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Ending the No Child Left Behind Catch-22 on English learner progress

Linda Darling-Hammond

Kenji Hakuta

Jan 09 2017
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California’s State Board of Education has an opportunity to leave behind one of the most unfair and problematic features of No Child Left Behind (NCLB): the way it calculates English learners’ progress for purposes of accountability. In doing so, however, the state will still need to address how it will focus on, understand, and support the nearly 1.4 million public students classified as English learners.

Topics The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Accountability and Improvement
Blog

Love Trumps Hate: Building Inclusive, Equitable School Communities

Linda Darling-Hammond

Dec 15 2016
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Since our November 8th election, educators across the country have been stunned by the increase in racial slurs, bullying, and graffiti featuring swastikas and hate speech on campuses, emulating what children saw and heard in the presidential campaign. While deeply disturbing, the explicitness and widespread public eruption of hate speech of all kinds gives us a direct opportunity to create a curriculum of civility and caring, and to unseat the tacit bigotry that is often under the surface in schools.

Topics Deeper Learning, Deeper Learning: School Organization & Design
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Op-Ed: Nudges That Help Struggling Students Succeed

David L. Kirp

Oct 29 2016
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In scores of rigorously conducted studies, social psychologists have demonstrated that brief interventions, designed to combat students’ negative feelings, can have a powerful and long-lasting impact on students’ academic futures by changing their mindsets before they get to college.

Topics Deeper Learning, Deeper Learning: Curriculum, Instruction & Assessment, Deeper Learning: College, Career & Civic Participation
Blog

Teacher Supply and Demand: Getting the Numbers—and the Solutions—Right

Leib Sutcher

Linda Darling-Hammond

Desiree Carver-Thomas

Sep 29 2016
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On September 15th, the Learning Policy Institute released a report on teacher supply and demand that examines the data behind shortages that are emerging in a number of areas around the country. This blog responds to questions about the size and nature of teacher shortages and reinforces the importance of evidence-based solutions that ensure every student is taught by a well-qualified and supported teacher.

Topic Educator Quality
Blog

Strengthening the Early Childhood Workforce to Assure High-Quality Early Education

Titilayo Tinubu Ali

Aug 12 2016
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There is broad agreement among researchers across a wide range of disciplines that early education can give children a powerful start on the path that leads to college and career success. Early learning professionals need what any savvy businessperson wants for his or her company—a motivated, skilled, quality workforce. While recent studies have highlighted several obstacles to building a high-quality early childhood workforce, another points to promising models in four states.

Topics Early Childhood Learning, Educator Quality
Blog

Op-Ed: To Teach a Child to Read, First Give Him Glasses

David L. Kirp

Aug 06 2016
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Community schools serve as a neighborhood hub, where both students and their families can receive medical, dental, and psychological services and other supports in partnership with local organizations. Research shows that such schools can have an outsized impact, including cutting the achievement gap and absentee rates.

Topics Equitable Resources and Access, Deeper Learning, Deeper Learning: School Organization & Design
Blog

Teacher Residencies: A Long-Term Strategy to Solve California Teacher Shortages

May 18 2016
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By Linda Darling-Hammond and Steve Barr | This was a year of good news and bad news in California’s schools. Faster-than-expected infusions of new funding under the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) allowed many districts to replace teachers and programs lost during the Great Recession. However, as the school year opened last August, districts around California scrambled to hire qualified teachers, and many came up short.

Topics Educator Quality, Educator Quality: Professional Learning
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Uncovering the Building Blocks of Preschool Quality

Joseph Bishop

Apr 05 2016
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The long-term rewards of quality early education continue to collect an impressive basket of evidence. An overwhelming majority of voters continue to call out the importance of quality preschool, even if the issue has not yet gotten much airtime in the 2016 presidential election. But how do parents know whether a preschool is of high quality?

Topic Early Childhood Learning
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What California School Districts Can Do to Address Teacher Shortages

Mar 03 2016
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By Roberta Furger and David Robertson | School districts and county offices of education estimate they will need to hire about 22,000 new teachers for the 2016–17 school year. These projections, part of a multiyear rebuilding of the state’s teaching force, are a good sign. There’s just one problem: California is not preparing enough new teachers to meet the projected need. Even with re-entrants and an increase in out-of-state recruits, districts are experiencing shortfalls they cannot easily address.

Topics Educator Quality, Educator Quality: Recruitment & Retention, Educator Quality: Professional Learning
Blog

What California Can Do to Address Teacher Shortages

Linda Darling-Hammond

Patrick M. Shields

Feb 23 2016
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As California embarks on an ambitious journey to raise standards for student learning and rethink nearly every aspect of its educational system, one of the state’s most pressing challenges is hiring and retaining well-prepared, high-quality teachers who can teach the challenging new skills our society demands. This is especially true as the state faces emerging teacher shortages.

Topics Educator Quality, Educator Quality: Recruitment & Retention, Educator Quality: Professional Learning

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Blog

Why Our Education Funding Systems Are Derailing the American Dream

Feb 18 2019

We live in an era of extreme income inequality and one of the places it’s hitting hardest is in our schools. That’s because inequity is hard-wired into our school-funding systems. Linda Darling-Hammond and Jeff Raikes explain the hard wiring and discuss what we can do to shift direction and ensure that every child receives a quality education.

Blog

Just as schools were becoming safer, Trump ‘safety’ commission likely to halt progress

Jan 08 2019

In late December, 2018, the Trump administration rescinded Obama-era guidance on school discipline that has helped improve school safety and student achievement across the country. In advance of that decision, Linda Darling-Hammond and Chris Edley cautioned against this move in a commentary in The Hill. They explained that after states adopted the guidance, suspensions and expulsions—which are given at much higher rates to students of color—were reduced significantly as were school-based firearms incidents.

Blog

What Detroit and Chicago Can Teach Us About Student Growth and School Rating Systems

Dec 13 2018

Historically, U.S. schools have been rated based largely on student performance on an annual summative test. With the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), state accountability systems now feature additional measures of student and school success, including academic growth. These factors are critical if we are to create accountability systems that recognize the contributions that schools make to student progress, while reducing bias against educators and schools serving students in diverse, high-poverty communities.

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