All Resources (by latest date)
Effective Science Instruction: What Does Research Tell Us? - Second Edition
Research and Best Practices
This brief from the Center on Instruction endeavors to distill the research on science learning to inform a common vision of science instruction and to describe the extent to which K-12 science education currently reflects this vision. A final section on implications for policymakers and science education practitioners describes actions that could integrate the findings from research into science education.
This Second Edition of Effective Science Instruction: What Does Research Tell Us? provides more detailed information for users. In.....
Evaluating School Principals (TQ Center)
Research and Best Practices
As part of the TQ Center's Tips and Tools series, Evaluating School Principals outlines four practical strategies for evaluating principals and offers numerous real-world resources and examples. The tool describes the benefits of evaluating school principals and provides tips and cautions to assist district and state leaders in effectively creating robust systems for assessing the quality of school leadership.
Adolescent Literacy Walk-through for Principals: A Guide for Instructional Leaders - Grades 4-12 (COI)
Research and Best Practices
This guide and accompanying scenarios of adolescent literacy instruction from the Center on Instruction, designed to help principals monitor and support adolescent literacy instruction in their schools more effectively, can be used at the late elementary school level, in content-area classes in middle and high school, and with intervention groups or classes. It provides a scaffold to build principals' understanding of scientifically based reading instruction, as a means for a principal to gather information about the quality of literacy and.....
Benchmark Assessment for Improved Learning (Assessment & Accountability Comprehensive Center)
Research and Best Practices
The Assessment and Accountability Center has published a report describing the purposes of benchmark assessments that includes recommendations for selecting and using benchmark assessments. The report addresses issues of validity, alignment, reliability, fairness and bias and accessibility, instructional sensitivity, utility, and reporting. The Center also presents recommendations on building capacity to support schools' and districts' use of benchmark assessments for improved learning.
Meaningful Exposure to Content Standards
Alaskan Resources
"Content standards" are broad statements of what students should know and be able to do as a result of their public school experience. In addition to providing "meaningful opportunities" for students in state assessed reading, writing, mathematics, and science standards, districts are expected to provide "meaningful exposure" to content standards not tested by the state so that students receive a balanced education. The concept of meaningful exposure comes from a ruling by Judge Gleason in Moore v State of Alaska.
The Teachers Page - The Library of Congress
Research and Best Practices
This rich website from the Library of Congress contains ready-to-use materials that bring the Library’s primary sources into the classroom. In addition, it builds teacher skills with the Library's professional development curriculum.
Educators can find classroom materials, professional development activities, Teaching with Primary Sources partners, news and events, class starters, teacher updates, and more Library of Congress resources.
Data Use for Improving Learning Re-launched (Assessment & Accountability Comprehensive Center)
Research and Best Practices
“An increasing body of evidence points to the link between effective data use and student learning,” said Margaret Heritage who managed the comprehensive revisions. She noted that the “Race to the Top” program goals place a high priority on better data systems that inform schools and teachers.
The new site includes a data users guide plus specific examples from states, school districts, and schools of successful data use. This site also has components of formative and diagnostic assessment.
Report: Assisting students struggling with mathematics: Response to Intervention (RtI) for elementary and middle schools
Research and Best Practices
This Practice Guide, released by IES in April 2009, aims to help educators develop and implement Response to Intervention to assist students struggling in math. The focus is building an instructional program in order to improve outcomes for students who have difficulty with math. The guide presents recommendations about screening, instruction, and progress monitoring and indicates the quality of the research base that supports them. It includes common questions and potential concerns that might arise with each recommendation and suggestions to.....
Learning From Leadership: Investigating the Links to Improved Student Learning
Research and Best Practices
The largest in-depth study of school leadership to date, this report gathers and analyzes quantitative data confirming that education leadership has a strong impact on student achievement, as measured by student test scores. The study shows that leadership makes its mark largely by strengthening a school’s “professional community” – an environment where teachers work together to improve classroom instruction. It also finds that rapid turnover of principals reduces student achievement. In addition, the study shows that although the.....
Learning Port
Research and Best Practices
Across states, national organizations and technical assistance investments, an extensive amount of professional development material is available. This library of over 700 professional development resources provides local educators with easy access to an array of resources that can be used or customized to meet their needs.
Principal and Teacher Evaluation: A Compilation of Information and Resources for Schools and Districts Developing Educator Evaluation Tools
Research and Best Practices
This document lists information and resources relating to principal and teacher evaluation that districts may find helpful as they develop tools to review a teacher's or principal’s performance. ACC has identified a number of tools, some of which provide examples that include student data in the evaluation process, which are research-based and offer promise as an effective practice. However, any resource’s inclusion or omission from this list does not constitute ACC’s endorsement or lack of endorsement.
Protocols
Research and Best Practices
The word “protocol” has taken on a more specific meaning in education in recent years. In the context
of educators working to improve their practice, a protocol is a structured process or set of guidelines
to promote meaningful and efficient communication and learning.
The National School Reform Faculty website has compiled several protocols for educator use. Protocols are most powerful and effective when used within an ongoing professional learning community such as a Critical Friends Group® and facilitated by a skilled coach.
