Teaching and Learning

The Supporting Students in Poverty with High-Impact Instructional Strategies Toolkit provides teachers, principals, district staff, and state agencies with evidence-based, high-impact strategies and supportive actions that have the potential to decrease the negative impacts of poverty on student achievement. The toolkit identifies five high-impact instructional strategies that teachers can implement with the support of their principals.

The disappointing results of the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress--a dip in trajectory of reading proficiency for all students except those at the highest level of ability--are prompting states to consider new reading-related policies and actions. In State Policy Levers for Improving Literacy, Barbara Foorman describes the validated non-negotiable steps for ensuring Grade 3 reading success and offers advice about policies that SEAs can implement to guide and support actions at district and school levels.

The American Rescue Plan (ARP) has created opportunities for school districts to address students’ learning challenges originating from the pandemic by improving and augmenting existing programs. Literacy Priorities in Local District ARP Plans is an interactive template intended to guide state-level staff as they review, strengthen and monitor LEAs’ plans for accelerating literacy learning. The guide includes important questions to consider along with tips and relevant links for more information.

The Reimagining Education: Strategies for Innovative Systems Change paper series spotlights three innovative, evidence-based educational strategies that hold the potential to transform student experiences, leading to additional choices, deeper engagement, and increased preparation for students’ postsecondary opportunities.

The Accelerated Learning Work Group’s introductory Guide to Accelerated Learning offers descriptions, resources, and examples of state education agencies implementing Accelerated Learning into their programs. It also answers questions, such as:

The National Comprehensive Center presents a tutoring package that provides timely, useful, and relevant information on how to use tutoring in learning recovery efforts. This resource offers a collection of best practices that can be applied immediately to classroom practice and to district or state policies. It also provides best practices for planning the expansion of tutoring programs to the district or state level, including national cost estimates and how program design efficiencies may lower the cost of implementation.

From the Accelerated Learning Work Group Roundtable, Dr. David Parker from Serve Minnesota describes evidence-based tutoring programs in literacy, mathematics, and early childhood offered by Americorps members throughout the country.

From the Accelerated Learning Work Group Roundtable, Alan Safran from Saga Education shares what he has learned about effective tutoring with special emphasis on selecting and coaching tutors, prioritizing grades/subjects for tutoring, and low-cost models.

 

From the Accelerated Learning Work Group Roundtable, Tess Yates from the state’s Department of Education summarizes her state’s tutoring model, including required parameters such as ratios of tutors to students and the flexibilities offered to districts and schools.

From the Accelerated Learning Work Group Roundtable, Drs. Missy Walley and Tracie Jones from the Arkansas Department of Education discuss the many population segments their programs are tapping as tutors and the detailed training program they offer tutors.

This blog expands on the recent R7CC brief, The Mutually Beneficial Partnership: Using Short-Term Disruptions from COVID-19 to Improve Partnerships Between Educator Preparation Programs (EPPs) and Districts. The blog uses research to highlight the importance of tutoring to decrease learning loss and the potential impact that preservice educators can have when serving as tutors.

This blog from Region 7 focuses on learning acceleration, highlighting Mission Acceleration, a high-dosage tutoring program in Mississippi that is generating results for its participants. The Region 7 team breaks down what exactly "high-dosage" tutoring means and provides evidence to support its effectiveness.

This guide, developed by the National Comprehensive Center, is part of a series of online multimedia resources that provide advice for literacy leadership teams. In addition to information about instructional priorities, the guide includes suggestions for planning efficient use of instructional time, relieving the burden on teachers, centralizing support for parents and engaging community resources. Links to evidence-based resources are provided throughout the text.

The guide, developed by the National Center Literacy Work Group, provides guidance to help teachers adapt to working in multiple modes with increased flexibility and inventiveness while focusing instruction on the essential literacy skills needed to learn subject area content. Resources with evidence-based practices are linked throughout the document, providing “one stop” access to seminal documents.

The American Rescue Plan (ARP) has created opportunities for school districts to address students’ learning challenges originating from the pandemic by improving and augmenting existing programs. Literacy Priorities in Local District ARP Plans is an interactive template intended to guide state-level staff as they review, strengthen and monitor LEAs’ plans for accelerating literacy learning. The guide includes important questions to consider along with tips and relevant links for more information.

This policy document from the Region 11 Comprehensive Center examines the importance of early identification and instruction to prevent prolonged difficulties in learning to read and ensuring that all students are reading with proficiency by the end of third grade. The policy guide includes the following sections: Literacy Instruction, Indicators of Reading Difficulties, Multitiered System of Support, Selecting Evidence Based Resources, Legal and Statutory Requirements, District Reporting Responsibilities, and Discussion of Terms.

