Leading Schools

Is it possible that leaders inflict their greatest damage with the best of intentions?

"Teacher observations are vitally important for the principal as much as the teacher. Unfortunately, there are observation tools that offer teachers no insight into how they could improve their own practice. Even in these days of increased accountability, some school leaders use checklists. Checklists, without any real post-observation conference, are a waste of time and should be thrown away."

Questions for leaders to Ponder:
• What do you notice?
• What are the students doing? 
• How is the teacher stretching the thinking of their students?
• How is the teacher helping struggling learners? 
• Does the teacher feel like they can take a risk during their observation? If not, does that have something to do with you or them?

"If we really want to transform teaching and learning in our schools and classrooms, perhaps we need to pause from all the technology buying, installing, and training and focus on the “mindsets” that our teachers and administrators have."

By Sarah Brown Wessling, 2010 Teacher of the Year

It's just the kind of thinking, where video is about surveillance, that we get confused notions of why having classroom cameras can make a difference for teachers.

By Edward Graham

While proponents of for-profit virtual schools argue that cyber classrooms provide students with greater access to a high-quality education,

A new report encourages counselors to talk to high school freshmen about college.

The influence of a counselor was especially critical in influencing the behaviors of first-generation college students, the NACAC report found.

A few elite institutions at both the grade-school and college levels are doing better than ever. But their health conceals the collapse of private-sector options in the U.S.

Private K-12 enrollments are shrinking -- by almost 13 percent from 2000 to 2010.

Many school leaders believe that virtually all students can learn at higher levels given skillful teaching, time, and persistent effort. But I’m not sure, however, that all leaders believe that vir...

A teenager's IQ can rise or fall as many as 20 points in just a few years, a brain-scanning team found that the intelligence measure isn't as fixed as once thought.

The Los Angeles Unified School District’s recent vote to ban student suspensions for “willful defiance”...

"As soon as evaluation becomes part of this process, the process changes." - Sarah Brown Wessling

The teaching profession as we know it is changing. It is time to redefine the way we think about developing the profession itself. Margaret Roth and Shelly Blake-Plock describe a new culture of tea...

Motivation—there are two kinds: intrinsic, which involves doing something because we want to do it, and extrinsic, which is doing something because we have to do it. A negative relationship exists between the two.

By Walt Gardner

Practices that try to repair the harm caused by student misbehavior are more promising than punishment.

Here is a great collection of web-based resources relating to successfully transitioning students at every level, K-16.

High school rankings by popular media usually take into account how many students take AP exams. Some high schools push students to take AP courses whether or not they are prepared, just to satisfy...

Teacher evaluations that are being perpetrated on teachers by politicians and reformers are wrong-headed. Peer Assistance and Review programs offer the best method that assure teacher quality.

Peer Assistance and Review (PAR) programs have been the exemplar for strong teacher evaluation systems

New techniques are letting researchers look at the activity of the whole brain at once. Most brain areas multitask, and the brain is dynamic. It can respond differently to the same events in different times and circumstances.

Latinos are entering colleges and universities at higher rates than whites and blacks but still lower than Asian Americans. This is an all-time high for Latinos, according to a recent Pew Hispanic Center report.