Effective instructional coaching won't happen across a district without a well-specified coaching program and a reliable way to guide coaches. Fortunately, there are innovations from research and development efforts that can help districts put into practice the best ideas about instructional coaching. Andrew Wayne and Jane Coggshall describe how…

While the demands of teaching continue to escalate, teacher development has changed relatively little over time, leaving many of today's teachers feeling underprepared, overwhelmed, or demoralized with few opportunities to make real change. Teacher leadership holds promise for both addressing challenges within schools and empowering teachers.…

A new body of research shows that project-based learning (PBL) can be effective in improving students' academic performance and attempts to define some of the key practices that are essential to PBL. Kristin De Vivo summarizes key findings of four studies that covered multiple grade levels and subjects. The studies found that PBL is effective…

Making evidence-based decisions in schools seems like an impossible task when hundreds of activities are available, the evidence base fails to address most of them, and budget deadlines are immovable. In addition, different stakeholders hold different views on what it means for a program, strategy, or intervention to "work." Fiona…

Amaya Garcia of New America talks with Kappan about grow-your-own programs, in which school districts partner with teacher preparation programs to recruit and prepare community members, often current students or school staff, to teach in local schools. A recent 50-state scan shows that there is a great deal of variety in how these programs are…

Critics and supporters have expressed concern that social-emotional learning (SEL) has not been adapted to children suffering from trauma. While SEL has been identified as a mechanism through which trauma-informed schools can be created, this does not make SEL implementation, in and of itself, trauma-informed. Erica Pawlo, Ava Lorenzo, Brian…

Over the past two decades, researchers have gathered a wealth of evidence showing the critical roles that emotional intelligence plays in education, work, and life. But what does it look like to translate that research into practice? In this interview, Yale University's Marc Brackett takes stock of recent efforts to help K-12 educators address the…

Under both No Child Left Behind and the Every Student Succeeds Act, school leaders have been mandated to employ data-driven decision-making (DDDM) to diagnose student needs, implement targeted supports, and design school improvements. However, district administrators tasked with developing principals' DDDM capacity face a tough road. The authors…

Teachers and administrators attest that the current workshop and seat-time approach to professional development has not been working. Microcredentials offer a new approach. Inspired by the badging movement, microcredentials offer teachers opportunities to document their learning using work samples, videos, and other artifacts. Based on this…

Many schools and out-of-school organizations use social-emotional learning (SEL) programs to boost students' skills. Yet research shows that these programs can be difficult to implement and don't always meet students' needs. In response, Rebecca Bailey, Laura Stickle, Gretchen Brion-Meisels, and Stephanie Jones propose a new approach to SEL…

The Next Generation Science Standards embody a new vision for science education grounded in the idea that science is both a body of knowledge and a set of linked practices for developing knowledge. The authors describe strategies that they suggest school and district leaders consider when designing strategies to support NGSS implementation.

The authors quantify and unpack the prevalence and effects of bullying on children and adolescents before prescribing provisos for schools to consider when planning preventive and responsive approaches to bullying.

Under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), federal education mandates will be decreasing, which means states will have more flexibility and authority than they've had in decades. State education agency (SEA) leaders are confronting great change and great opportunity as many agencies move away from a focus on compliance with federal regulations,…

The Santa Cruz/Silicon Valley New Teacher Project--under the aegis of the New Teacher Center--devised a program to train teacher mentors to help new teachers incorporate the Common Core standards into their teaching. The three-year program yielded five critical lessons: Mentors need ongoing support to develop their readiness and willingness to…

Students do not leave their mental health at the front door when they come to school. From wellness to serious illness, a student's mental health status is integral to how they think, feel, interact, behave, and learn. Decades of research and experience have laid a solid foundation and framework for effectively providing mental health…