Building 21st Century Schools

Governor Janet Napolitano orders Arizona's school facilities board to prepare a report containing recommendations on how the state can build 21st-century schools. The report must include specific recommendations on how to:

Enhance the ability of teachers and students to integrate technology into teaching and learning.

Create personalized instructional environments that best match teaching programs with individual student needs.

Foster productive relationship-building between teachers and students.

Ensure the safety of all students and school personnel.

Maximize energy and water efficiency.


NEA’s Rankings & Estimates

The National Education Association (NEA) has released its annual combined Rankings & Estimates report. Rankings 2005 provides facts and figures useful in determining how states differ from one another—or from national averages—on statistics including numbers of operating districts, per-student spending, teacher salaries, and other revenue and expenditure data. Estimates 2006 provides projections of public school enrollment, employment and compensation of personnel, and finances, as reported by individual state departments of education. NEA Research offers this report to its state and local affiliates as well as to researchers, policymakers, and the public as a tool to examine public education programs and services.


Tough Choices or Tough Times

A National Center on Education and the Economy report, Tough Choices or Tough Times: The Report of the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, contends that not only are our international counterparts getting more education, but they are getting a better education as well. The report proposes a restructuring of educational priorities that will have a major impact on all levels of education, from preschool to college and beyond. This report’s recommendations to help American’s compete in the global economy include recruiting from the top third of the high school graduates going on to college for the next generation of school teachers; developing standards, assessments and curriculum that reflect today’s needs and tomorrow’s requirements; providing high-quality, universal early childhood education; and, creating regional economic development authorities to develop goals and strategies for their region and ensure that the region’s education and training institutions are developing the skills and knowledge necessary for a worker to be successful in that labor market.

What Science Teaching Looks Like: An International Perspective

The latest Educational Leadership examines the report, Teaching Science in Five Countries: Results from the TIMSS 1999 Video Study. This study examined teaching practices in the United States and in four countries that outperformed the United States in science achievement on the 1999 TIMSS assessment. A random sample of science lessons in each of the five countries was selected to be videotaped during one school year in order to capture a range of science content and paint a picture of typical science teaching practices within each country. Although many teaching strategies were common to all five countries, the study revealed two major differences between the United States and the other countries. First, each of the higher-achieving countries had its own distinct core pattern of science teaching. Second, all of the higher-achieving countries had strategies for engaging students with core science ideas—that is, their science lessons focused on content.


Identifying Effective Teachers Using Performance on the Job

Traditionally, policymakers have attempted to improve the quality of the teaching force by raising minimum credentials for entering teachers. Recent research, however, suggests that such paper qualifications have little predictive power in identifying effective teachers. A Brookings Institution report released in April 2006 makes the case for improving teacher quality by lowering barriers to certification, basing tenure and bonus pay on student test scores and evaluations by principals, peers and parents, and federal bonuses for highly rated teachers willing to teach in high-poverty schools. The report also includes a thoughtful analysis of the challenges of data collection and controlling for student characteristics, as well as how teachers and schools can use this data in their efforts to improve performance.


Improving Higher Education Performance

The National Collaborative for Higher Education Policy, formed to help states improve higher education performance, has released a report offering guidance to states interested in gaining broad agreement around a new agenda for higher education. The work of the National Collaborative suggests that states can develop statewide public agendas that clearly identify the responsibilities of higher education to meet the educational needs of state residents. State leaders can forge agreement on priorities, uncover and remove policy barriers, identify statewide needs for new or modified policies, and design and implement action strategies based on findings. But in the end, success depends on sustained political and educational leadership.

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