Public interest in social-emotional learning is growing -- and the opportunities under the Every Student Succeeds Act have led many states and districts to consider the role of these skills in schools. As state and local leaders consider and commit to social-emotional learning programming in schools, they also have a responsibility to be…

In addition to excelling in subjects such as science, math, arts, and social studies, students must also develop skills like resiliency, adaptability, and collaboration in order to truly succeed in the world. But how do schools effectively measure those skills when they so often rely on standardized assessments? This article provides a thorough…

California's CORE Districts--a consortium of eight school districts serving a racially and socioeconomically diverse population of over one million students--have since 2014 led the way in deploying measures of social and emotional learning (SEL) and school climate and culture. Influenced by surging interest and research support over the past…

Various data systems have been long and pervasively used in schools to collect student data. However, very few educators are able to apply their collected data to improve their teaching. The purpose of this article is to investigate how middle school teachers adapt data mining protocols to enhance their teaching and to improve their students'…

In 2013, the National Commission on Asian American and Pacific Islander Research in Education (CARE) and the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (WHIAAPI)--with support from ETS and Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy (AAPIP)--began an Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) data quality campaign.…

The Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching initiative, which was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, was a multiyear effort to improve student outcomes--particularly high school graduation and college attendance among low-income minority students--by increasing student access to effective teaching. The RAND Corporation worked…

Libraries have become increasingly interested in studying the use of spaces within their buildings. Traditional methods for tracking library building use, such as gate counts, provide little information on what patrons do once they are in the library; therefore, new methods for studying space usage are being developed. Particularly promising are…

Analyzing students' mathematical explanations can be a powerful tool to enhance teachers' practice, but collecting these explanations can be cumbersome. Here, we describe our quest to find effective tools to make explanations accessible to elementary (K-6th) teachers. First, we describe how digital audio recordings enabled teachers to focus on the…

In this case study, a team of doctoral students--Luis M. Andrade, Angela Hoppe Nagao, Esmeralda Medrano, and Josephine Macharia Lowe--in a community college leadership program participated in a service-learning field project as part of an organizational theory course to analyze comparative outcomes of a college orientation and preparation program…

Mobile devices are increasingly upheld as powerful tools for learning and school reform. In this article, we prioritize youth voices to critically examine assumptions about student interest in mobile devices that often drive the incorporation of new technologies into schools. By demonstrating how the very meaning of mobile phones shift as they are…

The teaching performance assessment (TPA) seeks to measure the knowledge, skills, and competencies of teachers during the credential phase of their training. The TPA was introduced in California in 2004 with programs piloting it and then became mandatory for candidates enrolling in preliminary programs in 2008. Although California has multiple…

"Harvard Education Letter" is published bimonthly at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. This issue of "Harvard Education Letter" contains the following articles: (1) Integrated Data Systems Link Schools and Communities: Researchers Combine School and Non-School Data to Inform Interventions and Policy (Patti Hartigan);…

The number of school districts needing to focus their attention on ensuring that their students are receiving a 21st Century education has grown considerably with the creation of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) and the looming deadline of the 2014-2015 school year when the new assessments will be given. The assessment dates,…

While new teacher mentoring has traditionally focused on socio-emotional support and professional socialization, understanding mentors' role in developing novices' content teaching is needed given new educational reforms. Few researchers have explored a knowledge/practice base for content-focused mentoring. Therefore, we ask: what do content…

The Expository Reading and Writing Course (ERWC) was developed by California State University (CSU) faculty and high school educators to improve the academic literacy of high school seniors, thereby reducing the need for students to enroll in remedial English courses upon entering college. This report, produced by Innovation Studies at WestEd,…