Alliance for Transformative Education

Systemic improvement for special education comes from taking a team approach. Partners can include educators, administrators, technical assistance centers, parents, students, and community organizations, and the work isn’t about checking boxes to show an issue was discussed but giving careful consideration to evidence-based strategies with the potential to be scaled to reach more populations.

Establishing relationships with students should never be deemed as a “pit stop” or a “drive-through.” It's an extension of who we are and who our students can be.

For the sake of all students, school leaders should work to: *Establish an inclusive climate and vision. *Build staff capacity through professional development. *Support collaboration between general and special educators. *Allocate resources to support inclusive practices and special education supports. *Engage with families and the community to help support inclusive opportunities. *Monitor and evaluate efforts to make data-driven decisions.

This study of a set of New England schools highlighted four areas that the authors feel will help improve high school education: *The need for designing and strengthening instruction to offer flexibility without lowering expectations. *Creating systems that support every student in developing a high-quality, individualized postsecondary plan. *Leveraging data that measure the experiences and outcomes that point to student success. *Building systemic capacity to sustain innovation over time.

“If you prioritize your relationships with families and students, you’ll actually get the information you need to find out, like, what are the things that motivate them? What are the things that give them joy?” Read more below. Richmond Public Schools #chronicabsenteeism #leadwithlove #communityengagement

Offering students a chance to select their own reading material, such as a favorite book, can deliver more than just reading gains: they can also experience social-emotional benefits, too. Choice may be of particular help for students in middle and high school. What teacher of yours allowed you to read what you wanted?

Nearly 15 million children were chronically absent in the 2021-22 school year, doubling pre-pandemic numbers, and millions lived through at least one traumatic experience, such as parent death or abuse. The authors of this new report urge every school to track absenteeism and invest in family engagement to better understand challenges facing families. They also recommend implementing high dosage tutoring and champion the community school model, which offers wraparound physical and emotional health support alongside academics. #chronicabsenteeism #trauma #familyengagement #absenteeism

We believe strongly that SEL-related skills need to be part of the everyday classroom, not a program that happens separately from math and language arts. Professional learning for teachers, then, needs to support their mastery of strategies that facilitate content coverage and academic skill building while simultaneously increasing student engagement and nurturing their growth mindset and mental well-being. That's one of the important steps described in this K-12 Dive article.

This 2021 report from the Wallace Foundation shows that effective school principals have a significantly positive effect on the schools that they lead, as they contribute to outcomes such as student achievement, reduced absenteeism, and teacher retention. Effective principals carry out four key practices: (1) They focus on instruction in their interactions with teachers; (2) they build a productive school climate; (3) they promote collaboration and professional learning among teachers and others; and (4) they manage personnel and resources well.