November 2011 Issue
21st Century Fluencies for the Digital Age
Lee Crockett joins us this month to talk about digital learning and what schools must do to change their approach to instruction. The traditional school classroom is still locked in the past and we’re teaching as if it were fifty … Continue
Aligning Your Curriculum to the Common Core State Standards
Joe Crawford, author of the new book, Aligning Your Curriculum to the Common Core State Standards, discusses what school leaders need to be thinking about in terms of implementing the Common Core State Standards, identifies what he sees as the biggest challenges ahead, and provides a nuts-and-bolts look at the process of aligning local curricula to the new Common Core State Standards. Continue
How to Use Value-Added Analysis to Improve Student Learning
Value-added analysis is the most robust, statistically significant method available for helping educators quantify student progress over time, according to its proponents, but it’s also been controversial and has its share of detractors. To get a better understanding of value-added, … Continue
Transforming Your School One Conversation at a Time
Being a successful school leader demands highly developed interpersonal skills. Linda Gross, co-author of the book, Coaching Conversations, joins us to talk about some of the techniques that school leaders can use to engage and motivate everyone to work collaboratively … Continue
Blended Learning: Disrupting the Traditional Classroom
Blended learning — where students take online courses, but also learn in an adult-supervised school environment for at least part of the time — is growing rapidly. Heather Staker, a Senior Research Fellow at the Innosight Institute and the author … Continue
Early Warning Systems: Keeping Kids on Track
Schools and districts are increasingly turning to data to predict which students may be in danger of dropping out or to identify when students are falling behind. In this segment, Kelly Sparks, Director of College and Career Readiness programs at … Continue
What Matters Most to Change the Odds for Student Success
Bryan Goodwin, author of the new book, Doing What Matters Most to Change the Odds for Student Success, discusses a few simple keys to improving student success learned from decades of research: what great teachers do that makes such a huge difference, the importance of intentional instruction, and the Forrest Gump Principle of low-performing schools. Continue
The Power of Imaginative Play
Researchers have found that one of the most important predictors of student success is “self-regulation,” the ability to focus on the task at hand and drown out distractions. Young children today may be losing this ability to regulate their own … Continue
The Fearless School Leader
Cynthia McCabe, Director of Elementary Schools for Carroll County Public Schools in Westminster, MD and the author of the new book, The Fearless School Leader: Making the Right Decisions, joins us to talk about the nature of fear and how … Continue
What Can We Learn From Finland?
When it comes to international education comparisons, the school system in Finland ranks among the very best in the world. So why are Finland’s schools so successful and what can we learn and apply from their model? In this segment, … Continue