush to create smaller schools is happening too fast.

College Readiness Begins in Middle School - Many of America's middle and high school students need more help from schools to effectively plan for the future, according to a recent study by ACT. "There is clearly a disconnect between students' post-high school goals and their plans to meet those goals," said Richard J. Noeth, director of ACT's Office of Policy Research. "The most important element for middle and high school students in preparing for the future is to take the right courses, and too few are doing that now."

Jailhouse Middle School - It felt more like a juvenile detention center during lockdown than lunchtime in my neighborhood public middle school.