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| | LATEST NEWS FOR PRINCIPALS |
Education DIVE
Principals are key culture and thought leaders in schools, with the potential to profoundly impact students' experiences and performance while being well-compensated. So it's generally no surprise that some ambitious young teachers eye a future takeover of a principal's office when considering career advancement. Most principals are teachers before moving into administration. Former teacher and principal Mary Borba says it helps greatly to have experience in the classroom prior to taking on leadership roles in school systems.
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Education Week
For some Beltway policy wonks and advocates, it may seem like a long time ago since President Barack Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act last December. But for many principals and superintendents, the new law's details seem to be taking awhile to fully sink in. Recently, our colleague Catherine Gewertz wrote up the findings of a survey about testing commissioned by the Northwest Evaluation Association and conducted by Gallup Education.
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Edutopia
University Park Campus School uses low-stakes writing every day and in every subject to foster student voice, self-confidence and critical thinking skills. Low-stakes writing is a tool to help students build comfort with sharing and developing their thoughts through writing. A defining element of low-stakes writing is how it's graded — the grade doesn't carry a lot of weight. This removes much of the pressure from having to do the assignment a certain way, putting value instead on student thought, expression and learning, rather than punctuation, grammar or getting a correct answer the first time.
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By: Bambi Majumdar
 A Pew Research Center analysis in 2015 showed how international students have steadily outpaced Americans students, especially in STEM degrees. There is also a growing knowledge gap among students within the country that is detrimental to indigenous progress. It takes a bold plan to bring about real change, and that's exactly what the world's leading university wants to do. Harvard University is working with six cities to transform, improve and reinvent their education systems.
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eSchool News
Great teachers have long known what research is beginning to prove: an individual's mindset — as much, or even more so than ability — can have a profound impact on their success in school and beyond. But until recently, noncognitive skills like perseverance and self-motivation sat at the periphery of an education debate centered on the measurement of skills like reading and math. That is beginning to change. Books on noncognitive skills pepper best-seller lists. Policymakers have taken note of a growing body of research that proves our abilities and intelligence can be developed. The recent revamp of the federal K-12 education law, for the first time, introduced terms like "well rounded" into the policy lexicon, opening the door to inclusion of nonacademic factors in accountability plans.
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District Administration Magazine
For Portland Public School students in Oregon involved in The Circus Project, tumbling, acrobatics, juggling and conditioning activities help them learn to trust each other and themselves more. "The students pay attention because of the intensity of the experiences and the perceived risk in circus," says Jenn Cohen, The Circus Project's founder and artistic director. "They are doing things they didn’t think their bodies could do." When they learn to say "no" to things that feel personally unsafe to them, they begin to communicate better, and confidence and self-esteem rise, Cohen says.
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eSchool News
Thanks to recent strides in robotics and mobile devices, telepresence technology has opened up numerous possibilities at both the K-12 and higher-ed levels, where remote observation and communication can come in handy. Educators and students are exploring a new way to remotely observe and interact with colleagues and peers with a telepresence robot that enables face-to-face communication.
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THE Journal
Nearly half of all teachers — 48 percent — are using games in their instruction now, according to a new Speak Up research report by Project Tomorrow. That's more than double the percentage from five years ago (23 percent). Things are not all positive for gaming, however. While nearly half of school and district administrators indicated they had instituted some form of game-based learning in their schools, "38 percent of school administrators and 47 percent of district administrators said they have not and they have no plans to do so," according to the report.
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The Huffington Post
As schools have taken steps to beef up their security measures, violence in schools has taken a dive. The latest school safety numbers from the Department of Education show that schools have overall become safer places. While the data, which presents the most recent national indicators on school crime and safety, shows a slight uptick in violent deaths at school, it also shows that bullying and nonfatal crimes have greatly decreased. At the same time, the numbers show a huge increase in terms of school security measures and training over the years.
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The Conversation (commentary)
The tragic consequences of bullying have become a regular part of the news cycle. In April, an eighth grade girl in Missouri and a sixth grade boy in Pennsylvania committed suicide. Bullying was an important factor, according to their families. While such devastating cases understandably draw the most attention, they risk leaving the impression that bullying is an issue only in severe cases. In fact, bullying is pervasive and often causes harm. As awareness spreads that bullying is not just a childhood rite of passage but a significant public health issue, the demand for action has increased.
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Edutopia
Depending on how one might estimate, an approximate four million students have parents who are connected to the military, and of those, at least 80 percent go to public schools. However, teachers often do not know when these children are in their classes, and their many social-emotional needs are not being adequately met.
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The Christian Science Monitor
Are the expectations and demands for public school teachers too high? According to a new poll, they might be. The poll, which was conducted by the advocacy organization Center on Education Policy, found that while teachers themselves may feel reasonably satisfied with the state of their own classroom, when it comes to the profession itself, the vast majority feel discontented and unheard by policymakers at both the state and national level.
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The New York Times
It's long been known that meditation helps children feel calmer, but new research is helping quantify its benefits for elementary school-age children. A 2015 study found that fourth- and fifth-grade students who participated in a four-month meditation program showed improvements in executive functions like cognitive control, working memory, cognitive flexibility — and better math grades. A study published recently in the journal Mindfulness found similar improvements in mathematics in fifth graders with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. And a study of elementary school children in Korea showed that eight weeks of meditation lowered aggression, social anxiety and stress levels.
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MindShift
Is failure a positive opportunity to learn and grow, or is it a negative experience that hinders success? How parents answer that question has a big influence on how much children think they can improve their intelligence through hard work, a study says.
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| | FEDERAL ADVOCACY AND POLICY |
Education Week
The top Democrats on education committees in Congress are telling the U.S. Department of Education to help states gather an appropriately diverse level of feedback from civil rights advocates, teachers and others, as states consider life under the Every Student Succeeds Act. The Wednesday letter from Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. and the ranking member of the Senate education committee, and Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., who holds the same position on the House education committee, also expressed concern that there are roadblocks in the way of gathering important input from these groups.
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Education Week
A report from the Congressional Research Service states that spending regulations proposed earlier this year by the U.S. Department of Education appear to be outside what the statutory language of the Every Student Succeeds Act allows. The report from the Congressional Research Service, published May 5, deals with regulatory language governing "supplement-not-supplant," or SNS, a provision of ESSA that says federal Title I funds targeted at low-income students must be in addition to, and not take the place of, state and local spending on K-12.
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The Associated Press via Las Cruces Sun-News
A survey of available instruction time at public schools across New Mexico has found that a third of the hours are lost to a combination of standardized assessments, test preparation, re-teaching distracted students, absences, disciplinary actions and other activities. Staff analysts for the Legislative Finance Committee presented the findings to lawmakers Tuesday at the state capitol. The survey of teachers and principals found that late starts, recess and subsidized breakfasts also offset instructional time while being counted as productive learning hours.
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NAESP
With 1 in 68 children diagnosed with autism, it's more important than ever for school leaders to understand how to educate students on the autism spectrum. Principal magazine's five-part "Unlocking Autism" series arms principals with tools to support learners on the autism spectrum. Here are five nuggets of wisdom from the series to consider when supporting students on the autism spectrum at your school.
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NAESP
We are happy to share with you the 2016 Preliminary Program for NAESP's Best Practice for Better Schools Conference™ in National Harbor, Maryland! Please take a minute to preview some of the outstanding sessions taking place July 6-8 at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center. View the Itinerary Planner to search or browse events, create your own schedule, and plan your personal activities during the conference.
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