Blog

Never before has the need for social and emotional learning been so great in our students’ classrooms. The COVID-19 pandemic was an unprecedented event that had a profound impact on all aspects of our society, particularly on the social and emotional wellbeing of both students and adults. Recent surveys indicate that 70 percent of public schools reported an increase in...
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Current systems of summative assessment have not served the needs of all students, families and teachers. With the recent COVID-19 pandemic, school systems across the country face new assessment challenges. One promising innovation is through-year assessments. The idea is this: instead of one single, high-stakes summative assessment at the end of the year, through-year assessment systems aim to accomplish three...
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We know that teachers are grappling with unfinished learning and learning loss among their students from the past few school years. We also know that high-quality instructional materials (HQIM) are a critical component of strong, standards-aligned instruction and can support in recovering student learning. But in order to effectively understand and utilize high-quality instructional materials, teachers have to have the...
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How important are standard assessments? It depends on who you ask. Teachers generally agree that testing is important—but also that traditional bubble-sheet exams can feel more like an interruption than a key component of inquiry-based teaching and learning. Families want to know that students are on track for college or career, but also tend to put more stock in classroom...
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“I’m left wondering if we are all just patchworks of the stories we’ve been told.”—Clint Smith  Do you remember when you were first told about slavery? What about America? I vaguely remember my first explicit lesson about either, but I do remember being in my 10th grade English class and learning about the Harlem Renaissance—a period where Black artists displayed...
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For the 2022–23 school year, we invited applications for the SEL in Action Awards from two applicant pools: School-based educators (including teachers, counselors, administrators and other school staff) seeking to implement SEL initiatives in classrooms or schools in the 2022–2023 school year, and District-level applicants seeking to implement SEL initiatives district-wide and/or across multiple schools within one district (including a...
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What do Spotify, Fitbit and Venmo share in common? They were created via a human-centered design¹. Soon to join that list: student assessments; that is, student assessments crafted via an equitable human-centered design.  In our previous blog, “Designing for Equity: Innovative Assessments in a Post-COVID World,” we identified a reality prevalent for many educators, students and their communities: The pandemic...
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Grants made by the Emerging Bilingual Collaborative, a sponsored project of New Venture Fund, will help nine local education agencies support professional learning opportunities for educators serving Multilingual Learners from pre-K through Grade 3.  The Emerging Bilingual Collaborative, a sponsored project of the New Venture Fund backed by a coalition of five California-based philanthropic funders, is pleased to announce $1.78...
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The effects of COVID-19 on our nation’s schools cannot be overstated. It has, and continues to, dramatically change how students, educators, parents and community members interact and engage with the education system. It has also affected the needs of our schools systems’ innovation leaders. Those tasked with the role of creating new solutions, school models and strategies to spur district...
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Several years ago, we asked ourselves the question: “What can districts and teacher preparation programs, when partnering closely together, do to ensure that teachers are ready to support all students to succeed?” Together, with the Joyce Foundation, we embarked on a journey to learn from successful partnerships nationwide, and built a roadmap with 10 recommendations to define how they prepare...
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