Tunica County, Mississippi, in the heart of the delta, has been home to stagnant academic achievement even as federal and state funds increased. A teacher-focused professional development program through the University of Mississippi helped yield higher scores and national recognition for an elementary school. It also revealed some learnings:…

In 1973, the founding administrator of a Long Island high school proposed adoption of a student advisory system, team teaching in the humanities, and no academic department chairs. Convinced that having chairs diminished teachers' stature, this principal successfully encouraged teachers to work together to develop curriculum, prepare budgets, hire…

Vermont excels at including children with disabilities in general education; here, 83% are educated in "regular" classrooms, compared to just 36% nationwide. Supportive demonstrations, training, funding, and policy-making efforts have resulted in fewer special-education student identifications, successful instructional support teams, and…

Debunks notion that someone can teach for nine months and then start learning in a two-week summer institute. Describes a Seattle project that is demolishing teaching/learning barriers by allowing English and history teachers to meet monthly for an entire day to read and discuss literary and historical works and plan an interdisciplinary…

To circumvent typical public schooling restrictions, an upstate New York middle school established a Lab School that functions outside the regular program. Lab School aims to provide practice in intellectual inquiry, delve into complex, demanding topics, create an interdisciplinary, problem-oriented curriculum, and experiment with assessment…

Since its inception in 1994, the Michigan Educators' Exchange Opportunities Program has allowed nearly 300 K-12 educators to spend approximately 2 1/2 weeks in one of over a dozen countries. Michigan teachers stay in the homes of foreign colleagues and vice versa. This reciprocity benefits Michigan teachers and students. (MLH)

Through an Essex High School/University of Vermont partnership, students can complete all 33 credits of the teacher licensing program within high school walls. Each three-credit course includes theory-focused class meetings and action-focused practica that inspire students to develop and conduct action-research projects. As a roving education…

The New Standards Project, attempting to create an assessment system comprised of performance exams, portfolios and projects, may not have fulfilled its promise to create a national system of tests worth teaching to. However, NSP did deliver high- quality professional-development opportunities for hundreds of teachers across the nation. (Contains…