Airing Tonight on PBS NewsHour: Walking in a Student's 

Shoes (An Education Week Report)

If you're like most principals, about 70 percent of your time is spent on the 3 B's-buses, budgets, and behavior. What if, instead, you spent a day walking in your students' shoes? How might that experience change the way you look at school?

This spring, more than 1,400 school leaders from all 50 states and over 26 countries set out to answer that question in the first Shadow a Student Challenge. The idea comes from a partnership between the Institute of Design at Stanford University and IDEO, a leading design firm that also works with schools.

Among those who accepted the challenge was Assistant Principal Karen Ritter of East Leyden High, outside Chicago. Watch her put aside her walkie-talkie and follow one 9th grader through all of his classes-not to mention gym, the lunch line, and a full slate of homework.

What did she learn? John Tulenko of Education Week has that story tonight on the PBSNewsHour.

LEARN MORE TONIGHT ON PBS NEWSHOUR.

CheckLocal Listings

Read this recentEducation Weekstory on the Shadow a Student project and catch up on related coverage on the Rulesfor Engagement blog.

Need something to do this summer to stay out of the heat ---- Here are a few webinars!

Thursday, July 21, 2016 / 2 to 3 pm ET
Register Here

Monitoring and Improving School Climate With Student Surveys Part of the Inside ESSA Webinar Series Monitoring facets of school climate—like how safe, supported, and welcome students feel in their schools—is necessary to ensure that efforts to improve the learning environment are effective and that schools don't overlook the needs of students from some populations, like those from racial minority groups, researchers say. But, until recently, school climate surveys have been off limits to schools that didn't have the resources to pay for one or develop their own. Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Education released a free, online survey tool that will allow schools, districts, and states to administer regular, anonymous, online student surveys about school climate topics. The survey site, developed by a panel of researchers, creates an instant analysis of a school's results, and administrators can save the data in existing local data systems so they can track results over time. These results could be useful for school-level improvement work. They may also be helpful for schools in states that adopt school climate as an accountability indicator under the Every Student Succeeds Act. In addition to learning about the new tool, webinar participants will hear from the Austin Independent School District about its school climate surveys, how their results align with student achievement, and how schools there use the data in their day-to-day work. Underwriting for this webinar has been provided by the NoVo Foundation Guests: Lindsay M. Lamb, evaluation analyst, Austin Independent School District, Texas Joaquin R. Tamayo, Jr., director, strategic initiatives, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, U.S. Department of Education This webinar will be moderated by Evie Blad, staff writer, Education Week

Free Webinar: Cultivating Curiosity in Your  Classroom

In this webinar, Dr. Wendy Ostroff, author of the ASCD book, Cultivating Curiosity in K–12 Classrooms: How to Promoteand Sustain Deep Learning, will describe how you can create a structured, student-centered environment that allows for openness and surprise, where inquiry guides authentic learning. When a classroom is grounded in curiosity, teachers have the unique opportunity to mine students' deepest held wonder, making their engagement natural and effortless and allowing them to fully open up to learning.

This webinar will detail ways to foster student curiosity through novelty and play; questioning and critical thinking; and experimenting and problem solving.

Cultivating Curiosity in Your Classroom
Thursday, July 28 2016, 3:00 p.m. EDT (US)
Presented by Dr. Wendy Ostroff

RegisterNow

Resources on Improving School Climate

Department of Education Releases Resources on Improving School Climate

Free, First-of-Their-Kind Tools Will Support Enhanced Learning Environments for all Students

The U.S.Department of Education today released new school climate surveys and a quick guide on making school climate improvements to help foster and sustain safe and supportive environments that are conducive to learning for all students.

The ED School Climate Surveys (surveys) and the QuickGuide on Making School Climate Improvements will enable states, local school districts, and individual schools to collect and act on reliable, nationally-validated school climate data in real-time. These new free and adaptable resources will enable educators, administrators, and school system leaders to understand and create environments where every child can be successful.

“All students deserve schools that work to ensure safe and supportive school climates in which they can reach their full potential,” said James Cole Jr., General Counsel, Delegated the Duties of Deputy Secretary of Education. “These new surveys and quick guide will support any school that seeks to make significant improvements in all students’ safety and sense of respect and connectedness at school. We owe it to our children to ensure that school is not only safe and engaging, but that we are also working to continuously improve school climate by using resources like these.”

