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January 2010 E-newsletter

Below is a listing of our archived monthly e-newsletters. You can view the resources we mentioned in each issue by clicking on the link or Search Resources to find any resource from an e-newsletter or event.

  1. Handbook on Effective Implementation of School Improvement Grants

    The Center on Innovation and Improvement with contributions from the Assessment and Accountability Comprehensive Center, Center on Instruction, National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality, and National High School Center has released a handbook intended as an aid to the successful implementation of the School Improvement Grants (SIG) and help in achieving rapid improvement of schools that are persistently low-achieving.

    The Handbook is organized into two parts. Part I frames the purposes of the School Improvement Grants, provides guidance for SEAs to classify schools within performance strata, and identify the "persistently low achieving" schools, and offers a framework for diagnosing a school's performance and practice in order to target interventions and supports for rapid improvement. Part II itemizes more than 50 strategies relevant to the School Improvement Grants, connects the strategies with research, cites available resources; and offers action principles for the SEA, the LEA, and the school.

  2. A Coherent Approach to High School Improvement: A Needs Assessment Tool

    The National High School Center has released a needs assessment tool to help districts and schools assess current high school education policies and practices, identify areas of strengths and limitations, and implement coherent and sustainable school reform initiatives.

  3. Using the Right Data to Determine if High School Interventions Are Working to Prepare Students for College and Careers

    The National High School Center has released a report to assist educators in collecting and analyzing valuable student achievement data that can help them determine if and how high school interventions for underprepared students are working to effectively prepare them for college and careers.

  4. Improving School Leadership: The Promise of Cohesive Leadership Systems

    The Wallace Foundation released an evaluation conducted by RAND examining efforts by ten states and 17 districts that have participated in Wallace's education leadership to develop "cohesive leadership systems." The goal of these systems is to create well-aligned state-district policies to ensure that principals have the training and conditions they need to improve teaching and learning in their schools.

  5. Gauging the Gaps: A Deeper Look at Student Achievement

    Education Trust recently published a report examining reading and math test score data for fourth and eighth graders from the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP)—the only standardized test that allows for direct comparison across states—from four perspectives: simple gap narrowing, progress for all student groups, gap size, and group comparisons across jurisdictions.

  6. How State Charter Laws Rank Against the New Model Public Charter School Law

    The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools has published a report that gauges a state's public charter school law with respect to its commitment to the full range of values in the public charter school movement: quality and accountability, funding equity, facilities support, autonomy, and growth and choice. This report looks at each individual state that has a charter school law, assesses the strengths of its law against the 20 essential components of the model law, and ranks them from 1 to 40.

  7. The Economic Benefits from Halving the Dropout Rate: A Boom to Businesses in the Nation's Largest Metropolitan Areas

    The Alliance for Excellent Education released a study analyzing the local economies of the nation's fifty largest cities and their surrounding areas. Using a sophisticated economic model developed by Economic Modeling Specialists, Inc., the Alliance calculated economic projections tailored to each of these metro regions.

    These projections estimate the gross increase in important local economic factors such as individual earnings, home and auto sales, job and economic growth, spending and investment, tax revenue, and human capital based on two scenarios:

    1) Reducing by half the number of local students from the class of 2008 who failed to graduate with their class.
    2) Reducing by one thousand the number of local students from the class of 2008 who failed to graduate with their class.

  8. Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2009

    The National Center for Education Statistics released their annual report examining crime occurring in school as well as on the way to and from school. The report provides the most current detailed statistical information to inform the nation on the nature of crime in schools. Data on crime away from school are also presented to place school crime in the context of crime in the larger society.

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