Summer professional development is a fixture for educators and school districts, but there’s consensus that it shouldn’t be business as usual after a pandemic-disrupted school year. Education Week talked to teachers and principals about how they think this year’s PD can address crucial issues like students’ social-emotional learning needs, academics, and how to make sure teachers have a hand in shaping their training.
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About Education Week:
Education Week is America’s most trusted source of independent K-12 education news, analysis, and opinion. Our comprehensive coverage of education policy takes the form of articles, photography, and video journalism.

Published by the nonprofit organization Editorial Projects in Education, Education Week has been providing award-winning coverage of the field for over 35 years.

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"The big problem with public education is the teachers' unions--they protect bad teachers." Sound familiar?

Produced by: John D. Tulenko ____________________

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About Education Week:
Education Week is America’s most trusted source of independent K-12 education news, analysis, and opinion. Our work serves to raise the level of understanding and discourse about education among school and district leaders, policymakers, researchers, teachers, and the public. Published by the nonprofit organization Editorial Projects in Education, Education Week has been providing award-winning coverage of the field for over 35 years.

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In a year of unprecedented teacher activism, Jahana Hayes, the 2016 National Teacher of the Year, decided to make a run for the U.S. House of Representatives—and won. In an exclusive interview with Education Week, Hayes discusses her journey from Connecticut classroom to Washington and her priorities as a new lawmaker.

Leaders to Learn From: Dupree Interview ____________________

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About Education Week:
Education Week is America’s most trusted source of independent K-12 education news, analysis, and opinion. Our work serves to raise the level of understanding and discourse about education among school and district leaders, policymakers, researchers, teachers, and the public. Published by the nonprofit organization Editorial Projects in Education, Education Week has been providing award-winning coverage of the field for over 35 years.

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Experience Camps, a summer program for children who are coping with the loss of a loved one, offers a safe space for kids to experience and work through the many emotions that come with grief. Here, the program’s founder discusses some of the tactics they employ, and how those same practices can be brought into the school building.

Charles Curtis is the psychologist at Ron Brown College Prep, a unique public high school in Washington, D.C. for young men of color. As a central member of the school's CARE team, Curtis is responsible for establishing and helping to carry out the school's unorthodox approach to student discipline: restorative justice. Curtis explains what restorative justice means in a school setting and why he believes it's essential for young black men, who disproportionately experience exclusion when they misbehave at school through suspensions and expulsions. Ron Brown--which has an intense focus on developing students' social-emotional skills and creating a culture where students feel safe physically and comfortable expressing themselves in the classroom--also emphasizes a college-preparatory curriculum. For the past year, Education Week's Kavitha Cardoza and NPR's Cory Turner visited Ron Brown weekly -- and some weeks, daily -- to witness the birth of this new school and to see how its staff tackles some of the toughest challenges in education. We spent hundreds of hours there, from the earliest days to the last bell.

Read more: http://www.edweek.org/ew/proje....cts/raising-kings-dc

Zach Champagne, assistant in research at FCR-STEM at Florida State University, compares the “traditional” area model for teaching fractions to the number-line model emphasized in the Common Core State Standards. ____________________

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About Education Week:
Education Week is America’s most trusted source of independent K-12 education news, analysis, and opinion. Our work serves to raise the level of understanding and discourse about education among school and district leaders, policymakers, researchers, teachers, and the public. Published by the nonprofit organization Editorial Projects in Education, Education Week has been providing award-winning coverage of the field for over 35 years.

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By working together and balancing urgency with careful planning, the superintendent and CIO of the Houston Independent School District are setting the bar for how to manage a 1-to-1 student computing initiative in a large urban district. This video was produced as part of Education Week’s Leaders To Learn From project, recognizing outstanding school district leaders from around the country. More at http://leaders.edweek.org. ____________________

Want more stories about schools across the nation, including the latest news and unique perspectives on education issues? Visit www.edweek.org.

About Education Week:
Education Week is America’s most trusted source of independent K-12 education news, analysis, and opinion. Our work serves to raise the level of understanding and discourse about education among school and district leaders, policymakers, researchers, teachers, and the public. Published by the nonprofit organization Editorial Projects in Education, Education Week has been providing award-winning coverage of the field for over 35 years.

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Joseph Davis, the new superintendent of the Ferguson-Florissant School District, discusses why he applied for the job after Michael Brown’s shooting death and his plans to work with the community to transform the school system. Read more: http://www.edweek.org/ew/artic....les/2015/09/16/qa-fe ____________________

Want more stories about schools across the nation, including the latest news and unique perspectives on education issues? Visit www.edweek.org.