Bringing Literacy Strategies into Content Instruction
Research and Best Practices
This document provides research-based guidance on academic literacy instruction in the content areas, specifically focusing on the effective use of text in content areas. It reviews the research evidence about content-area literacy instruction for adolescents and suggests ways teachers can use content-area texts to enable students to understand the vocabulary and concepts they contain. This document also provides a brief synopsis of working with adult learners and the most promising professional development practices identified in research......
iObservation: Supervising and Supporting Effective Teachers in Every Classroom
iObservation is an instructional and leadership improvement system. It collects, manages and reports longitudinal data from classroom walkthroughs and teacher observations. Teacher growth and leadership practices inform professional development differentiated to individual learning needs for every teacher and leader to increase his/her effectiveness each year. (Marzano,Reeves)
PBS TeacherLine: Professional Devlopment for PreK-12 Educators (A Service of PBS Teachers)
Research and Best Practices
PBS TeacherLine's high quality, standards-based graduate-level courses offer teachers the professional development opportunities they need in an accessible online format that makes learning fun, flexible and collaborative. You can earn graduate credit, PDPs, or CEUs while gaining strategies and resources to bring directly to your classroom.
Uncharted Territory: Using Tiered Intervention to Improve High School Performance
Research and Best Practices
A new report from the High School Tiered Interventions Initiative (HSTII), a collaboration among the National High School Center, the Center on Instruction, and the National Center on Response to Intervention, summarizes what HSTII has learned thus far about effective implementation of RTI in high schools.
Tiered Interventions in High Schools: Using Preliminary ‘Lessons Learned’ to Guide Ongoing Discussion, provides a brief description of the RTI framework and the essential components of RTI, illustrates how the essential components of.....
Principles for Culturally Responsive Teaching
Research and Best Practices
This source describes seven characteristics of culturally responsive teaching:
1. Positive perspectives on parents and families
2. Communication of high expectations
3. Learning within the context of culture
4. Student-centered instruction
5. Culturally mediated instruction
6. Reshaping the curriculum
7. Teacher as facilitator
Space learning over time with review and quizzing
Research and Best Practices
A key aspect of effective teaching and learning is helping students retain information over the course of the school year and beyond. Research has shown that exposing students to key concepts and facts on at least two occasions, separated by several weeks to several months, greatly reduces the rate at which information is forgotten. This is accomplished by spacing the introduction of material over time and by reviewing material with short quizzes, review games, targeted homework assignments, and exams.
View this multimedia overview to learn.....
Alaska State System of Support (SSOS) Operations Manual 2011-2012
Research and Best Practices
Alaska State System of Support (SSOS) Operations Manual,
Building Local Capacity, 2011-2012
The Alaska SSOS's mission is to support districts as they build their capacity to implement sustainable school improvement strategies with fidelity. Authority for developing and implementing a system of support for districts and schools comes from both State and Federal law. This document provides an overview of the SSOS program and resources that are available to districts and schools in Alaska.
Improving Adolescent Literacy: Effective Classroom and Intervention Practices
Research and Best Practices
For the purposes of this website, these recommendations have been merged into four practices: Vocabulary Instruction; Comprehension Strategies; Engaging Text Discussion; and Intensive Intervention. This Practice Guide was developed by an expert panel convened by the Institute of Education Sciences. It is designed to address challenges in improving literacy levels in middle and high school and providing interventions for struggling adolescent readers. The Practice Guide offers a set of five research-based recommendations. A summary of the.....
Alaska Native Knowledge Network (ANKN)
Alaskan Resources
The Alaska Native Knowledge Network (ANKN) is an AKRSI partner designed to serve as a resource for compiling and exchanging information related to Alaska Native knowledge systems and ways of knowing. It has been established to assist Native people, government agencies, educators and the general public in gaining access to the knowledge base that Alaska Natives have acquired through cumulative experience over millennia. Anyone wishing to participate in the Alaska Native Knowledge Network or contribute to the development of the resources in this.....
Alaska History & Cultural Studies
Alaskan Resources
Alaska's History & Cultural Studies provides students, teachers and others interested in the state access to a rich source of facts and viewpoints about Alaska and its history.
There are six UNITS, each encompassing an important theme or historical period. Linked to the UNITS you'll find extensive information that includes an historical account of that era, stories of the people who lived then, photographs, maps, oral history, letters and other primary resources.
Visual Art Lessons for K-8 Educators
Alaskan Resources
This website provides art lesson plans for teachers. All lessons have been developed and time-tested by the specialists at the Art Center in the Fairbanks, Alaska public schools. Although developed for a specific grade, all lessons are easily adaptable to others levels. Many of the lessons developed for 4th and up are easily relevant for middle school art students. Please keep in mind that these lesson plans are designed to be taught with an ‘Art Kit’ and may not be easily usable without the visuals in the kit.
The Fairbanks North Star.....
Reinventing the American High School (Association for Career and Tech Ed)
Research and Best Practices
In this paper, the Association for Career and Technical Education review the challenges and current efforts in high school redesign, and offer a number of recommendations about what elements should be included in our mutual efforts to reinvent the American high school for the 21st century.
