In 2022, the first year Samantha Eischen used Amplify CKLA, a reading curriculum based in the Science of Reading, the second-grade teacher at Escuela SMART Academy in Toledo was sold. Of the school's thirty-two mostly Spanish-speaking second graders, eleven went on to pass Ohio's reading proficiency test on the first try in the fall of third…

The surge of support for the science of reading is cause for great cheer. According to the Albert Shanker Institute, 45 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws since 2019 to shift reading instruction based on what research says works. These laws often explicitly call for teaching phonics, phonemic awareness, and other skills that…

There are numerous ways a health educator can conclude a unit of instruction to demonstrate student learning. One approach is to utilize a national health education standard to reflect upon and tie units together at the end of the curriculum. The lesson presented in this article was designed to illustrate this methodology and add to the health…

New Leaders developed the Transformational Leadership Framework (TLF) to pinpoint practices commonly found in schools that were significantly advancing student achievement and in what sequence principals and their teams implemented those practices to deliver consistent and equitable outcomes for students. The TLF is based on: (1) More than 100…

This article addressed California's proposed math curriculum framework which has ignited a ferocious debate, touching off a revival of the 1990s math wars and attracting national media attention. Early drafts of the new framework faced a firestorm of criticism, with opponents charging that the guidelines sacrificed accelerated learning for high…

During the COVID-19 pandemic, an adult noncredit program in the California Community College system partnered with Ease Learning to help convert face-to-face courses to an online modality. Subsequent data revealed a misalignment in the courses' Student Learning Outcomes and Instructional Objectives which became a barrier to student success. Wile's…

Curricular guidelines promote standardized approaches to coverage of essential knowledge and skills in undergraduate education. The American Society for Microbiology (ASM) Curriculum Guidelines for Undergraduate Microbiology were developed in 2012. Continuous, rapid growth of knowledge in science and a dynamic, changing world necessitate updates…

The problem of educational achievement by boys and young men is a long-standing and big one that has been largely ignored by policymakers. This new HEPI report considers the consequences for individuals and society and proposes: (1) adopting a 'boy positive' environment in schools; (2) expanding proven grassroots initiatives that help boys; (3)…

This paper employs the lenses of timescapes, themselves shaped by wider conceptions of time, to view evolving patterns of private supplementary tutoring around the world. Such tutoring is commonly called shadow education because much of its content mimics that in regular schooling: curriculum changes in the schools lead to related changes in the…

The project described here was aimed at developing and evaluating a novel curriculum with corresponding instructional materials for middle school students on an introduction to Newtonian mechanics, based on physics education research findings. A case study showed that teachers who attended a half-day workshop on the curriculum subsequently enacted…

For more than a century, state and federal governments and organizations have used different measures to determine if students and groups of students have achieved in a particular subject or grade level. While the construct of achievement is applied irrespective of student differences, this equal application turns out to be anything but equitable.…

This article describes the efforts of members of the North Carolina Collaborative for Mathematics Learning to provide equitable, engaging, and high-quality mathematics instruction to students, aligning with the vision outlined in the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics's (NCTM) "Principles to Actions" (2014). The statewide…

The COVID-19 pandemic raised concerns that academic skills would wither away during the lockdown and with it, social-emotional skills. This is assumed to be as true for neurotypical students as for neurodiverse ones. When students return to their schools, how will they function again in their social environment? The key to addressing the…

Faced with students failing to complete Calculus 1 at rates of almost 50%, the Department of Mathematics at Western Michigan University addressed the lack of progression of STEM majors through this gateway course and, thus, through their intended majors. In this case study, we describe the four-year process of redesigning our single variable…

Systems thinking involves attempts to understand and improve complex systems, examines systems holistically, and focuses on the way that a system's constituent parts interrelate. This essay provides examples of how systems thinking can enable principals to demonstrate instructional leadership and nurture learning-focused schools in the current era…