About Education Week:
Education Week is America’s most trusted source of independent K-12 education news, analysis, and opinion. Our work serves to raise the level of understanding and discourse about education among school and district leaders, policymakers, researchers, teachers, and the public. Published by the nonprofit organization Editorial Projects in Education, Education Week has been providing award-winning coverage of the field for over 35 years.

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To license video footage from Editorial Projects in Education please contact the Education Week Library at library@epe.org.

The pandemic took a huge bite out of 4th and 8th graders’ progress in reading and math, according to the 2022 results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as “the nation’s report card.”

It’s the first national assessment students have participated in since the pandemic began, and it revealed the steepest declines in student math scores since the federal testing program began in the early 1990s. In reading, students’ scores were knocked back by a decade or more.

Achievement dropped for all students: boys and girls, white, Black, and Hispanic students, students in poverty and wealthy students. And while top performers fared the best, struggling learners suffered the steepest declines.

The devastating portrait of student achievement painted by the results contrasts with parents’ view of how their children are doing in school. Ninety percent say their children are working at grade level or better.
Assistant Editor Sarah D. Sparks breaks down the latest findings and explains what makes the main NAEP assessment findings attention-worthy.

Rather than waiting to see how job losses and higher housing costs would impact the schools in Vancouver, Wash., top leaders in the district set out in 2008 to create an “opportunity zone” where schools would focus on addressing the impact of poverty that can affect students’ classroom performance.

In several phases, schools in the opportunity zone each set aside space for a family- and community-resource center staffed by a coordinator to help meet the needs of students and their families. Each resource center developed its own menu of services that are tailored to the specific needs of the school community, offering things like food pantries, free clothing, referrals to mental-health services, family-literacy classes, GED prep programs for parents, and on-site dental care through mobile dental vans.

“We have a vested interest in the success of young people,” Superintendent Steve Webb says. “Too many of our young people have barriers to student success in their homes and in their neighborhoods. ... If not us, then who?”

City leaders and school volunteers credit Webb and his chief of staff, Tom Hagley, with helping make that vision a reality.

This video was produced as part of Education Week’s Leaders To Learn From project, recognizing outstanding school district leaders from around the country. More at http://leaders.edweek.org ____________________

Want more stories about schools across the nation, including the latest news and unique perspectives on education issues? Visit www.edweek.org.

About Education Week:
Education Week is America’s most trusted source of independent K-12 education news, analysis, and opinion. Our work serves to raise the level of understanding and discourse about education among school and district leaders, policymakers, researchers, teachers, and the public. Published by the nonprofit organization Editorial Projects in Education, Education Week has been providing award-winning coverage of the field for over 35 years.

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Mari Monroe is a high school teacher in San Diego who’s also a yoga instructor. When she started to incorporate elements around mindfulness from her yoga practice into the classroom, she realized just how eager students were for that type of instruction.

Here, she explains how she teaches and incorporates mindfulness through daily lessons she’s dubbed the ‘Mindful Minute,’ and offers advice for teachers looking to do the same, regardless of their comfort or familiarity with the topic.

The Washoe County school district in Reno, Nev., has been way ahead of most other districts in its approach to social-emotional learning, especially in measuring students' SEL skills, which are part of the district’s accountability system. Education Week, which first reported on Washoe’s SEL work in 2016, checked back in with the district this school year to learn how its work on social-emotional learning has been progressing. We visited high school classes that are pointedly about developing SEL skills such as coping with stress and the power of thought. Stephan Molder, an SEL teacher in Reno's Hug High School, says successful social-emotional learning starts with the adults in schools. He boils it down to this: "...It's all about building relationships with students. I never wreck the relationship, no matter what. I always try to save the relationship first.”

Tessa Falcetta, who has dysgraphia and ADHD, discusses why online learning is a good fit for her. ____________________

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About Education Week:
Education Week is America’s most trusted source of independent K-12 education news, analysis, and opinion. Our work serves to raise the level of understanding and discourse about education among school and district leaders, policymakers, researchers, teachers, and the public. Published by the nonprofit organization Editorial Projects in Education, Education Week has been providing award-winning coverage of the field for over 35 years.

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In all that has been written about teacher evaluation, there has been one glaring omission: For teachers, it is frightening.

It’s intimidating to adjust to new performance expectations, anxiety-inducing when a job rating is attached to students’ test scores, and downright terrifying when less-than-rosy results come back.