In partnership with the Idaho State Department of Education (ISDE), the Region 17 Comprehensive Center developed this toolkit to help instructional leaders deliver consistent, effective training to teachers across Idaho on evidence-based strategies for improving literacy in grades 4-8. The toolkit is based on four recommendations in the practice guide from the Institute of Education Sciences. For each recommendation, there is a facilitator’s guide, PowerPoint presentation, and handouts.

Troubling results of the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) should trigger action on the part of state-level policymakers. This virtual conference from the National Association of ESEA State Program Administrators (NAESPA) featured presenters from the Comprehensive Center Network who discussed several validated steps states can take in prekindergarten through grade 3 to ensure reading success. The program included several implementation questions for states to consider for their work, examples of state initiatives to improve literacy outcomes, and additional resources forthcoming from the CCNetwork.

A presentation for the National Comprehensive Center’s Accelerated Learning Work Group.  Presented by Dr. Nancy J. Nelson, NCIL Deputy Director and Professional Development & Technical Assistance Lead and Assistant Professor, Boston University

This presentation provides information on key issues for learning recovery following the COVID-19 pandemic.  It describes what accelerated learning is, what it is not and how schools and state agencies are addressing learning loss within each of the 3 tiers of intervention (RTI tiers).

Region 5 worked in partnership with the Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) to develop an adult learning framework and toolkit. This guide is a companion to the Adult Learning Framework (ALF). It works in partnership with the framework while considering the unique challenges associated with the development of engaging and effective online, asynchronous learning experiences that have become embedded in the fabric of learning for all.

This professional development package, produced by the National Comprehensive Center, shares information from an expert roundtable event held at the beginning of the 2020-2021 school year. The event showcased evidence-based guidance to state policymakers and educators about remote and hybrid learning in literacy. The package includes short videos, researchers’ answers to question posed by participants, and links to training resources.

As schools pivot to online teaching, student engagement in the virtual classroom environment has become an urgent and important topic to be addressed. This tip sheet provides concrete strategies that teachers can incorporate into their online teaching to increase engagement with students of middle and high school. The authors present a framework based on trauma-informed (TI) approaches and social and emotional learning (SEL) strategies to ensure students feel safe, connected, engaged, and ready to learn.

A community of practice led by the Region 1 and Region 9 Comprehensive Centers tackled the challenge of measuring the effectiveness of remote and hybrid learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. The project uncovered three key learnings and developed two tools that can inform implementation of remote and hybrid instruction now and into the future.

InformCS, a National Comprehensive Center project, provides guidance and resources that can be used by district-level instructional coordinators and teacher leaders to deepen computer science educators’ content and pedagogical knowledge through focusing on formative assessment literacy. InformCS offers a five-step approach to support teachers in using formative assessment tasks to identify student challenges on specific computer science concepts and to adjust instruction accordingly.

This whitepaper, from the National Comprehensive Center. presents a call to action for states and school districts to support Computer Science (CS) teacher capacity-building through standards-aligned, sustained, scalable, and reusable teacher professional development (PD). This strategy promotes teachers’ CS formative assessment literacy as a way to improve their ability to effectively teach CS.

This practice guide from the National Comprehensive Center walks the reader through a five-step process for developing and using formative assessment tasks aligned to a specific computer science (CS) standard. The practice guide is designed to be used with the corresponding white paper, Building Teacher Capacity in K–12 Computer Science by Promoting Formative Assessment Literacy.

This resource from Region 7CC examines some limitations of current mathematics instruction and provides key considerations for coaches of mathematics teachers.

This brief provides an overview of dual enrollment programs, including a discussion of key policy design elements and an overview of student enrollment, demographics, and outcomes. The brief includes a discussion of the policy approaches and a set of best practices to support policymakers in designing high-quality dual enrollment programs.

This brief describes traditional education before colonization, educational values for Native students, and how to support students’ future goals without asking them to compromise their cultural identity. The authors provide an overview of inequity and barriers to Native student academic success and ways to address them. Topics include how gifted and talented programs and advanced placement courses have impacted Native students; education strategies and career awareness in students from rural tribal communities; and how to access career pathways beyond locally available options.

The Reimagining Education: Strategies for Innovative Systems Change paper series spotlights three innovative, evidence-based educational strategies that hold the potential to transform student experiences, leading to additional choices, deeper engagement, and increased preparation for students’ postsecondary opportunities.

The Regional Center 8 is supporting the Michigan Department of Education (MDE) in making changes to expand secondary learning opportunities for all students. Under the Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act (Perkins V), Career and Technical Education (CTE) curricula will be directly tied to credentials that allow employment upon graduation. Students in the Education & Training career cluster will be able to work toward the Child Development Associate (CDA) Credential or the Michigan Youth Development Associate (MI-YDA) Credential.