In our last post, we outlined the scope of work for the Achievement School District and our goals of transforming the bottom 5% of schools into schools that perform among the top 25% in the state. As both an operator and authorizer, the ASD is working urgently to ensure that we provide our students with…
“The Common Core standards will only have a chance of raising student achievement if they are implemented with high-quality materials, but there is currently no basis to measure the quality of materials.” This sobering assessment by Matthew Chingos and Russ Whitehurst of the Brookings Institution opens a strong argument for greater focus on instructional materials…
This Op-Ed originally appeared in the 4/10/12 The Week. Consider Laura. When she entered the third grade, she couldn’t understand the stories all her friends enjoyed. She was even too embarrassed to read aloud. Why? She could only read at a first grade level. Laura’s hardly alone — but that’s small comfort. A recent study from the…
In a February 20, 2012 New York Times article entitled, “States Try to Fix Quirks in Teacher Evaluations,” Tennessee’s new teacher evaluations figured prominently. The Times reporter traveled across TN, interviewing state leaders, principals, teachers – all who described the promise, pitfalls, and potential to improve teacher quality with an evaluation framework that expands dramatically…
A major study by researchers from Harvard and Columbia universities on the long-term effects of teachers on the lives of their students has generated a great deal of interest recently, including a detailed article in the New York Times. The research team tracked 2.5 million students from grades 4-8 to age 28 to determine the…