All of that makes Renee Pryor’s job one of the most challenging in Tennessee’s Lincoln County school district—a job, she jokes, that “no one wants.” She is the administrator who works with new teachers and those who have gotten a lower score on one element of the reviews, typically the portion that is based on student-test scores.

Formally the district’s supervisor of evaluation programs, Pryor is in reality responsible for making sure that evaluations of the district’s 250 teachers trigger useful feedback and targeted support—rather than leaving them frustrated and bewildered.

This video was produced as part of Education Week’s Leaders To Learn From project, recognizing outstanding school district leaders from around the country. More at http://leaders.edweek.org ____________________

Want more stories about schools across the nation, including the latest news and unique perspectives on education issues? Visit www.edweek.org.

About Education Week:
Education Week is America’s most trusted source of independent K-12 education news, analysis, and opinion. Our work serves to raise the level of understanding and discourse about education among school and district leaders, policymakers, researchers, teachers, and the public. Published by the nonprofit organization Editorial Projects in Education, Education Week has been providing award-winning coverage of the field for over 35 years.

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An artist-in-residence program at Four Seasons A+ Elementary School in St. Paul, Minn., is improving classroom engagement with a student population that includes deaf and hard-of-hearing children. This video is closed-caption enabled. ____________________

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About Education Week:
Education Week is America’s most trusted source of independent K-12 education news, analysis, and opinion. Our work serves to raise the level of understanding and discourse about education among school and district leaders, policymakers, researchers, teachers, and the public. Published by the nonprofit organization Editorial Projects in Education, Education Week has been providing award-winning coverage of the field for over 35 years.

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A graduate of the Program for the Exceptionally Gifted, or PEG, at Mary Baldwin College, talks about her college experience. ____________________

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About Education Week:
Education Week is America’s most trusted source of independent K-12 education news, analysis, and opinion. Our work serves to raise the level of understanding and discourse about education among school and district leaders, policymakers, researchers, teachers, and the public. Published by the nonprofit organization Editorial Projects in Education, Education Week has been providing award-winning coverage of the field for over 35 years.

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Parents and schools locked in pitched conflicts—over curriculum, book bans, policies that support LGBTQ students and staff—has been a dominant storyline for two years.

But the reality of school-family dynamics in many districts is not one of constant combat over highly politicized issues. That said, districts and schools often really struggle with fostering meaningful engagment with the families of the students they serve.

There are several ways that school districts can build effective relationships with parents and families. Inviting families to participate in the creation of district policies before a decision is made or providing spaces for parents to build community with each other are a few of the more intensive strategies that districts can implement. Joanna Geller, director of policy, research and evaluation at NYU’s Metropolitan Center, explains that there are also lighter touch techniques that districts can employ, such as providing translation services or simply inviting parents to board meetings can go a long way towards building positive family engagement. Here, she talks about what motivates parents to engage with their districts, and how districts can best support that work.

Education Week's Leaders To Learn From is a singular event that draws more than 250 superintendents, district-level administrators, policymakers, industry professionals, and other education leaders to highlight excellence in K-12 leadership and share innovative and proven solutions to the challenges facing today's public schools.

Learn more at http://edweek.org/leaders

Want more stories about schools across the nation, including the latest news and unique perspectives on education issues? Visit www.edweek.org.

About Education Week:
Education Week is America’s most trusted source of independent K-12 education news, analysis, and opinion. Our work serves to raise the level of understanding and discourse about education among school and district leaders, policymakers, researchers, teachers, and the public. Published by the nonprofit organization Editorial Projects in Education, Education Week has been providing award-winning coverage of the field for over 35 years.

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At Audubon Nature Preschool in Chevy Chase, Md., a “classroom” can be a pond, a bamboo forest, a meadow, or a garden. That’s because Audubon is a “nature preschool”—one of a growing number of preprimary schools around the country where children spend all or part of their days outdoors and in all kinds of weather. Read more on edweek.org: http://www.edweek.org/ew/artic....les/2017/01/18/at-na ____________________

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About Education Week:
Education Week is America’s most trusted source of independent K-12 education news, analysis, and opinion. Our work serves to raise the level of understanding and discourse about education among school and district leaders, policymakers, researchers, teachers, and the public. Published by the nonprofit organization Editorial Projects in Education, Education Week has been providing award-winning coverage of the field for over 35 years.

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To license video footage from Editorial Projects in Education please contact the Education Week Library at library@epe.org.