High-quality teaching is the most significant school-related factor in helping students make significant gains in learning or achievement. Students who have effective teachers year after year routinely make more progress than other students. This is why every child must experience great teaching every day. For this to occur, teachers must have…

Community schools, or full-service schools, address the barriers to learning created by social problems, such as poverty, that affect students' home life and well-being. These schools do this by partnering with community services and agencies to offer students and their families the supports and services they need to remedy the life problems that…

Research Findings: This article is a natural follow-up to intent-to-treat findings indicating that the MyTeachingPartner Consultancy, inclusive of online video resources and Web-mediated consultation, improved the quality of pre-K teachers' interactions with children. This study takes a close look at implementation fidelity within the effective…

Bethpage Union Free School District in New York is a high-performing district by almost any current accountability measure. Yet administrators and teachers worried that they were not doing enough to prepare their students as critical thinkers for the 21st century. Inspired by the curriculum framework of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, the…

Many educators agree that we already know how to foster student success, so what is keeping common sense from becoming common practice? The author provides step-by-step guidance for overcoming the barriers to adopting the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and achieving equity and excellence for all students. As an experienced teacher and…

Children grow and change more rapidly during the first eight years of life than any other time in their life span. Progression through the physical, cognitive, and social-emotional developmental stages varies for each individual child. Children with atypical development experience a wide spectrum of variability in their development. Over the past…

The concepts of professional learning communities and organizational disciplines support staff development and leadership that lead to sustainable systems. Little research has examined the ability of rural schools to achieve sustainable systems. This quantitative design study considered the relationships between predictor variables of…

Closing educational gaps between sub-populations in Israel, particularly between students in Hebrew-speaking and Arabic-speaking schools, persists to be one of the priorities of Israel's education system. In the field of information and communication technology (ICT), this goal refers to infrastructure as well as practice, i.e. teaching and…

Many educational institutions have implemented ubiquitous or required laptop, notebook, or tablet personal computing programs for their students. Yet, limited evidence exists to validate integration and acceptance of the technology among student populations. This research examines student acceptance of mobile computing devices using a modification…

This article summarises three case studies examining the implementation of inclusive practices, which evidence the exclusionary pressures acting in school settings that put the needs, rights and entitlements of vulnerable children and young people at risk. It examines how three very culturally different secondary schools in England interpreted…

Challenge Based Learning (CBL) is an engaging multidisciplinary approach to teaching and learning that encourages students to leverage the technology they use in their daily lives to solve real-world problems. The approach is collaborative and hands-on, asking students to work with other students, their teachers, and experts in their communities…

Schools today have transcended from the chalkboard to the whiteboard and are populated by students who are not frightened to use the technology of this new age of learning. During this period of dynamic change, teachers must be ready to meet the challenges of preparing students for a global society characterized by diversity and ever-increasing…

This guide aims to help education policy leaders develop effective policy in support of good teaching and learning. It provides tools and resources that help policy leaders to: (1) Look back at the research on strategies and practices that have been proven to bring about results for the greatest number of students; (2) Look around in order to…

An Innovation Configuration (IC) map identifies and describes the major components of a new practice such as NSDC's standards and details how it would look in practice. NSDC's ICs are detailed by contexts and professional roles. This CD-ROM focuses on the role of school-based staff developers.

The rising numbers of special education referrals have resulted in national debate and subsequent new legislation regarding the methods school districts have traditionally used to identify specific learning disabilities. The 2004 reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA) now allows the use of a student's response…