A new report  found that despite the enormous sums school districts are spending on professional development, an average of almost $18,000 per teacher per year, there is no evidence that any particular approach or amount of professional development consistently helps teachers improve in the classroom.

On the surface, these findings are disconcerting, but after digging into the research, we've found key learnings that school districts can take and apply to improve their teacher professional development programs.  ( Read more.)

The Evolution of Teaching Creationism in Public Schools  by Eric Jaffe on the Atlantic Monthly site.

Despite the overwhelming and research-based concerns regarding value-added models (VAMs), VAM advocates, policymakers, and supporters continue to hold strong to VAMs' purported, yet still largely theoretical strengths and potentials.

Those advancing VAMs have, more or less, adopted and promoted a set of agreed-upon, albeit "heroic" set of assumptions, without independent, peer-reviewed research in support. These "heroic" assumptions transcend promotional, policy, media, and research-based pieces, but they have never been fully investigated, explicated, or made explicit as a set or whole. These assumptions, though often violated, are often ignored in order to promote VAM adoption and use, and also to sell for-profits' and sometimes non-profits' VAM-based systems to states and districts. The purpose of this study was to make obvious the assumptions that have been made within the VAM narrative and that, accordingly, have often been accepted without challenge.  ( Read more.)

 Current U.S. educational policy, with its emphasis on high-stakes testing and scripted, "teacher-proof" curricula, have impeded creativity in teaching and learning. Based on the findings of this study, suggestions for curricula include the incorporation of teachers' unique personal creative interests in lessons, along with infusion of the arts and music across varied disciplinary content. Teacher education programs and professional development courses should include a focus on both real-world, cross-disciplinary lesson planning, while administrators and policymakers should support opportunities for teachers to take creative and/or intellectual risks in their work.  (Read more.)

Weighing public and private interests in regulating school choice  by Jon Valant on the Brown Center Chalkboard site.

The steady growth of charter schools and public school choice programs is changing the ways that U.S. public schools are governed.  Traditionally, states delegate school governance to school districts, with governing authority held by locally elected boards.  These districts then assign students to neighborhood schools based on students' home addresses.  Increasingly, however, school choice reforms are weakening the link between residential address and school assignment, encouraging families to choose from an assortment of tuition-free options.  These reforms bring a type of market-based accountability that generates pressure for schools to appeal to local families.  This has implications for the ways that schools serve private and public interests, raising important questions for state regulators.  (Read more.)

Parenting in America, Outlook, worries, aspirations are strongly linked to financial situation  by Kim Parker, Juliane Menasce Horowitz and Molly Rohal on the Pew Research Center site.  (Click here.)