Because the population of today's schools is so multicultural, teachers may find a variety of religious beliefs represented in their classrooms, from Islam, Judaism, and Christianity to Jehovah's Witnesses, Hinduism, atheism, and many others. All of which makes the season of December a little tricky to navigate, even when one is teaching "the…

After the oft-repeated three Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle) comes the lesser-known but equally important fourth R: rot. In this case, rot means compost. Classrooms, schools, and school districts can use a number of methods to establish a compost program. The finished product is a valuable soil amendment that adds fertility to local farmland, school…

Transporting students with special needs can be a costly proposition. However, school business officials can help mitigate those costs by focusing on four specific areas: relationships, information sharing, safety, and time lines. Although these areas may seem a bit far removed from the numbers we love to crunch, they do affect your…

During these hard economic times, Heads of Department (HoDs) need to find cost effective ways of providing CPD for their staff. An astute department or subject leader will want to be adept at creating the right opportunities for professional learning for their staff with a minimum of expenditure. This article provides ideas on how to find cost…

Planning for policy implementation is as important as the implementation itself. A policy's intent can be subverted by the way the policy is implemented, or when unanticipated outcomes take precedence over the true intent. This article presents three cases of specific instances of unintended outcomes from policy implementation and presents a…

One of the toughest battles a music teacher can fight is the battle to stay organized. Getting organized--and staying that way--is no easy task for a busy music educator. However, for the sake of music teachers' success in the classroom, and for their sanity, organization is crucial. The author has spoken with several educators about how they keep…

The traditional delivery system for public K-12 education in the U.S. is being disrupted by forces from without (e.g., forms of competition, including charter schools) and from within (e.g., new regulatory requirements, including meaningful teacher evaluation and the Common Core). As in any sizable sector of the economy, challenges to the status…

Drawing on the author's experience as director of a long-lived school-university partnership, this essay describes how one such organization can "do it right" and enhance the development of teacher leadership in schools. It also provides a cautionary tale about how that same organization can "do it wrong" and achieve the…

To navigate today's fiscal challenges successfully, school districts must constantly examine the long-term fiscal implications of policy, programmatic, and human resource decisions on their organization. They must look at the effect of such items as bargaining agreements, contracted services, placement costs, transportation costs, benefits,…

Teachers may be apprehensive about commissioning, and frequently directors do not see it as realistic for their programs. It took the author a while to commission a piece, even though he is often on the composer side. The author asserts that there's already plenty of high-quality literature out there to keep teachers busy, but a bigger factor is…

Evidence-based programs will be useful to the extent they produce benefits to individuals on a socially significant scale. It appears the combination of effective programs and effective implementation methods is required to assure consistent uses of programs and reliable benefits to children and families. To date, focus has been placed primarily…

The everyday operations of a school district depend on a network of people, including students, teachers, staff, and administrators. However, the ancillary services staff are really responsible for making the school day run smoothly. They are often the first employees that students see in the morning, either on the school bus or in the cafeteria,…

Web-based standard setting holds promise for reducing the travel and logistical inconveniences of traditional, face-to-face standard setting meetings. However, because there are few published reports of setting standards via remote meeting technology, little is known about the practical potential of the approach, including technical feasibility of…

Instructional design models have been criticized for being too inflexible and taking too long to follow to be useful in today's fast-paced environment. As a result, some have rejected instructional design. This article offers an alternative view of instructional design as flexible and able to be accomplished in much shorter time periods than…

The New Mexico Public Schools Facilities Authority (NM-PSFA) is a relatively small state agency (50 staff members) that manages the allocation of funding for public school facilities in the state while assisting school districts and state-chartered charter schools in facility planning, construction, and maintenance. Like the majority of other…