Research shows that students learn best when they are in environments in which they feel safe, supported, challenged, and accepted. Positive school climates foster trust, respect, communication and cooperation among students, school staff, parents and the community at-large. By improving school climate, schools lay the foundation for improving daily school attendance and high achievement by all students.

These new resources build on two Administration initiatives: President Obama’s Nowis the Time Plan, and his MyBrother’s Keeper Taskforce, which recommended that the Department work on the issue of school climates. As part of Now is the Time, the Department announced efforts to place a high priority on helping schools create safer and more nurturing school climates. One result was that the Department funded its NationalCenter for Education Statistics to develop the surveys to create a school climate measurement platform in coordination with theOffice of Safe and Healthy Students.

The new school climate surveys, which are on a web-based platform, are designed for middle and high school students, instructional staff, non-instructional staff, and parents and guardians. Moreover, the platform can process real-time data and provide user-friendly reports. Education agencies and schools administering the survey can store school climate survey data on their state, local, or school-based data systems. The federal government is planning to conduct a sample-based study using the surveys for benchmarking but will not collect or store data generated by the schools using the surveys for any other purposes.

In addition to the Quick Guide, a series of tools will be released later this this spring and summer as part of the SchoolClimate Improvement Resource Package, a web-based suite of action-oriented, research and evidence-based resources to help create and support positive school climates.

School Climate Resources

Department of Education Releases Resources on Improving School Climate

Free, First-of-Their-Kind Tools Will Support Enhanced Learning Environments for all Students

The U.S Department of Education today released new school climate surveys and a quick guide on making school climate improvements to help foster and sustain safe and supportive environments that are conducive to learning for all students.

The ED School Climate Surveys (surveys) and the Quick Guide on Making School Climate Improvements will enable states, local school districts, and individual schools to collect and act on reliable, nationally-validated school climate data in real-time. These new free and adaptable resources will enable educators, administrators, and school system leaders to understand and create environments where every child can be successful.

“All students deserve schools that work to ensure safe and supportive school climates in which they can reach their full potential,” said James Cole Jr., General Counsel, Delegated the Duties of Deputy Secretary of Education. “These new surveys and quick guide will support any school that seeks to make significant improvements in all students’ safety and sense of respect and connectedness at school. We owe it to our children to ensure that school is not only safe and engaging, but that we are also working to continuously improve school climate by using resources like these.”

Research shows that students learn best when they are in environments in which they feel safe, supported, challenged, and accepted. Positive school climates foster trust, respect, communication and cooperation among students, school staff, parents and the community at-large. By improving school climate, schools lay the foundation for improving daily school attendance and high achievement by all students.

These new resources build on two Administration initiatives: President Obama’s Now is the Time Plan, and his My Brother’s Keeper Taskforce, which recommended that the Department work on the issue of school climates. As part of Now is the Time, the Department announced efforts to place a high priority on helping schools create safer and more nurturing school climates. One result was that the Department funded its National Center for Education Statistics to develop the surveys to create a school climate measurement platform in coordination with the Office of Safe and Healthy Students.

The new school climate surveys, which are on a web-based platform, are designed for middle and high school students, instructional staff, non-instructional staff, and parents and guardians. Moreover, the platform can process real-time data and provide user-friendly reports. Education agencies and schools administering the survey can store school climate survey data on their state, local, or school-based data systems. The federal government is planning to conduct a sample-based study using the surveys for benchmarking but will not collect or store data generated by the schools using the surveys for any other purposes.

In addition to the Quick Guide, a series of tools will be released later this this spring and summer as part of the School Climate Improvement Resource Package, a web-based suite of action-oriented, research and evidence-based resources to help create and support positive school climates.

Questions? Contact Us

It's AVAILABLE!

We are excited to announce that SERC's Equity in Education:  A transformation approach document is available to be read or downloaded from the SERC website.  Click on http://equity.ctserc.com/ for the document.

New document coming soon - Equity in Education - A transformational approach