Youth and Adults Transforming Schools Together
This organization was founded in Vermont to increase student voice in decision-making and engagement in learning. Youth and adults participate together in action research to identify areas for growth, share data, and take actions. Teams focus on four areas: rigor, relevance, relationships, and responsibility. The two overview videos provide an excellent introduction to the approach.… Read More ›
Building Support for Student-Centered Learning: A Toolkit
This toolkit provides strategies, resources, and tools for those who would like to build public understanding and engagement around student-centered learning or other education reform efforts. The toolkit is organized around a theory of change that includes three elements: a compelling public story, deep dialogue and conversation, and real youth engagement. The toolkit draws on… Read More ›
Transforming Teaching: What University Presidents and Deans of Colleges of Education Need to Know about Modernizing the K-12 Educator Workforce
This issue brief outlines how university presidents and deans of colleges of education can use their influence to advance changes in the teaching profession to support more student-centered learning. In particular, it challenges institutions of higher learning to: Diversify the educator workforce Modernize teacher preparation Promote continuous professional learning and development This brief builds on… Read More ›
Measuring SEL
This collection of resources can help schools, districts, and states determine how to measure students’ social emotional learning (SEL). Compiled by the Center on Standards and Assessment Implementation (CSAI), a partnership between WestEd and the Center on Standards and Assessment Implementation (CRESST), it includes overviews of relevant ESSA regulations, links to guiding documents, and a… Read More ›
The State Education Agency’s Role in Supporting Equitable Student-Centered Learning
This guide was designed to help state education agencies empower local districts to create student-centered learning environments. State agencies have a large role to play in the transformation process and this tool provides guidance and relevant examples, highlighting ways to gather support for a state-wide vision, align curriculum, assessment and funding policies with practice; and… Read More ›
The Blogs You Loved from 2019
Throughout 2019, educators and researchers from across the country have shared blogs about their goals, passions, challenges and triumphs working towards building and sustaining equity-driven and student-centered practices in classrooms, schools and local communities. Here are some of your favorites: 1. The Mastery Collaborative Approach: Student Centered, Culturally Responsive, and Competency-Based “As a community, the… Read More ›
Amplifying Student Voice
This website was designed to introduce educators to action civics. Action civics projects empower youth to become agents of change in their schools or communities. They learn to identify issues important to them and develop evidence-based arguments to influence public policy. This website is full of practical tools for school and community-based educators. Teachers can… Read More ›
Asking Big Questions
Driving home from grocery shopping the other day, my seven-year-old released a long, dramatic sigh and proceeded to tell me that, “Sometimes my head is just so tired by the end of the day because it’s spent all day thinking and asking questions. Like…What is a dream when you dream it? Can you stand flat in space?… Read More ›
State Policy Framework for Personalized Learning
This framework will help states and stakeholders define and navigate their pathway from the exploratory phase of system design, where a limited number of districts engage in personalized learning practices, to statewide transformation. The State Policy Framework for Personalized Learning includes: Four strategies for systems design Four core commitments states should be mindful of for quality… Read More ›
Developing a Modern Teacher Workforce
This report, Developing a Modern Teacher Workforce: Federal Policy Recommendations for Professional Learning and Supporting Future-Focused, Competency-Based Education Systems, addresses how policymakers can support the development of a teacher workforce with the skills and support systems needed to embrace the student-centered, competency-based, and diverse learning environments of the future. Specifically, this brief describes a vision for… Read More ›
From a Nation at Risk to a Nation at Hope
The National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development was created to engage and energize communities in re-envisioning learning to encompass its social, emotional, and cognitive dimensions so that all children can succeed in school, career, and life. This culminating report draws on the information gathered over two years from conversations, meetings, and site visits… Read More ›
When Personalized Learning Also Boosts Special Education Students
This article looks at Brooklyn Laboratory Charter School which is successfully serving a large number of students with learning disabilities, in part because of its commitment to personalizing learning. Students progress at their own rate, not in grade-by-grade lockstep. Teachers are trained to give all students targeted, individualized support with the help of an integrated student information… Read More ›