Blog

Imagine you are about to end your senior year, but instead of sharpening your number two pencil and pulling out a scantron for a bubble test, you are putting the final touches on your portfolio of work showcasing your project, research and learnings from the last semester, year or high school career. This idea of an assessment of learning grounded...
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This blog is part of a series detailing best practices and key considerations for setting up a high-quality virtual academy, based on research conducted by Education First. This research included a wide-range of sources, including expert interviews from implementers on the ground and research-based best practice. The series discusses: centering the voices of stakeholders at the margins, components of a...
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Pride Month is an opportunity to celebrate the diversity within our community. At Education First, it’s also a time to reflect on the experiences of LGBTQIA+ students in public education, and the ways we can support them in our work. For this blog post, we’ve compiled research and resources that policymakers and educators can use to support LGBTQIA+ students throughout...
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“We wanted to provide a really great online learning experience for kids and for families. A big part of that is partnering with families. An online education in many ways is an even deeper partnership because students are learning in their house. From the beginning, we thought of our online school as an opportunity to provide kids with an excellent...
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This past year’s dual challenges of ongoing systemic racism and COVID-19 exposed the deep inequities that exist within our schools and communities, including disparities in access to high-quality teachers prepared to teach both virtually and in-person. High-quality teacher preparation can play a critical role in dismantling these and other inequities in education. We—a group of leading Teacher Preparation Transformation Centers...
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“Love is that condition in the human spirit so profound that it empowers us to develop courage; to trust that courage and build bridges with it; to trust those bridges and cross over them so we can attempt to reach each other.”—Maya Angelou “We combine strategy and love to achieve our purpose.”—A Nexus mindset/belief Experiences that truly transform us are...
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“Now would be the time, especially with everything going on in this country, to recruit Black teachers into teacher preparation programs.”—Rachel Tillman, Teacher, Rochester Academy Charter School We agree, and as we highlighted in our Spotlight on Teacher Diversity blog series—districts, states and education support agencies must prioritize teacher diversity as they focus on an academic recovery that benefits all...
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President Joe Biden has nominated Dr. Miguel Cardona as the next U.S. Secretary of Education. As the leader of the Department of Education, it’s vital that Dr. Cardona commits fully to uplifting teacher professional learning practices we know will make schools more equitable places for students to learn.  Along with 28 other organizations and researchers, we ask for the opportunity...
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Guest blog by Maeghan Jones This blog first appeared as part of the We Refuse to Lose series that profiles five cradle-to-career initiatives working to close racial gaps for students journeying from early education to careers.  More than ever, we can feel the turbulence of history. This past year has changed all of our lives as we navigate a global pandemic, political...
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Guest blog by Megan Boren Last spring as the pandemic gathered force, my high school chemistry teacher, who was rounding out his 42nd year of teaching, died from COVID-19. Mr. Metcalfe was loved and honored for his teaching. His funeral was an all-day parade as cars stretched miles down the street into the high school parking lot, where community members...
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