The purpose of this toolkit is to help education leaders craft written language that conveys their work clearly, effectively, and in a way that resonates with their intended audiences--otherwise known as messaging. Written messaging is the most critical approach for achieving coherence, consistency, and resonance. It ensures the audiences are…

Strategic communications is important for building awareness, engagement, and commitment for serving children and youth. When this communication is bidirectional, it also creates avenues for state education agency (SEA) leaders to receive timely, honest feedback from stakeholders about the effectiveness of whole-person initiatives. This guide is…

The issue of freedom of speech on college and university campuses has captured the interest of the nation and attracted considerable media attention. As board members and institutional leaders address the difficult questions that arise in relation to this controversial issue, they need to balance the competing tensions between individual freedom…

Every day in America more than 50 million children go to neighborhood public schools. Parents send them off with every hope they will be safe while there. And yet, as has been the case in too many cities, violence shatters that hope. The Council of Educational Facilities Planners International (CEFPI) seeks to lead in the effort to bolster schools…

Parents expect school districts and schools to keep their children safe while they are in school. That expectation of safety and security also extends to the protection of their children's learning data. Therefore, it is critical that school districts and schools are open and transparent about their student data privacy practices, and that those…

While academic interventions can be implemented in any grade, focusing on interventions in high school is critical because it is often a student's last chance to become ready for the academic demands of postsecondary education and careers. States across the country are implementing large-scale initiatives focused on delivering academic…

Teacher evaluation has emerged as a key strategy for improving student outcomes in public education. The rationale is compelling: teachers vary widely in their effectiveness, and evaluation systems need to identify and address this variation. Performance evaluations have historically been largely perfunctory: no meaningful feedback is provided, no…

Across the country, states and districts are designing principal evaluation systems as a means of improving leadership, learning, and school performance. Principal evaluation systems hold potential for supporting leaders' learning and sense of accountability for instructional excellence and student performance. Principal evaluation also is an…

State implementation of new standards (revising, adapting, and adopting new standards) is a significant undertaking. Such an effort at the state level requires extensive support, planning, and resources. Implementing new state standards also requires the support of multiple education leaders--governors, legislators, state departments of education,…

While literacy interventions can be implemented in any grade, focusing on interventions in grades 3-8 is critical because it is often the best chance for students identified with earlier reading deficiencies to become ready for the literacy demands of postsecondary education and careers. States in both the Regional Educational Laboratory (REL)…

This guide describes emerging social media practices among State education agencies and other governmental organizations and suggests key steps and considerations for those interested in using social media to advance education reform.

Difficulties in paying for college and in maintaining good academic performance are two major hurdles to college graduation for low-income students. In recent years, state and federal budgets for postsecondary education have been cut significantly, limiting the options policymakers, education leaders, and communities have to improve rates of…

States are in various stages of reforming how they evaluate their educators, all striving for a new system that can assess a range of abilities and practices over long periods of time and capture the full nature of an educator's performance. The strongest systems look at teaching in a more comprehensive way than evaluations have done in the past,…

Gunther, McGowan and Donegan draw on their own experiences and those of others in the field, to explain the importance of communication in school leadership. In focusing on the communication process--why it's critical for schools, and how it can be executed well--they make the case that communication must be a primary emphasis for leaders, not an…

Your school has plans and protocols in place to respond to fires, severe weather, medical emergencies, fights and weapons possession. But what about school incidents like those listed above that involve bigotry and hate? Are plans in place to respond to a bias incident or hate crime? Too often these plans are created in the moment during the…