One of the biggest obstacles to overcome in creating and sustaining an administrative professional learning community (PLC) is time. Administrators are constantly deluged by the tyranny of the urgent. It is a Herculean task to carve out time for PLCs, but it is imperative to do so. In this article, the authors describe how an administrative PLC…

Ten years ago, the Atlanta Public Schools had low and declining student achievement, demoralized teachers, crumbling buildings, high turnover among superintendents (average tenure of two years) and disaffected parents pulling their children out of the system. More than 60 percent of the city's high school students missed at least two weeks of…

School and district leaders are commonly faced with diverse student needs and interests that could be effectively addressed with a course that is not currently offered in local schools. Virtual schools have grown up over the past 15 years in different policy and budget ecosystems, but most online course programs can be classified in one of six…

To help improve reading instruction, a California district developed an effective staff development plan featuring learning-support teams, a 30-week training schedule, and recommended reading resources. Teachers selected San Francisco State University's Consortium for Reading Excellence program for its training in phonics instruction and…

Discouraged by their existing administrator evaluation system, a task force of principals reviewed the literature and crafted a more effective process geared to developing leadership capacity that accepts full responsibility for student growth. The process increased interactions with colleagues, gave participants support and assistance in tackling…

Featured are 8 of the 17 exemplary staff development programs selected by the Advisory Panel of the National Center for the Improvement of Learning. Nine of the programs were featured in the February issue. (Author/DCS)

Robert Sternberg's triarchic theory of intelligence presupposes that students exhibit at least three kinds of intelligence: creative, practical, and analytical. Staff at the Wake County (North Carolina) School System designed learning activities to give students balanced experiences and a time to shine in the learning mode that suits them best.…

A renewed interest in early childhood programs has sparked a debate at local, state, and national levels over the content of such programs, the sponsorship, and the question of who should pay. A variety of locally run early childhood services are described. (TE)

Hudson, Massachusetts, an industry-based, socioeconomically diverse community with 2,800 students in six schools, developed a comprehensive preK-12 service-learning program. Parent support, ongoing professional development, curriculum planning time, administrative support, and sustained funding have helped the program achieve districtwide…

Weary of fighting with other districts for the best teachers, Fairfax (Virginia) County Schools adopted a more cooperative approach. The district is pursuing professional-development school agreements with four area universities. Similar recruitment partnerships are under way in Cleveland, Ohio; Tolleson, Arizona; and Olathe, Kansas. (MLH)