The following is a list of recent resources for those focused on the professional improvement of teachers, principals, and other educational leaders.
Colorado Touts Small and Big Solutions to Roll Back State’s Teacher Shortage Recommendations include starting teacher cadet programs at local schools, forgiving student loans and offering livable wages in rural areas. (Denver Post)
Study: Black, Latino Preservice Teachers Demonstrate More Multicultural Awareness
Districts looking to hire teachers who have the skills to work with an increasingly diverse student population might want to begin recruiting young people working in summer camps, after-school programs and other community organizations that serve black, Latino and other minority children, a new study published in the Journal of Teacher Education suggests. (Education Dive)
Illinois Teacher Shortage Hits Vulnerable Students Hardest Of the 1,006 unfilled teacher positions in the state, 81 percent are in districts where the majority of students are low-income. See which school districts and subjects are being affected. (Advance Illinois)
Illinois Educator Shortage Crisis: Survey The Illinois Association of Regional Superintendents of Schools’ (IARSS) educator shortage survey identified a widespread concern for both teacher shortages and substitute teacher shortages. How does your county fare? (Illinois Association of Regional Superintendents of Schools)
How Effective Is Your School? Stanford researcher Sean Reardon says standardized tests are an incomplete measure of educational success, and some places like the state of Massachusetts have tried to include measures of growth or progress in evaluating teachers. (New York Times)
Logic Models for Selecting, Designing, and Implementing Evidence-Based School Leadership Interventions unpacks what’s behind ESSA-required logic models, providing a step-by-step guide for understanding how they work and how they can be applied to six types of school leadership interventions: principal preparation programs, strategic staff management, professional learning, leader evaluation systems, working conditions and school improvement. The publication also provides sample logic models for each intervention. Logic models are useful not only for ESSA planning but also for helping educators clearly define the problems they want to tackle, think through the steps needed to solve them, and decide whether particular activities seem to lead logically to the desired results.
School Leadership Interventions Under the Every Student Succeeds Act: Evidence Review is an expanded version of a 2016 report that both explains the law’s complex requirements regarding the rigor of evidence needed for funding-eligible activities and describes a number of school leadership activities that meet the evidence mandates. The version released today contains a new appendix describing key features of 17 school leadership endeavors with ESSA-grade evidence.
The 74: Every Student Succeeds Act: 50 State Roll Call The bipartisan Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) was signed into law in December 2015, replacing No Child Left Behind (NCLB). The passage of ESSA turned control of the country’s K-12 education system back over to the states, giving local legislatures more flexibility surrounding decisions about standards, assessments and other accountability measures. Since Congress passed ESSA, states have been busy writing their own accountability plans which have to be submitted for approval from the federal Department of Education no later than September 2017.
