Current Features

Leading for Literacy: CEL Partnership Helps District Smarten Up Practice System-Wide

The South Los Angeles County school district faced tremendous challenges. Less than one-third of its students read at proficiency level. Its high populations of English Language Learners and special education students were chronically underperforming: even those who could read words often had no idea what the words meant. Many of their teachers were convinced that some students just can’t learn. The teachers didn’t connect their own low expectations to the low literacy levels in their classrooms.

Leaders in the Norwalk-La Mirada school system were determined to make changes...

Purposeful Instruction in Anchorage

A Clear Focus: Leadership Lessons in Purposeful Instruction

University of Washington Center for Educational Leadership and Anchorage School District

What if all teachers knew how to plan purposeful, standards-based lessons and learning targets with all of their students in mind? More importantly, what if each of their students understood and could articulate the purpose of each and every lesson?

These are some of the provocative questions helping the Anchorage School District adapt to teaching a student population that has diversified rapidly over the past 20 years. Research clearly shows that students' understanding of lesson purpose can...

Anacortes Transforms Teacher Evaluation

Beyond 'Satisfactory': A Teacher Evaluation Pilot Focused on Professional Growth

Evaluations that tell teachers “You’re OK” or “You’re good enough” say little about actual classroom practice and provide no targets for professional growth. But that’s the evaluation system that pervades Washington State education – a system that the Center for Educational Leadership, in partnership with the Anacortes School District, is working hard to overhaul.

The question, say project leaders, is not whether you’re good enough but how you can get better. “This critical initiative will be a real leap forward...

Principals Collaborate in Seattle

Working Together: School Leaders Problem-Solve in Professional Learning Communities

School principals in the Seattle Public Schools district are discovering the power of peer collaboration. They’ve opened the doors of their school buildings and classrooms, invited school leaders in to observe and give feedback, analyzed instruction in partners’ schools, and shared strategies for ensuring that every student, regardless of background, achieves academic success.

The Center for Educational Leadership has guided this collaborative work in the 91-school district for two years, helping principals and assistant principals establish themselves in professional...

Oregon Proficiency Project

The Oregon Business Council and Employers for Education Excellence

In every state, including Oregon, there are new expectations for public schools. Oregon's education leaders are focusing increasingly on improved classroom instruction as the missing link between rigorous standards and desired student outcomes. Within the permissive environment of Oregon's education policy, proficiency-based work is gaining ground rapidly.

The two key challenges - what is proficiency-based education and how do we get more of it - were addressed by the Oregon Proficiency Project, conducted by the ...

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