non-profit,education: National Alliance of Black School Educators (NABSE)

School principals share keys to success
What does it take to be an effective school leader, and how can school principals best support teaching and learning in their buildings? A new video series, built around the Wallace Foundation's "The School Principal as Leader: Guiding Schools to Better Teaching and Learning," examines these questions and more, through the eyes of school principals around the country. [read more]
32 summer professional development opportunities
It's a common misconception that education professionals have summer vacation like their students. But anyone who's been a teacher, administrator or even superintendent knows that summer is the perfect opportunity for professional development. Whether it's attending online webinars, traveling to workshops or sitting down for a good read, there are plenty of opportunities to brush up on Common Core State Standards, 21st century leadership and technology integration this summer. [read more]
Common Core promises new tests. Will they be better than the old ones?
Tests that can assess students' mastery of skills and knowledge are as important as the Common Core standards themselves, say many educators and education reformers. Will the tests that accompany Common Core be any better than those states are using now? The hope is they will be, but it will be about two years before the answer is clear. [read more]
Teaching active reputation management: 5 steps for sanitizing Facebook accounts
Collectively, all of the digital content you create, and that others create about you, becomes your online reputation. And today, that's the reputation that matters the most. Active "Reputation Management" includes both using proactive measures to keep from sharing content harmful to reputations, and measures to "sanitize" or clean-up damaging content already posted. [read more]
We need a new approach to principal selection
In charting a course to sail your boat around the world, you don't hire a navigator who still believes the Earth is flat. Yet we continue to ask those vested in our present education system to create a new vision for educating our children. We must move away from the biased opinions of the past to create a new, more effective job description for principals who can turn around failing schools. While the investment in current principals is significant, it may not necessarily be able to provide the new direction needed. This is because it is based on a paradigm reliant on outdated geography. [read more]
Filling in the gap on climate education in classrooms
Polls show most U.S. students learn little about climate change at school, and even many adults have a fuzzy notion of what causes it. For the first time, new K-12 science standards issued in April include climate change. But the standards, written by a consortium of science and education groups in consultation with 26 states, are only voluntary and could take years to roll out. So Cy Maramangalam hopes to bring kids up to speed fast on a topic that scientists say must be urgently addressed. [read more]
FEATURED ARTICLE: School principals share keys to success What does it take to be an effective school leader, and how can school principals best support teaching and learning in their buildings? [read more]
TRENDING ATICLE: Instructional leadership is about quality time, not quantity Principals set the tone for academic excellence in their schools, but researchers and policymakers are only just beginning to understand how their leadership affects student achievement. [read more]
MOST POPULAR ARTICLE: Fear not the principal's office: That's where school success begins School principals do a lot more than strike dread in the hearts of misbehaving kids, even if that's how many people remember them. [read more]
Defining moments Dan Kerr, a contributor for Connected Principals, writes: "So this week I'd like to talk a little bit about the defining moments in a student's life, as well as the kind of 'learning' that I believe to be the most profound, impactful, and enduring throughout a student's education. I have to admit that I was inspired to write this post because of the experiences, the stories, and the anecdotes that came out of last week's China Trips." [read more]
New leaders don't have to 'fly solo' It's a stressful time to be a new leader. With so many new mandates, accountability and budget cuts, leaders definitely have their challenges. At least new superintendents have administrative experience under their belts so, from an administrative level, they have seen these changes coming. New school leaders may not have that luxury. School leaders have to learn a new set of skills when they move from one level to the next. At the same time they are trying to acquire that new skill set, they are working through the emotional side of accountability that everyone is experiencing. [read more]
Rifts deepen over direction of education policy in US In statehouses and cities across the country, battles are raging over the direction of education policy � from the standards that will shape what students learn to how test results will be used to judge a teacher's performance. Students and teachers, in passive resistance, are refusing to take and give standardized tests. Protesters have marched to the White House over what they see as the privatization of the nation's schools. Professional and citizen lobbyists are packing hearings in state capitols to argue that the federal government is trying to dictate curricula through the use of common standards. [read more]
Do new exams produce better teachers? States act while educators debate It took less than a minute for Mario Martinez to finish the first six questions of the algebra exam that his professor, Ivan Cheng, had just handed to him. The high school-level test was supposed to be a good example of an exam, so that the graduate students in Cheng's math methods course at the California State University, Northridge's school of education would better understand what rigorous high school-level questions look like, and how to write tests for their own lessons. [read more]
E-rate needs overhaul for digital era, experts argue As school districts strive to put more technology into schools to support 1-to-1 computing initiatives and prepare for the common-core online assessments, the federal E-rate program is in danger of becoming as outdated and insufficient as a sputtering dial-up connection in a Wi-Fi world. While the program can boast great success since its inception � just 14 percent of schools were connected to the Internet when the E-rate was launched in 1996, compared with near-universal access today � it is now at risk of buckling under the weight of districts' technological demands in the age of laptops, tablets, smartphones and 24/7 online activity. [read more]
Sequestration forces Indian land, military base schools to make drastic cuts Military families are always moving around, and those shifts can be tough for children who have to adjust to new surroundings. School districts that serve these students often try to ease the transition by providing counselors for them to talk with. But thanks to sequestration, the Lemoore School District in central California has had to get rid of that service. "These [military parents] go out on crews on a ship for nine months. The kids don't see a parent or two for that long. So they have to deal with that," said Jack Boogaard, the assistant superintendent of schools in Lemoore, Calif. [read more]
10 education technology tools of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s We don't know about you, but sometimes the eSchool News editors are amazed to hear about the education technology students use to learn in schools these days: mobile gaming apps, 3-D printing and robots? Many of the editors still remember the prestige of walking to the front of the class and writing on the chalkboard with colored chalk. To celebrate technologies of the past, the editors of eSchool News have compiled a list of the education technologies we and our teachers used back in the day � you know, before the Internet even existed. Can you think of an ed-tech tool not on the list? What was your favorite classroom tool when you were in school? [read more]
In Newtown's wake: How grief is handled at school Christine Park, the president of New York Life Foundation, writes: "In the months since the horrific Newtown school shooting, a media spotlight has glared on the nearly 450 surviving students at Sandy Hook Elementary who are grieving for their friends, teachers, classmates, school staff and, in some cases, their siblings. Their stories serve as an enduring reminder of the overpowering grief and loss left in the Newtown tragedy's wake." [read more]
The surprising ways BYOD, flipped classrooms and 1-to-1 are being used in the special education classroom The latest compilation from the U.S. Department of Education (from 2010-2011) reports that about 13 percent of public school enrollment consists of students served by special education programs. That count has pretty much stayed the same for the last 13 years. What's different now is that, as technology pervades all aspects of the classroom, special education teachers need to make a decision about whether they're going to stay on track with specialized assistive technologies or adopt some of the mainstream ones that general education students are using. [read more]